Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/50

RV 30 pictures now remaining, or at most four, can be confidently attributed to the gallery of the ninth century, and among them one alone is identifiable as the production of a particular artist. It is from Kukai's brush, a portrait of his hierarch, Gonso, painted with sufficient vigour and feeling to show that already in the ninth century the religious artists of Japan stood on a plane of high achievement, and that the enthusiastic eulogies bestowed by tradition on their secular contemporaries, Kawanari and Kanaoka, were doubtless not undeserved.

It may be noted here of all Japanese painters down to the twelfth century, perhaps even down to the thirteenth, that they regarded the religious picture as the field of highest achievement, and that, when their subject was a Buddhist divinity, a Nirvana, an Arhat, or a Rishi, they sought inspiration either directly from the Chinese masters or indirectly from the latter's most famous disciples. Religious paintings, like religious propagandism, appeal either to the intellect or to the senses. Pictures of the former class are, of course, the exception; those of the latter, the rule. The characteristics of Japanese Buddhist paintings in general are the characteristics of the illuminated missal: a rich display of gold and of glowing but harmonious colours, with conventional drawing, complete absence of chiaroscuro, apparent errors of anatomy, and faithful observance of traditional types. sometimes, however, just as the noble thoughts of a great preacher impart new and lofty aspects to the familiar faith he inculcates, so Buddhist pictures from a master hand cease to be a mere repetition of hackneyed types, and reveal glimpses of a world of divine inspirations and emotions Thus it happens that