Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/80

RV 58 cannot be obtained, and that elasticity of line is incompatible with what the classicists call strict accuracy. Kiyōsai, as his sketch books showed, knew all about the structure of the human hand and foot, but the hands and feet that he drew in his pictures would have been wholly condemned by a Bouguereau or an Ingres.

There has already been occasion to note, as a general criticism, that in Japanese pictures—not excepting those that delight by their fleeting impression of life and movement, by the appearance of reality and character they convey—a discord is often created by the intrusion of accentuated outlines among natural surroundings. This defect is least observable in the paintings and chromo-xylographs of the Popular school, because their motives are usually human figures and drapery, subjects which not only permit but require some recognition of outline; and if, occasionally, the student is disposed to quarrel even with Kiyonaga, Harunobu, Utamaro, Toyokuni, or Yeishi for their emphasis of outlines, he forgives them readily for the sake of the charm of manner, the exquisite grace of gesture, and the superb rhythm of movement that their figure subjects display.

Passing, further, to the question of composition, it may be said that in this feature the ukiyo-ye paintings stand on a very high level. More unstinted praise has indeed been bestowed on them, but when "composition" is here spoken of, reference is made to the perfect arrangement to which all the factors of pictorial art must contribute their share,—not merely flow and force of line, harmony of colour and due relation of tones, but also linear perspective and chiaroscuro. Some of the artists of the Popular