Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 8.djvu/141

 , and polychromatic painting over the glaze, the principal colours of the latter being red and gold, with very exceptional additions of black, and still rarer touches of dull yellow and enamel green; and that the subjects were seldom more varied than the colours, being limited to bamboos, pines, large peony and chrysanthemum flowers growing stiffly from rocks, symbolical animals, birds, butterflies, and personages apparently suspended in the air, with the addition of rough reliefs and rudimentary reticulation. Messrs. Audsley and Bowes, also, speaking of the Dresden collection, say with true instinct: "One is somewhat at a loss while examining these works to account for their markedly peculiar artistic treatment,—a treatment that the student of Japanese art would scarcely be prepared to pronounce strictly natural. They are ancient, certainly, and of necessity present art thoughts of schools long passed away; but making full allowance for this, one cannot help asking if there could have been an external influence at work which modified their artists' national taste. Jacquemart mentions that the Dutch exercised a considerable influence over the porcelain manufacture of Japan. … If such was the case, the difficulties of the student disappear. This theory certainly has probability on its side; and the lavish richness of much of the ware, in many cases absolutely overcrowded with ornamentation, tends to prove its truth." These writers unfortunately mar the soundness of the above judgment by depicting in their plates and describing as "a type in which Japanese treatment is most marked," a triple-gourd-shaped vase which is in every sense an offensive monstrosity and in no sense true to Japanese canons. The plain fact is