Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 8.djvu/218

 The decorative style introduced by the first Dōhachi and carried to perfection by his son was faithful to the canons of his time. At the close of the eighteenth century Maruyama Okyō, one of the greatest painters of Japan, had broken the fetters of old-fashioned conventionalism and by his unaided genius accomplished a revolution in the laws of painting in Kyōtō. Of the Shijo school, founded by him, the chief characteristics, as enumerated by the late Dr. W. Anderson in "Japanese Pictorial Art," are "an easy but graceful outline, free from the arbitrary mannerisms and unmeaning elegance of some of the works of the older schools; comparative truth of interpretation of form, especially in the delineation of birds, associated with an extraordinary rendering of vitality and action; and, lastly, a light harmonious colouring, suggestive of the prevalent tones of the objects depicted, and avoiding the purely decorative use of gold and pigment. The motives," Dr. Anderson goes on to say, "most in favour with the classical academics were necessarily excluded by the principle of the Shijo school; but Chinese landscapes, Chinese sages, and animals which the painter never saw in life, were profitably replaced by transcripts of the scenery and natural history of Japan. The subjects peculiar to the Popular school, the life of the streets and theatres, were, however, as carefully avoided by the naturalist as by the classical artist; but where the two schools chanced to coincide in motive, as in the drawing of Japanese heroes, the advantage of refinement always lay on the side of the pupils of Okyō." All this applies accurately to the methods of the Dōhachi family. They chose their decorative motives from nature, and applied them with great refinement