Page:Brinkley - The Art of Japan, vol. 1.djvu/16

4 and with light coming from one fixed direction. Thus, also, linear perspective and cast shadows are necessarily excluded. Vanishing points, horizon lines, and such things mean that only one aspect of a picture is delightful; every other, painful. The Japanese artist understood these things thoroughly. It has been said of him reproachfully that he remained perpetually ignorant of perspective, and that he never discovered the theory of shadows. Certainly it is true that his knowledge of linear perspective continued to be very imperfect until modern times; but it is also true that he always had a full understanding of aerial perspective; and if we could induce ourselves to imagine for a moment that the presence of cast shadows escaped the observation of one so deeply versed in every other detail of nature’s portraiture, the delusion would at once be dispelled by examining his representations of fishes, where each scale is accompanied by its due shadow, and of foliage, where leaves and branches occupy their proper places in an accurate scheme of light and shade. But the fact is that he never allowed his artistic fancy to obscure the logic of his purpose. His prime function was to ornament a flat surface, and he recognised that scenes demanding the realistic effects produced by relief and differences of plane are entirely discordant with such a function. He considered that his picture, whether it represented landscape, seascape, figures, flowers, birds, or what not, was intended to produce not an illusion but a harmony. Very seldom did he make the mistake of pasting what we of the Occident call “pictures” upon walls, screens, doors, or ceilings. Aerial perspective and foreshortening were permissible, and he used them with admirable skill: linear perspective and cast shadows he carefully eschewed. It is easy to conceive that a tendency to what the West calls “suggestion” would be developed by such conditions. A temple would be represented by the torii that spans its avenue of approach; a town, by two or three roof-ridges emerging from mist; a tree, by one bough; a river, by a sinuous stroke; the sea, by the curves of a few wave-crests. Some have said of Japanese art that it is essentially impressionist. That is true, with the limitation that the impressions produced are those of facts, not of fancies, of realities, not of ideas. Appreciation depends on education. Occidentals have learned to esteem painting for the sake of its beauty independently of its environment; the Japanese esteems it for its beauty in subordination to its environment. As to which is the greater effort of art, need there be any discussion? The purpose of the artist in each case is radically different. When he steps out of the comparatively narrow limits imposed by decorative canons; when, by the aid of cast shadows, perspective, and a delicate graduation of “values,” he shows us not merely an exquisite scene from nature but also the poetical aspects that it presents to his own refined imagination, are we not in the presence of one of the greatest achievements of genius, one of the noblest results of intellectual development? Still we must recognise the merits of the decorative system also; above all such a system as the Japanese elaborated by centuries upon centuries of subtle effort. The “picture” obliges us to isolate ourselves from our surroundings; to