Page:Brinkley - The Art of Japan, vol. 1.djvu/17

Rh gaze through an open window without any consciousness of the room in which we are standing. The decorative painting invites us to view it as part of a whole, and to value it in proportion as it enhances its environment. Japanese art may be said to end where European art begins—that is to say, European art subsequent to the sixteenth century.

This broad difference recognised, we pass on to note that the Japanese artist accepted every suggestion offered by nature within the limits of its adaptability. His observation was extraordinarily keen, perhaps because he never assisted it artificially. He knew nothing of animate models. It would have appeared quite irrational in his eyes to take a drawing of a danseuse from a posed girl, or to gather the idea of a bird in flight from a stuffed specimen with extended wings. “Objects at rest can never seem to be in motion,” would have been his thought, “however their limbs be disposed or their muscles stretched.” Therefore he painted moving objects according to his impression of the appearance they presented when in motion, and it was such a correct impression that his birds seemed to be flying out of the canvas, his dancers moving across the field of vision. In that feature