Page:Brinkley - The Art of Japan, vol. 1.djvu/26

10 the position of the painter with regard to his picture influences the whole character of his line work. Instead of standing upright before his easel so that the axis of his lines is either on the mahl-stick or at his shoulder, he kneels on the floor with his paper or silk beneath him so that the axis of his sweep is the lower part of the leg, and the whole body from the knee upwards becomes the arm with which the lines and curves are produced. Whether this mechanical difference constitutes an advantage or a disadvantage is a question we do not venture to answer. But, as a very astute critic has remarked, “Japanese drawing so depends on its lines, its character is so wrapped up in them, that if the lines changed their sweep and flow, that character would be lost.”

It will easily be inferred from what has thus far been written that the mannerisms of Japanese art are numerous. The decorative limits within which it is for the most part confined render such a result almost inevitable. In the course of time, certain tricks of delineation have received the cachet of great masters and been recognised as the ne plus ultra of forceful suggestiveness. A fatal temptation to learn these tricks without attempting to acquire the spirit that suggested them besets the average student. It is so comfortable, so reassuring, to know that waves, bamboos, clouds, flowing water, hair, rock, and a multitude of other objects may be depicted by lines, curves, and washes combined and arranged in ways capable of being memorised as accurately as an ideograph or a syllabary. The result is painful ease of reproduction. One is lost in admiration of the directness and facility of a Japanese artist who seats himself among a group of onlookers and paints a dozen pictures in an hour, each presenting some points of excellence. But it may very well happen that a year or two later one is invited to attend a séance where the same artist performs the same tour de force by producing exactly the same pictures in the same time. We speak here of the rank and file of the profession—the men who, being without originality of conception, are obliged to substitute skill of pencil, and who find in the mere processes of the great masters a sufficient equipment for the purposes of every-day art. Unfortunately such mechanists of the brush have abounded in every era. Their skill as copyists constitutes a barrier to foreign appreciation of true Japanese art. How many collectors or connoisseurs in Europe or America have had an opportunity of examining genuine works of great Japanese painters? How many Japanese in Japan have had such an opportunity? Their combined number might probably be counted on the fingers of two hands. Copies, imitations, forgeries, they have seen in abundance, but to authenticated originals they have had no access.

What has already been said about picture galleries may be recalled here. In Europe and America one can visit collections, private or public, where examples of all the celebrated artists of France, Italy, Germany, and so on are displayed. There is nothing of the kind in Japan, and there never has been anything of the kind. Japanese pictures are hidden away among the heirlooms of temples or in the store-houses of noblemen and