Page:Brinkley - The Art of Japan, vol. 1.djvu/71

Rh and proportions. He formed his own idea of “ snarling, crouching, treacherous mass of energy,” and he painted that idea with force and effect, but yet with so little resemblance to nature’s original that the distortion of the modelling impairs our appreciation of the essence of the thing. He had, however, seen a tiger’s skin, and a tiger’s skin is just the kind of texture that lends itself readily to linear representation, and consequently comes within full range of the Japanese artist’s brush. Ganku’s tiger-skins are marvels of brush work. Mori Sosen (born 1747, died 1821), one of the greatest of the Shi-jo masters, is as celebrated for his delineations of the monkey as Ganku is for his paintings of the tiger.

But Sosen studied the monkey in nature, and acquired an extraordinarily intimate knowledge of its habits and attitudes. He may be called the Landseer of Japan, for though his fame rests chiefly on his pictures of the monkey, he has left paintings of deer, of badgers, of rats, of fishes, and of hares that would have won for him a great reputation even without his remarkable studies of simian life.

The reader will understand that no attempt is here made to separate the Shi-jo and the Ganku schools: their differentiation is scarcely a practical problem. He will understand, also, that if special reference is not made in this section to such painters as Gekkei, Keibun, Hoyen, Kikuchi Yosai, Kōrin and Bunrin, it is for the same reason that has compelled us to omit from other sections any detailed account of the works and styles of scores of other famous masters, from the early Tosa and Kano celebrities to Tani Buncho and Hokusai.

What is the present condition of pictorial art in Japan and what are its prospects? The former question has been answered more than once in a pessimistic strain. Japan is said to have outlived the manners and customs from which her old art derived vitality, and to have entered upon a phase of existence so permeated with Occidental influences that her artists, like her tailors and her barbers, can not resist the change. Surely that is a superficial view. It involves the assumption that her art has no elements