Page:Brinkley - The Art of Japan, vol. 1.djvu/74

44 poor as have been the results hitherto attained. We have spoken of the modern hybrid school as a revival rather than a new creation. Such a form of speech will perhaps be challenged, for more than one writer of high authority has denied that any marked traces of Western art are visible in Japanese pictures painted before the opening of the country forty years ago. It is admitted that in the field of copper-plate engraving some aid was received from the Dutch at the close of the eighteenth century, and that a few of the later artists of the Popular School obeyed the laws of linear perspective; but even such an astute critic and accurate historian as Dr. Anderson speaks with surprise of the “want of receptiveness” of Japanese artists, and surmises that it was chiefly due to the low grade of the European pictorial works coming under their observation during the era of restricted foreign intercourse. There is another explanation; an explanation vividly illustrated in the story of an artist who has hitherto received singularly inadequate notice from foreign

essayists. On the 23rd of November in the year 1840, died by his own hand in Yedo (Tokyo) Watanabe Kwazan. He was a member of the patrician (shizoku) order. During