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 masters are best known for some particular one. Han Kan was famous for his horses, the models for succeeding generations of painters, both Chinese and Japanese. A specimen of his brush is in the British Museum; and in the same collection is a long roll which gives a glimpse of the landscape of this age. It is a copy by a great master of the Yuen dynasty, Chao Mêng-fu, from a famous painting by Wang Wei, representing scenes on the Wang Chʽuan, the latter’s home (Plate I. fig. 3 shows a fragment). With the Tʽang age landscape matured, and two schools arose, one headed by Wang Wei, the other by Li Ssü-hsün. The style of Wang Wei, who was equally famous as a poet, had a romantic idealist character—disdainful of mere fact—which in later developments created the “literary man’s picture” of the Southern school, as opposed to the vigorous naturalism of the North.

Next come five brief dynasties, memorable less for any corporate style or tradition, than for some fine painters like Hsü Hsi, famous for his flowers, and Huang Chʽuan, a great master in a delicate style. Two pictures by him, fowls and peonies, of extraordinary

beauty, are in the British Museum.

The empire, which had been broken up, was reunited, though shorn of its outer dependencies, under the house of Sung. This was an age of culture in which the freedom of the individual was proclaimed anew; glorious in art as in poetry and philosophy; the period which

for Asia stands in history as the Periclean age for Europe.

The Mongol dynasty continues in art the Sung tradition. Chao Mêng-fu, the greatest master of his time, belongs to both periods, and ranks with the highest names in Chinese painting. A landscape by him, copied from Wang Wei, has been already mentioned as in the British

Museum, which also has two specimens of Yen Hui, a painter less known in his own country than in Japan. He painted especially figures of Taoist legend. The portrait by Chʽien Shun-chü (Plate I. fig. 5) is a fine example of purity of line and lovely colour, reminding us of Greek art.

The simplicity of motive and directness of execution which had been the strength of the Sung art gradually gave way during the Ming era to complicated conceptions and elaborate effects. The high glow of life faded; the lyrical temper and impassioned work of the Sung time were replaced

by love of ornament and elegance. In this respect Kiu Ying is typical of the period, with his richly coloured scenes from court life (Plate I. fig. 6). None the less, there were a number of painters who still upheld the grander style of earlier ages. The greatest of these was Lin Liang (Plate I. fig. 7), whose brush work, if somewhat coarser, is as powerful as that of the Sung masters. But though individual painters of the first rank preserved the Ming age from absolute decline, it cannot be said that any new development of importance took place in a vitalizing direction.

The present dynasty prolongs the history of Ming art. The literary school of the South became more prominent, sending out offshoots in Japan. There has been no movement of national life to be reflected in art, though a great body of admirable painting has been produced, down

to the present day. The four landscape masters known as the “four Wangs,” Yün Shou-pʽing and Wu Li are pre-eminent names.

2. Engraving.—According to native historians, the art of printing from wooden blocks was invented in China in the 6th century, when it was employed for the publication of texts. The earliest evidence we have for the existence of woodcuts made to reproduce pictures or drawings is a passage in a work by Chang Yen-yüan, from which it appears that these were not made before the beginning of the Tʽang dynasty, under which that author lived. The method employed was to cut the design with a knife on the plank of the wood, in the manner followed by European artists till the end of the 18th century, when engraving with a burin on boxwood ousted the older process. The Japanese borrowed the art from China; and in Japan a whole school of artists arose who worked specially for the woodcutters and adapted their designs to the limitations of the material employed. In China the art has remained merely reproductive, and its history is therefore of less interest. Printing in colours was known to the Chinese in the 17th century, and probably earlier. In the British Museum is a set of prints brought from the East by Kaempfer in 1693, in which eight colours and elaborate gauffrage are used. Some fine albums of colour prints have been issued in China, but nothing equal in beauty to the prints produced in Japan by the co-operation of woodcutter and designer. Engraving on copper was introduced to China by the Jesuits, and some well-known sets of prints illustrating campaigns in Mongolia were made in the 18th century. But the method has never proved congenial to the artists of the Far East.

3. Architecture.—In architecture the Chinese genius has found but limited and uncongenial expression. A nation of painters has built picturesquely, but this picturesqueness has fought against the attainment of the finest architectural qualities. There has been little development; the arch, for instance, though known to the Chinese from very early times, has been scarcely used as a principle of design, and the cupola has been undiscovered or ignored; and though foreign architectural ideas were introduced under the influence of the Buddhist and Mahommedan religions, these were more or less assimilated and subdued to the dominant Chinese design. Ruins scarcely exist and no building earlier than the 11th century is known; but we know from records that the forms of architecture still