Page:Gems of Chinese literature (1922).djvu/185

 



 

In painting oxen and tigers, it is always customary to paint the hair, but the hair of horses is not painted. On my asking an artist why this was, he replied that a horse’s hair is too fine, and cannot be brought out; but when I suggested that a rat’s hair was still finer and yet was always painted, he had nothing to say. Now a horse is never seen in a painting to be more than a foot in size, which is a great proportionate reduction, and therefore the hair would be far too fine to be reproduced; whereas a rat generally has about the same measurement as in real life, and therefore the hair ought to be painted. This principle would seem to apply equally to the ox and to the tiger; the hair however of these animals is long, and a distinction has accordingly to be made. Li Ch‘êng, whenever he put kiosques, pagodas, or other buildings, on the mountains of his landscapes, painted them with cocked-up eaves, so that the spectator looked upwards and saw the inner part; because,