Page:Landscape Painting by Birge Harrison.djvu/227

THE SUB-CONSCIOUS SERVANT Oki smiled. "In Nippon," he said, "we do not study art in the American way. We don't sit down before a thing and copy it. The master takes his pupils to the cage of the tiger, and he say: 'Look at the tiger's leg and the shape of his paws; look at his eyes and the way his ears lie back upon the head; look at his long body and his sweeping tail; see how he crouches as he walks.' Then we go home and each one makes a drawing, and the master say all those drawings very bad. And the next day we go again to the cage of the tiger and look at the things we do not remember; and we go again the next day, and maybe we go every day for one month, two month, three month—but in the end we know that tiger." And he certainly did know his tiger.

To the figure painter, of course, and [175]