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214 ates harmony rather than a juxtajiosition of contrasts^ makes them consider, for example, a pictm-e of lovely and vivid coloin- of summer growth and joyous birds a little inharmonious in the wintry season, and to be re- placed by themes painted in a quieter scheme of colour ; while, of course, the converse of this holds good, in re- spect of the summer season. A subdued theme of this kind such as I saw in the Bond Street Gallery — nearly mono-chromatic in colour, and mounted on a border of arabesque patterned silk, which, as in nearly every case, carries out the intention of the painter as a suit- able framing to his design — is of a snowy scene, simple alike in subject and in treatment. It is a solitary tree growing on the side of a hill, its branches so laden with snow that it seems as if a mere breath would be sufficient to shake it all to the earth ; the sky, which is most delicately washed in on a pale ground, recedes behind the dimly-outlined hills which lie beyond a gorge, on the hither side of which some deer are moving. These animals, touched in with a warm, flat tone, form the only positive colour suggestion in the picture; but it just serves to enunciate the loneliness and chill of winter-time, and to bring the idea of the desolation of snowbound hills and woods into accord with some suggestion of living things. This ' Kake- mono,' dated the nineteenth century, is the work of ' Moro-Ippo, particularly successful as a painter of birds, and a disciple of the naturaHst school, which was founded in the last century by Okio, born in 1773, and one of the most original painters among the Japanese at that time. Okio, after receiving the usual academic training of liis day, revolted against the hieratic canons of the Buddhist school, which, as they ever do, fettered invention, drawing, and originality of style and thought, by exhausting the artistic faculty of the indi^'idual in the repetition of conventional compositions, in which gorgeousness of colour and much gold had their place without the faintest indication of shadow or relief Tims he and his followers, casting aside the artificial restraints imposed by custom, effected something like a revolu- tion in the artistic world by rejecting that 'cali- graphic dexterity ' of the earlier conservative period, which until then had resulted in the reproduction of traditional types of unknown birds and beasts, and wonderful thunder dragons and storm fiends. In their attitude, these founders of the naturalistic school, who resolved to make truth to nature their highest aim and sole standard of excellence, are found to resemble the little band of English pre-Raphaelite painters who, in the middle of the jjresent century, waged the same war against the conventionalism of the old masters. As they, in their zeal, were attracted by the earnest feeling, and biassed to a certain extent by the influence, of some of the painters before Raphael — Botticelli, Giotto, Fra Angelico, Lippo Lippi, Perugini, and many another besides— so the naturalists of Japan appear to have turned once more with appreciation to the vigour and naturalism oi early Japanese and secular Chinese art, whence, as I men- tioned earlier, so much of their own art was derived. In both cases a renaissance took place, whose influence in both it seems impossible to estimate, partly because we are yet in the thick of it, and pai-tly because the complex relations of modern life bring other forces into play, which either accentuate or minimise differ- ences, introduce new methods and ideas, and eliminate old errors. These interactions, how is it possible to exhaustively consider them ? If, for instance, we see a movement going on now, a tendency towards 'impres- sionism' in painting, as antithetic towards absolute realism in art, as its aim is admirable towards a partial realisation of phenomena, how much of this simplifica- tion of idea, and concentration of effect — minus passion and emotion — may not be set down to Japanese influ- ence } Or on the other hand, we may ask how much has Western thought reacted on Japanese art, in introducing a very definite advance in perspective knowledge into their drawing, especially seen in the nineteenth, and the latter part of the eighteenth century work .'' A comparison of the earlier ' Kake- monos,' say of the sixteenth and seventeentli centuries, with those of the eighteenth and nineteenth, will show this ; for although the beauty of form and colour in these earlier ones is as fine as in the later, yet the later ones show an advance over these in particular directions, such as an increased freedom of touch, and variety in the pictured form, presenting a fore- shortened view of bird, animal, and plant forms where before was only outline, or where at most the surface modelling of the form was represented by the sym- metrical lining in of all the parts, as if each was exactly opposite the eye at one and the same moment. Thus it is that in the carp swimming, the scales on the fisli's body are painted with as much distinctness, and of the same size, on the further side as they are on the nearer ; and the same thing occurs in the painting ot the plumage of the exquisite studies of quails and other birds ; in which, nevertheless, as in the former instance, the especial characteristics of each animal are given, and in a way that no slavish imitation could possibly effect, and this because the Japanese observes and connects his impressions, and so obtains, even in his perspectiveless carp, the action, ease, and grace of swimming, even as he understands so well the subtle curve of the flowering reed and fragile grasses, the picturesqueness of angular boughs, and the fluttering vivacity of starlings and tree sparrows. But although this somewhat conventional interpreta- tion is common to much of the Japanese work, it is curiously enough almost absent in some of the very earliest themes exhibited, which are less mannered than later on ; indeed, there is one, a Chinese, — not Japanese, — Kakemono of the twelfth century, of ' Wild Geese in the Rushes,' which for naturalness and beauty of form, is nearly on a level with the best work of the