Page:The Spirit of Japanese Art, by Yone Noguchi; 1915.djvu/117

112 pleased to say was one of Hara's best pictures. Whenever I see Hara's pictures of any old woman, not only this "Old Seamstress," I think at once that what you might call his soul sympathy immediately responded to the old woman, since Hara's heart and soul were world-wearied and most tender.

Markino has somewhere in the book the following passages: "First few weeks I used to take him round the streets, and whenever we passed some picture shops he stopped to look through the shop window, and would not move on. I told him those nameless artists' work was not half so good as his own. But he always said: "Oh, please don't say so. Perhaps my drawings are surer than those, and my compositions are better too. But the European artists know how to handle oils so skilfully. I learn great lessons from them."

Indeed when he returned home he had fully mastered the technique of handling oils from England, where he stayed some four years. It is really a pity that Hara passed away without having fully expressed his own art in his masterly technique, which he learned with such sacrifice and patience. His death occurred suddenly at the time when he was about to break away from his former self and to create his own new art ten times stronger, fresher, and more beautiful.

I wish to call the readers' attention to Yoshio Markino's My Recollections and Reflections, which contains the most sympathetic article on Busho Hara.