Page:The Spirit of Japanese Art, by Yone Noguchi; 1915.djvu/91

86 all of it, when I grow stronger again, and become a real artist, the real artist even to satisfy you. Oh, how I could paint the mysterious changes of the sky which I have been studying for the last week!"

Again I saw him in his sick-bed at his little home one afternoon; we grew, as a matter of course, quite enthusiastic and passionate as our talk was on art and artists; it was the foundation of his theory, when he expanded on it, not to put any difference between the arts of the East and the West; he seemed to agree with me on that day when I compared even recklessly Turner with our Sesshu. Although he entered into his art through the technique, I observed that he was speedily turning to a spiritualist; I often thought that he was a true Japanese artist even of the Japanese school, while he adopted the Western method. (It was the Graphic critic who said that he was "perhaps the ablest Japanese painter in our method who has visited our shores.") He and I saw that time the famous large screen by Goshun belonging to the Imperial Household called "Shosho no Yau," or "The Night Rain at Shosho"; as our minds were still absorbed in its soft mellow atmosphere and grey flashes of sweeping rain, we often repeated our great admiration for that Goshun. "It's not merely an art, but Nature herself," he exclaimed. The afternoon of the summer day was slowly falling;