Page:Women in the Fine Arts From the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentiet.djvu/46

Rh A fuller acquaintance with the art and art-methods of countries of which but little had before been known has been an element in art expansion. Technical methods which have not been absolutely adopted by European and English-speaking artists have yet had an influence upon their art. The interest in Japanese Art is the most important example of such influence, and it is also true that Japanese artists have been attracted to the study of the art of America and Europe, while some foreign artists resident in Japan — notably Miss Helen Hyde, a yoimg American — have studied and practised Japanese painting to such purpose that Japanese juries have accorded the greatest excellence and its honors to their works, exhibited in competition with native artists.

Other factors in the expansion of art have been found in photography and the various new methods of illustration that have filled books, magazines, and newspapers with pictures of more or less (?) merit. Even the painting of "posters" has not been scorned by good artists, some of whom have treated them in such a manner as to make them worthy a place in museums where only works of true merit are exhibited.

Other elements in the nineteenth-century expansion in art are seen in the improved productions of the so-called Arts and Crafts which are of inestimable value in cultivating the artistic sense in all classes. Another influence in the same direction is the improved decoration of porcelain, majolica, and pottery, which, while not equal to that of earlier date in the esteem of connoisseurs,