The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-11-11


drawing may be divided into the drawing of
form and the drawing OF motion, they may
lay claim to a full and consummate owner
ship of the latter. If their modes shock our
own conventionalities, we cannot gansay
that never before have artists so lived at
home with animals and plants never has
artistic skill held under more subtle sway
the thoughtless tribes of sea and air.
The printed sketches of Hoksai, one of
their later artists are types of the many
sidedness of the Japanese sketch-books.
Birds, beasts, insects, and plants-their
growth and movements; curves of motion
IN water-falling, running, or even
thrown; the curl of smoke; the cere-
mony of the Daimios the shutting of the
Bones, the strut of the soldiers, the quarres
of the populace, scenes of home and outdoor
life, games of children, military exercises;
all trades with the workers in them, and de-
formites born of their work; men too fat.
men too thin; landscape effects; studies of
architecture and perspective; and especially,
and always, all possible positions of the
human body are noted down in these little
albums. All this is done in q manner which
would grace the slletch-book of the best
draughtsman that ever lived, with SEN
sitive feeling, detached mind, and
gentle humor. Art is a necessary en-
aggeration of nature, and implies O bear
ing heavily upon certain distinctive points
(cdj3cdturd). A certain grotesqueness marks
these japanese drawings. / do not refer to
that side which, in all works of art marks
national differences, and which has for other
nations something ludicrous; but there exists
here a vein of humor which everything tells
us must be a national expression Their con-
stant and delicate observation recalls with
smile the secret mechanism of actions, from
the slight indications of any habit to extrava-
pf OpCtr1pp on1 1aY,ooDn,, ,,.l; a.,
flourish in an open life like theirs.
Their hand is light, and never suffers from
that Western spirit of caricatre which un-
derlines and insists and dwells upon it's Joke
A few lines give it. If we understand it, so
much the better; if not, we shall not have
failed in puzzle or q rebus. We can still
admire the accuracy of whatever is detailed
the comprehensiveness of what is suggested,
often the grace and beauty, always the swing
and energy Of the design: for the Japa-
nese drauohtsman unites within him what
is often separated in the Western artist
the power of representing grace and awk-
wardness, and a feeling Of dignity, with a
sympathy for the laugh on things. Japa-
nese hero strains under ponderous weight,
or lady firts her fan, and it IS hard to say
whether we receive most distinctly the i'm
preston of manly effort or of female
grace. The summons Of the idea is always
answered by their imagination; the real bends
before their will, though never trampled
upon, and retaining all its essential laws.
However much the motive, the main forms or
the accessories help the story and belong to
it, they retain their elementary construction
and their strength or their grace is merely
framed by more feeling line. Hollsai,
in the Inscriptions alongside of some designs
equal in all but beauty to the Greek inven-
tions Of the centaur or the fawn,
modestly remarks that it is more easy
to draw things that no one has
seen, than to represent things that
every one sees. With rs, however, this
ease of imagination is not an everyday mat
ter, though with us, also, the greatest sue
cesses in realism have been attained by men
among the greatest in imaginative power.
The exception with us seems to be an essen
tial character with them, Transforming ma
ture deeply studied and wisely understood.
The sum Of all this makes up our first i'm
preston that the two opposites of realism and
decoration form the art Of Japan, and that, in
this successful blending it takes a distinct
place, never before filed in the logical history
of art.
Some of the compromises made necessary
by this combination are interesting. Chinese
art is often ridiculed for its complete absence
of perspective; bat our own practice of copy
ing paintings, initiated in all their modelling
and light and shade, upon the curved surface
of our vases, is itself an utterly barbaric
notion.
The perspective of the vase destroys the
perspective of the ornament, which it is i'm
possible even to see from proper point of
view. The treatment of perspective in
Chinese decoration is, therefore, the result
Of very sensible idea. But the Japanese
have improved upon the usual Chinese man
ner, and have invented an interesting COM
promise, in which certain rules of linear or
isometric perspective are used with deep
feeling for the actual appearance Of nature;
and by the use of high horizons, so that
the different planes shall come one above the
other, they manage to frame large compost
tions within quite an Elusive effect. 1t is
owing to this birds eye view that they are
able to represent crowds and masses Of people
with enviable felicity, and give the feeling OF
open air and expanse to their smallest
landscapes. In the gradual separa-
ton of decoration and pictorial art with
MS there was at least this advantage, that the
artist was impeled to the individual study of
nature that he might mirror the great world
in the little world of his picture.
To different origins we shall reasonably
! look for the causes which have kept the Japa-
nese artist to fiat tints and boundary lines in
drawing, and have prevented his pursuing
others Of natures appearances, and attempt
ing to give the forms of things by the oppo-
sition of light and shade, or the influence of
colored light. With the harmony which be-
longs to all good art, Japanese works, if they
do not solve the latter problem, offer at least
very successful sketches of such solutions.
Their colored prints are most charmingly SEN
sitive to the coloring that makes up the ap'
Ooarance of different times of daV. to the re-