The Roanoke times. [volume] (Roanoke, Va.) 1890-1895, 1895-05-03
JAPANESE ART.
Queer Effects Of Tradition Upon
the Native Artists.
Methods OF tho Masters Carried Out TO nm
Exaggerated Extent by the Disciples
OF ThcIr Respective SchooIs-Pe-
culiarities OF Flower Work.

Japanese drawings of howers-and
they usually draw them beautifully
are often influenced in some way by q
tradition. Tho man who invented the
method was n true impressionist, writes
Alfred Parsons in IIarper's Magazine.
He seized what appeared to him char
acteristic of the plant, nnd insisted on
that to the exclusion of other truths,
thus founding mannerism which all
following artists initiated. In time,
what he saw as characteristic became
exaggerated by his disciples, who
looked ct nature only through his eyes
and not with their own, and have OBJ
served that the flowers which are most
frequently drawn are not so like the
originals as those less popular ones de
picted in books of botany and such
like, for drawing which there is no rec
ognized method, and where the
draughtsman relied entirely on his
own observation for his facts. Take,
for example, the spots on the lotus
stems; II you look very closely you can
see that there are spots, but certainly
they could not strike every artist as
marked feature of the plant, for they
IRE not visible three yards away. But
some master noticed them many years
ago and spotted his stems, and now they
oil spot them. and the spots get bigger
and bigger; and SO it will be until some
original genius arises who will not be
content with other peoples eyes, but
Will dare TO look for himself, and he
may perhaps, without abandoning jap
anese methods, get nearer to nature
and start n renaissance in japanese
art The Japanese treatment of land
scape is not more conventional that of
Claude or David Cox, or than the short
hand of our pencil sketches, but 1t re-
cords facts in different way.
The everlasting question in art is the
imitation Of nature; it has never been
carried farther In certain directions
than by Millais and his pre-Raphaelite
brethren, or in others than by Manet,
Monet and the modern French, but no
one can put in everything; look at
simple bunch of leaves in sunlight
against wall, and think how long it
would take to really initiate all their
complexities of form, color, and light
and shade; some facts can only be given
by ignoring others, and the question
what is the important thing which must
be insisted on is the personal affair of
each individual artist in every country
where art is unfettercd and alive. But
In Japanese, as in byzantine and other
eastern arts, this question Is still de-
cided by the practice of past genera
tions, and it will take all the vitality
OF strong man to infuse new life into
it without destroying it's many ex-
quisite qualities Perhaps when Jap
anese artists absorb It's spirit instead
of merely trying to initiate its methods,
western art may help in the direction
of freedom; at present l fear that its
influence has done more harm than
good. The people are so quick to rccog-
nize the meaning of a few lines, and to
understand the poetic idea which they
suggest, that 1t is n wonder the artists
ever learned to draw at all; they might
have been content with symbols, for
few lines are enough to convey all the
poetry that is associated in their minds
with any OF the wcll-known art mo-
tives.