Page 35 - Chinese Porcelain Vol I, Galland

RELIGION.

DRAWING AND PATNTING.

The fine arts seem never to have been so highlv esteemed
among the Chinese as literature, and it may be that the small
amount of encouragement accorded to drawing and painting
accounts for the, in some respect, backward state of these
arts in China. Perspective and shading are the two points in
which they appear to European eyes to fail most; but as Chinese
views in most matters are diametrically different to those of
Europeans, their artists have no doubt been prevented by
national taste and from out of the
prejudices moving groove
in which have worked for centuries. Mr. Barrow states
they :
"
When several portraits by the best European artists, intended
as for the were to view, the mandarins,
presents emperor, exposed
the of tints occasioned the
observing variety by light and shade,
asked whether the originals had the right and left sides of the
of different colours considered the shadow of the
figure ; they
nose as a great imperfection in the figure, and some supposed
"
it to have been placed there by accident (Davis, vol. ii. p. 253).
The most successful of their decorations on porcelain are those
in which and are not called into
perspective shading requisition.
In the of insects, birds, fruits, flowers, and ornamental
painting
and borders, they excel; but before this
patterns pursuing
subject further, we had better glance at the sources from which
the Chinese artists derived their
inspiration.

RELIGION.

Religion, as might be expected, has exercised a great
influence on Chinese art, and we must therefore bestow some
little attention on this
complex question.
It has been said by M. Von Brandt that a Chinaman is
born a Confucianist, lives as a Taoist, and dies as a Buddhist,
which simply means, that while a nominal adherent of the old
State of which ancestral is a he is all his
religion, worship part,