Page 359 - Chinese Art, Vol II By Stephen W. Bushell

CHAPTER XTTI.
Pictorial Art.

The preceding chapters have led up to the last and most im-
portant branch of our subject, that of Chinese pictorial art, which
embraces a very wide range, while the limited space at our dis-
posal will only allow the briefest of sketches. In China, as else-
where, painting has passed through a prolonged period of historical
evolution. The development has been in the main indigenous,
although not without an occasional stimulus from the west, as
shown by Professor Hirth in his paper on Fremde Einflnsse in
der Chincsischen Kiinsl, 1896, in which he discusses his theme
in early times under the chronological periods :
From the oldest times to B.C. 115—Period of spontaneous develop-
1.
ment.
2. From B.C. 1 15 to a.d. 67—Period of Gr,-ECO-Bactrian influence.
A.D. 67—Introduction of Buddhism into China.
3.
The learned professor and appreciative connoisseur of Chinese
art passes on from these early times till he comes to the Mongolian
period of rule in China (.\.d. 1280-1367), when scions of the house
of Genghis were seated on the thrones of Peking and Bagdad, and
he concludes with an account of more direct influences from Europe,
dating from the arrival in Peking of the Jesuit fathers Gherardini
and Belleville in the year 1699. Of these alien influences it is
generally conceded that the Buddhist was by far the most important
and lasting, the others were comparatively transient and evanescent.
In the study of Chinese painting a recent critic, M. R. Marguerye,
justly observes that to appreciate it properly the westerner must
2S
S041.