Page 365 - Chinese Art, Vol II By Stephen W. Bushell

PICTORIAL ART. iii

every detail of the official costume, the embroideries of the robe,
the plaques of jade suspended on the necklace or girdle, the trim-
mings and button of the hat, arc made as important as the face and
hands.
Apart from the qualities of the design, Chinese painters have
had from the first a fine feeling for colour ; even if they have not
formulated the laws scientifically, they have applied the colours,
by intuition, with perfect sureness and delicacy. It is especially
by cultivating the properties of the vibration of colours that the
Chinese have revealed their power as colourists. Instinct and ob-
servation have taught them that by modulating the tones on them-
selves a singular depth is imparted to each tint, an intense strength.
In the decoration of porcelain, even more than in their paintings on
silk, they have made the colours vibrate and pulsate by putting blue
upon blue, red on red, pink on pink, yellow on yellow, passing from
the clearest to the deepest of shades in each single colour.
The laws of the effects of light and shade have also not been
laid down in China, but yet in their interpretation of the really
picturesque, the Chinese have occasionally attained, in landscape
painting, a mastership of the most delicate effects of chiaroscuro.
The grand landscape school of the T'ang produced some perfect
works in this line, and their successors during the Sung dynasty are
hardly inferior in the harmonious breadth of colouring of their
wide stretches of reed-clad plain charged with groups of water
fowl, either flying or at rest.
There is no gewre that the Chinese artist has not attempted. They
have treated in turn mythological, religious and historical subjects
of every kind ; they have painted scenes of daily familiar life, as
well as those inspired by poetry and romance ; sketched still life,
landscapes and portraits. Their highest achievements, perhaps,
have been in landscapes, which reveal a passionate love foi nature,
and show with how delicate a charm, how sincere and lively a
poetic feeling, they have interpreted its every aspect. They