Page 367 - Chinese Art, Vol II By Stephen W. Bushell

PICTORIAL ART. — 113

point of view ; the artist is not curious about local colour, he cares
nothing for differences of date, of race, of sentiment, or costume>
in a word, he has no pretension to resuscitate the moral or physical
aspect of the time ; and there is to be noticed in his historical
compositions neither epic exaggeration nor any leaning to the
heroic style. Literature has always been, after religion, the most
prolific source of inspiration. One of the causes of this rests in
the particular conception, in China, of the aims of painting and
of the role assigned to the painter. Before becoming an artist,
the aspirant is a man of letters, a poet, or a writer of romance ;
the arts of design and of painting are only means of expression
by which every cultivated mind knows how to give to his thought
a more exact turn, a more delicate shade of meaning.
The main features of Chinese art have been well summed up in
Anderson's British Museum Catalogue (p. 491) as follows :
1. Drawing calligraphic ; beauty of outline and decision of touch being
of more importance than scientific observation of form. The sacrifice of the
latter element is more marked in pictures of the middle period than in the
older works, while both are often lost in the more recent productions of the
country. The defect of drawing is, as a rule, most obvious in the rendering
of female faces in general, and profiles in particular, and is least marked in
birds and other animals whose anatomical forms present the least complexity.
The proportions of both men and animals are usually good, and action is
forcibly and truthfully suggested. An exceptionally realistic art, however,
occasionally appeared in portraiture, and some works offer examples of great
academical truth and power.
2. Perspective isometrical.—A few works of the pure Chinese school and
some Buddhist pictures suggest a rudimentary idea of linear perspective by
showing the convergence towards a vanishing point of lines that are parallel
in nature, but the point is wrongly placed, and in other respects the rendering
of distance indicates a luck of intelligent observation.
3. Chiaroscuro sometimes absent, sometimes represented by a kind of
shading that serves to throw adjacent parts into prominence, without in-
dicating any study of the true appearance. Projected shadows always
omitted. Reflections, whether of form, light, or colour, always ignored,
unless the repetition of an image upon the surface of a mirror or lake be
required by the exigencies of the story.
4. Colouring almost invariably harmonious, but often arbitrary, and either
flat, or presenting delicate gradations, which compensate in some degree for
the absence of chiaroscuro.