Page 381 - Chinese Art, Vol II By Stephen W. Bushell

PICTORIAL ART. 125

a brush pencil in her riglit hand, writing her admonitions to the
imperial concubines. Two seals stand out prominently ; an
imperial seal in the upper left-hand corner of the plate inscribed
"
Tien Tzft Ku Hsi, An Ancient Rarity of the Son of Heaven " ;
and the private seal below, on the right, of Hsiang Yuan-p'ien,* the
celebrated art writer of the sixteenth century, inscribed with his
"
literary title, Mo-lin Shan jen, a dweller in the hills of Mo-lin."
We have here, as Mr. Binyon remarks, the actual work of the
hands of a great painter who flourished goo years before Giotto.
Yet there is nothing primitive about him, and his art is of an age
that is quite mature. It is obvious from history that it was an
age of refinement, leisured thought, and civilised grace. The
completeness of mastery shown in the picture presupposes not
two or three but very many centuries of previous evolution. The
phrase which the artist used himself to typify the aim of painting
— "
" to note the flight of the wild swan —shows already the pre-
occupation of Chinese art with the motion and breathing life of
animals and plants, which has given their painters so signal a
superiority over Europeans in such subjects.
The famous six canons {liu fa) of Chinese pictorial art were
formulated a little later by the critic-painter Hsieh Ho, during
the Southern Ch'i dynasty (a.d. 479-501). The six laws are (i)
rhythmic vitality, (2) anatomical structure, (3) conformity with
nature, (4) harmonious colouring, (5) artistic composition, and (6)
finish.
" Thus early " (Mr. Binyon, I.e.) " we find expressed and accepted in China a
theory of the essential laws of pictorial art which no other age or nation in
the world seems to have perceived so clearly or followed with such fidehty.
These six canons of the fifth century only crystallised ideals which had in-
spired previous artists ; and their ready and universal acceptance proves
them to have been racial and native to the Chinese mind. Hence the theory
advanced by Dr. Anderson, that Chinese painting owed its virtual existence
to the inspiration of Buddhist images and pictures imported from India, seems
to be entirely untenable. To assume that a race which has produced no great
* See Bushell's Oriental Ceramic Art (p. 134).
2 X
8941.