A partial explanation of the apparent physiognomical conventionalism in
Japanese drawing is just that law of the subordination of individualism
to type, of personality to humanity, of detail to feeling, which the
miscomprehended lecturer, Mr. Edward Strange, vainly tried to teach the
Japan Society something about. The Japanese artist depicts an insect,
for example, as no European artist can do: he makes it live; he shows
its peculiar motion, its character, everything by which it is at once
distinguished as a type,--and all this with a few brush-strokes. But he
does not attempt to represent every vein upon each of its wings, every
separate joint of its antennae [1] he depicts it as it is really seen
at a glance, not as studied in detail. We never see all the details of
the body of a grasshopper, a butterfly, or a bee, in the moment that
we perceive it perching somewhere; we observe only enough to enable
us to decide what kind of a creature it is. We see the typical, never
the individual peculiarities. Therefore the Japanese artist paints
the type alone. To reproduce every detail would be to subordinate the
type character to the individual peculiarity. A very minute detail is
rarely brought out except when the instant recognition of the type
is aided by the recognition of the detail; as, for example, when a
ray of light happens to fall upon the joint of a cricket's leg, or to
reverberate from the mail of a dragonfly in a double-colored metallic
flash. So likewise in painting a flower, the artist does not depict a
particular, but a typical flower: he shows the morphological law of
the species, or, to speak symbolically, nature's thought behind the
form. The results of this method may astonish even scientific men.
Alfred Russel Wallace speaks of a collection of Japanese sketches of
plants as "the most masterly things" that he ever saw. "Every stem,
twig, and leaf," he declares, "is _produced by single touches of the
brush;_ the character and perspective of very complicated plants being
admirably given, and the articulations of stem and leaves shown in
a most scientific manner." (The italics are my own.) Observe that
while the work is simplicity itself "produced by single touches of
the brush," it is nevertheless, in the opinion of one of the greatest
living naturalists, "most scientific." And why? Because it shows the
type character and the law of the type. So again, in portraying rocks
and cliffs, hills and plains, the Japanese artist gives us the general
character, not the wearisome detail of masses; and yet the detail is
admirably suggested by this perfect study of the larger law. Or look at
his color studies of sunsets and sunrises: he never tries to present
every minute fact within range of vision, but offers us only those
great luminous tones and chromatic blendings which, after a thousand
petty details have been forgotten, still linger in the memory, and
there recreate the _feeling_ of what has been seen.
Now this general law of the art applies to Japanese representations
of the human figure, and also (though here other laws too come into
play) of the human face. The general types are given, and often with
a force that the cleverest French sketcher could scarcely emulate;
the personal trait, the individual peculiarity, is not given. Even
when, in the humor of caricature or in dramatic representation, facial
expression is strongly marked, it is rendered by typical, not by
individual characteristics, just as it was rendered upon the antique
stage by the conventional masks of Greek actors.
[Footnote 1: Unless he carves it. In that case, his insect--cut in bone
or horn or ivory, and appropriately colored--can sometimes scarcely
be distinguished from a real insect, except by its weight, when held
in the hand. Such absolute realism, however, is only curious, not
artistic.]