1. _Painting._--Painting is the pre-eminent art of China, which can
boast of a succession of great painters for at least twelve centuries.
Though the Chinese have an instinctive gift for harmonious colour, their
painting is above all an art of _line_. It is intimately connected with
writing, itself a fine art demanding the same skill and supple power in
the wielding of the brush. The most typical expression of the Chinese
genius in painting is the ink sketch, such as the masters of the Sung
dynasty most preferred and the Japanese from the 15th century adopted
for an abiding model. Utmost vigour of stroke was here combined with
utmost delicacy of modulation. Rich colour and the use of gold are an
integral part of the Buddhist pictures, though in the masterpieces of
the religious painters a grand rhythm of linear design gives the
fundamental character. Exquisite subdued colour is also found in the
"flower and bird pieces" and still-life subjects of the Sung artists,
and becomes more emphatic and variegated in the decorative artists of
the Ming period.
Not to represent facts, but to suggest a poetic idea (often perfumed, so
to speak, with reminiscence of some actual poem), has ever been the
Chinese artist's aim. "A picture is a voiceless poem" is an old saying
in China, where very frequently the artist was a literary man by
profession. Oriental critics lay more stress on loftiness of sentiment
and tone than on technical qualities. This idealist temper helps to
explain the deliberate avoidance of all emphasis on appearances of
material solidity by means of chiaroscuro, &c., and the exclusive use of
the light medium of water-colour. The Chinese express actual dislike for
the representation of relief. Whoever compares the painting of Europe
with that of Asia (and Chinese painting is the central type for the one
continent, as Italian may claim to be for the other) must first
understand this contrast of aim. The limitations of the Chinese are
great, but these limitations save them from mistaking advances in
science for advances in art, and from petty imitation of fact. Their
religious painting has great affinity with the early religious art of
Italy (e.g. that of Siena). But the ideas of the Renaissance, its
scientific curiosity, its materialism, its glorification of human
personality, are wholly missing in China. For Europe, Man is ever the
hero and the foreground--hence the dominant study of the nude, and the
tendency to thronged compositions, with dramatic motives of effort and
conflict. The Chinese artists, weak in the plastic, weak in the
architectural sense, paint mostly in a lyric mood, with a contemplative
ideal. Hence the value given to space in their designs, the
semi-religious passion for nature, and the supremacy of landscape.
Beauty is found not only in pleasant prospects, but in wild solitudes,
rain, snow and storm. The life of things is contemplated and portrayed
for its own sake, not for its uses in the life of men. From this point
of view the body of Chinese painting is much more modern in conception
than that of Western art. Landscape was a mature and free art in China
more than a thousand years ago, and her school of landscape is the
loftiest yet known to the world. Nor was man ever dissociated from
nature. As early as the 4th century Ku K'ai-chih says that in painting a
certain noble character he must give him a fit background of great peaks
and deep ravines. Chinese painting, in sum, finely complements rather
than poorly supplements that of Europe; where the latter is strong, it
is weak; but in certain chosen provinces it long ago found consummate
expression for thoughts and feelings scarcely yet expressed with us.
History: Early periods (to A.D. 618).
The origin of Chinese painting is lost in legend, though there is no
reason to doubt its great antiquity. References in literature prove that
by the 3rd century B.C. it was a developed art. To this period is
ascribed the invention of the hair-brush, in the use of which as an
instrument both for writing and drawing the Chinese have attained
marvellous skill; the usual material for the picture being woven silk,
or, less often and since the 1st century A.D., paper. In early times
wood panels were employed; and large compositions were painted on walls
prepared with white lime. These mural decorations have all disappeared.
History and portraiture seem to have been the prevailing subjects; a
secular art corresponding to the social ideals of Confucianism. Yet long
before the introduction of Buddhism (A.D. 67) with its images and
pictures, we find that the two great symbolic figures of the Chinese
imagination, the Tiger and the Dragon--typifying the forces of Nature
and the power of the Spirit--had been evolved in art; and to imaginative
minds the mystic ideas of Lao Tzue and the legends of his hermit
followers proved a fruitful field for artistic motives of a kind which
Buddhism was still more to enrich and multiply. Early classifications
rank Buddhist and Taoist subjects together as one class.
With the 2nd century A.D. we come to individual names of artists and to
the beginnings of landscape. Ku K'ai-chih (4th century) ranks as one of
the greatest names of Chinese art. A painting by him now in the British
Museum (Plate I. fig. 1) shows a maturity which has nothing tentative
about it. The dignified and elegant types are rendered with a mastery of
sensitive brush-line which is not surpassed in later art. Ku K'ai-chih
painted all kinds of subjects, but excelled in portraiture. During the
next century the criticism of painting was formulated in six canons by
Hsieh Ho. Rhythm, organic or structural beauty, is the supreme quality
insisted on.
T'ang dynasty (A.D. 618-907).
During the T'ang dynasty the empire expanded to its utmost limits,
stretching as far as the Persian Gulf. India was invaded; Buddhism,
taught by numbers of Indian missionaries, became firmly established, and
controlled the ideals and imaginations of the time. The vigorous style
of a great era was impressed upon the T'ang art, which culminated in Wu
Taotzue, universally acknowledged as the greatest of all Chinese
painters. It is doubtful if any of his work remains. The picture
reproduced (Plate I. fig. 2) was long attributed to him, but is now
thought to be of later date, like the two landscapes well known under
his name in Japan. Wu Taotzue seems to have given supreme expression to
the central subject of Buddhist art, the Nirvana of Buddha, who lies
serenely asleep, with all creation, from saints and kings to birds and
beasts, passionately bewailing him. The composition is known from
Japanese copies; and it is in fact from the early religious schools of
Japan that we can best conjecture the grandeur of the T'ang style. Wu
Taotzue excelled in all subjects: other masters are best known for some
particular one. Han Kan was famous for his horses, the models for
succeeding generations of painters, both Chinese and Japanese. A
specimen of his brush is in the British Museum; and in the same
collection is a long roll which gives a glimpse of the landscape of this
age. It is a copy by a great master of the Yuen dynasty, Chao Meng-fu,
from a famous painting by Wang Wei, representing scenes on the Wang
Ch'uan, the latter's home (Plate I. fig. 3 shows a fragment). With the
T'ang age landscape matured, and two schools arose, one headed by Wang
Wei, the other by Li Ssue-hsuen. The style of Wang Wei, who was equally
famous as a poet, had a romantic idealist character--disdainful of mere
fact--which in later developments created the "literary man's picture"
of the Southern school, as opposed to the vigorous naturalism of the
North.
Five dynasties (A.D. 907-960).
Next come five brief dynasties, memorable less for any corporate style
or tradition, than for some fine painters like Hsue Hsi, famous for his
flowers, and Huang Ch'uan, a great master in a delicate style. Two
pictures by him, fowls and peonies, of extraordinary beauty, are in the
British Museum.
Sung dynasty (A.D. 960-1280).
The empire, which had been broken up, was reunited, though shorn of its
outer dependencies, under the house of Sung. This was an age of culture
in which the freedom of the individual was proclaimed anew; glorious in
art as in poetry and philosophy; the period which for Asia stands in
history as the Periclean age for Europe.
The religious paintings of Li Lung-mien, the grandest of Sung masters,
if less forcible than those of T'ang, were unsurpassed in harmonious
rhythm of design and colour. But the most characteristic painting of
this period is in landscape and nature-subjects. With a passion
unmatched in Europe till Wordsworth's day, the Sung artists portrayed
their delight in mountains, mists, plunging torrents, the flight of
the wild geese from the reed-beds, the moonlit reveries of sages in
forest solitudes, the fisherman in his boat on lake or stream. To them
also, steeped in the Zen philosophy of contemplation, a flowering
branch was no mere subject for a decorative study, but a symbol of the
infinite life of nature. A mere hint to the spectator's imagination is
often all that they rely on; proof of the singular fulness and reality
of the culture of the time. The art of suggestion has never been
carried farther. Such traditional subjects as "Curfew from a Distant
Temple" and "The Moon over Raging Waves" indicate the poetic
atmosphere of this art. Ma Yuan, Hsia Kuei and the emperor Hwei-tsung
are among the greatest landscape artists of this period. They belong
to the South Sung school, which loved to paint the gorges and towering
rock-pinnacles of the Yangtsze. The sterner, less romantic scenery of
the Hwang-Ho inspired the Northern school, of which Kuo Hsi and Li
Ch'eng were famous among many others. Muh Ki was one of the greatest
masters of the ink sketch; Chao Tan Lin was famed for his tigers; Li
Ti for his flowers as for his landscapes; Mao I for still-life: to
name a few among a host.
Yuen dynasty (A.D. 1280-1368).
The Mongol dynasty continues in art the Sung tradition. Chao Meng-fu,
the greatest master of his time, belongs to both periods, and ranks with
the highest names in Chinese painting. A landscape by him, copied from
Wang Wei, has been already mentioned as in the British Museum, which
also has two specimens of Yen Hui, a painter less known in his own
country than in Japan. He painted especially figures of Taoist legend.
The portrait by Ch'ien Shun-chue (Plate I. fig. 5) is a fine example of
purity of line and lovely colour, reminding us of Greek art.
Ming dynasty (A.D. 1368-1644).
The simplicity of motive and directness of execution which had been the
strength of the Sung art gradually gave way during the Ming era to
complicated conceptions and elaborate effects. The high glow of life
faded; the lyrical temper and impassioned work of the Sung time were
replaced by love of ornament and elegance. In this respect Kiu Ying is
typical of the period, with his richly coloured scenes from court life
(Plate I. fig. 6). None the less, there were a number of painters who
still upheld the grander style of earlier ages. The greatest of these
was Lin Liang (Plate I. fig. 7), whose brush work, if somewhat coarser,
is as powerful as that of the Sung masters. But though individual
painters of the first rank preserved the Ming age from absolute decline,
it cannot be said that any new development of importance took place in a
vitalizing direction.
Tsing dynasty (from A.D. 1644).
The present dynasty prolongs the history of Ming art. The literary
school of the South became more prominent, sending out offshoots in
Japan. There has been no movement of national life to be reflected in
art, though a great body of admirable painting has been produced, down
to the present day. The four landscape masters known as the "four
Wangs," Yuen Shou-p'ing and Wu Li are pre-eminent names.
SOURCES AND AUTHORITIES.--While the designs on porcelain, screens,
&c., have long been admired in the West, the paintings of which these
are merely reproductions have been utterly ignored. Ignorance has
gained authority with time, till the very existence of a great school
of Chinese painting has been denied. Materials for study are scanty.
Fires, wars and the recent armed ravages of Western civilization have
left but little. The profound indifference of the Chinese to European
admiration has prevented their collections from being known. The
Japanese, always enthusiastic students and collectors of the
continental art, claim (whether justly or not, is hard to ascertain)
that the finest specimens are now in their country. Many of these are
reproduced in the invaluable Tokyo publications, the _Kokka_, Mr
Tajima's _Select Relics_, &c., with Japanese criticisms in English. Of
actual paintings the British Museum possesses a fair number, and the
Louvre a few, of real importance. Copies and forgeries abound.
See H.A. Giles, _Introduction to the History of Chinese Pictorial Art_
(1905); F. Hirth, _Scraps from a Collector's Note-Book_ (1905),
(supplements Giles's work and especially valuable for the art of the
Ch'ing dynasty); S.W. Bushell, _Chinese Art_, vol. ii. (1906); K.
Okakura, _Ideals of the East_ (1903); M. Paleologue, _L'Art chinois_
(1887); W. Anderson, _Catalogue of Japanese and Chinese Paintings_
(1886); Sei-ichi Taki, "Chinese Landscape Painting," _The Kokka_, Nos.
191, &c. (1906); _Chinesische Malereien aus der Sammlung Hirth_
(Catalogue of an exhibition held at Dresden) (1897); W. von Seidlitz,
article in _Kunstchronik_ (1896-1897), No. 16.
2. _Engraving_.--According to native historians, the art of printing
from wooden blocks was invented in China in the 6th century A.D., when
it was employed for the publication of texts. The earliest evidence we
have for the existence of woodcuts made to reproduce pictures or
drawings is a passage in a work by Chang Yen-yuean, from which it appears
that these were not made before the beginning of the T'ang dynasty,
under which that author lived. The method employed was to cut the design
with a knife on the plank of the wood, in the manner followed by
European artists till the end of the 18th century, when engraving with a
burin on boxwood ousted the older process. The Japanese borrowed the art
from China; and in Japan a whole school of artists arose who worked
specially for the woodcutters and adapted their designs to the
limitations of the material employed. In China the art has remained
merely reproductive, and its history is therefore of less interest.
_Printing in colours_ was known to the Chinese in the 17th century, and
probably earlier. In the British Museum is a set of prints brought from
the East by Kaempfer in 1693, in which eight colours and elaborate
_gauffrage_ are used. Some fine albums of colour prints have been issued
in China, but nothing equal in beauty to the prints produced in Japan by
the co-operation of woodcutter and designer. _Engraving on copper_ was
introduced to China by the Jesuits, and some well-known sets of prints
illustrating campaigns in Mongolia were made in the 18th century. But
the method has never proved congenial to the artists of the Far East.
See Sir R.K. Douglas, _Guide to the Chinese and Japanese Illustrated
Books_ (British Museum, 1887); W. Anderson, _Japanese Wood Engraving_
(1895).
3. _Architecture_.--In architecture the Chinese genius has found but
limited and uncongenial expression. A nation of painters has built
picturesquely, but this picturesqueness has fought against the
attainment of the finest architectural qualities. There has been little
development; the arch, for instance, though known to the Chinese from
very early times, has been scarcely used as a principle of design, and
the cupola has been undiscovered or ignored; and though foreign
architectural ideas were introduced under the influence of the Buddhist
and Mahommedan religions, these were more or less assimilated and
subdued to the dominant Chinese design. Ruins scarcely exist and no
building earlier than the 11th century A.D. is known; but we know from
records that the forms of architecture still prevalent imitate in
essentials those of the 4th and 5th centuries B.C. and doubtless
represent an immemorial tradition.
The grand characteristic of Chinese architecture is the pre-eminent
importance of the roof. The _t'ing_ is the commonest model of building.
The roof is the main feature; in fact the _t'ing_ consists of this roof,
massive and immense, with recurved edges, and the numerous short columns
on which the roof rests. The columns are of wood, the straight stems of
the _nanmu_ being specially used for this purpose. The walls are not
supports, but merely fill in, with stone or brickwork, the spaces
between the columns. The scheme of construction is thus curiously like
that of the modern American steel-framed building, though the external
form may be derived from the tent of primitive nomads. The roof, being
the preponderant feature, is that on which the art of the architect has
been concentrated. A double or a triple roof may be devised; the ridges
and eaves may be decorated with dragons and other fantastic animals, and
the eaves underlaid with carved and lacquered woodwork; the roof itself
is often covered with glazed tiles of brilliant hue. In spite of
efforts, sometimes desperate, to give variety and individual character
by ornament and detail, the general impression is one of poverty of
design. "Chinese buildings are usually one-storeyed and are developed
horizontally as they are increased in size or number. The principle
which determines the plan of projection is that of symmetry" (Bushell).
All important buildings must face the south, and this uniform
orientation increases the general architectural monotony produced by a
preponderance of horizontal lines.
A special characteristic of Chinese architecture is the _pai-lou_, an
archway erected only by special authority, usually to commemorate famous
persons. The _pai-lou_ is commonly made of wood with a tiled roof, but
sometimes is built entirely of stone, as is the gateway at the avenue of
the Ming tombs. A magnificent example of the _pai-lou_ is that on the
avenue leading to Wo Fo Ssue, the temple of the Sleeping Buddha, near
Peking. This is built of marble and glazed terra-cotta. The _pai-lou_,
like the Japanese _torii_, derives its origin from the _toran_ of Indian
_stupas_. Lofty towers called _t'ai_, usually square and of stone, seem
to have been a common type of important building in early times. They
are described in old books as erected by the ancient kings and used for
various purposes. The towers of the Great Wall are of the same
character, and are made of stone, with arched doors and windows. Stone,
though plentiful in most provinces of the empire, has been singularly
little used by the Chinese, who prefer wood or brick. M. Paleologue
attributes this preference of light and destructible materials to the
national indifference of the Chinese to posterity and the future, their
enthusiasm being wholly devoted to their ancestors and the past.
Temples are designed on the general _t'ing_ model. The Temple of Heaven
is the most imposing of the Confucian temples, conspicuous with its
covering of deep-blue tiles and its triple roof. Near this is the great
Altar of Heaven, consisting of three circular terraces with marble
balustrades. Buddhist temples are built on the general plan of secular
residences, and consist of a series of rectangular courts with the
principal building in the centre, the lesser at the sides. Lama temples
differ little from these except in the interior decorations and
symbolism. Mahommedan mosques are far simpler and severer in internal
arrangement, but outwardly these also are in the Chinese style.
The _pagoda_ (Chinese _taa_), the type of Chinese architecture most
familiar to the West, probably owes its peculiar form to Buddhist
influence. In the pagoda alone may be found some trace of a religious
imagination such as in Europe made Gothic architecture so full and
splendid an expression of the aspiring spirit. The most famous pagoda
was the Porcelain Tower of Nanking, destroyed by the T'aip'ing rebels in
1854. This was covered with slabs of faience coated with coloured
glazes. The ordinary pagoda is built of brick on a stone foundation; it
is octagonal with thirteen storeys.
No Chinese buildings show more beauty than some of the graceful stone
bridges for which the neighbourhood of Peking has been famous for
centuries.
See M. Paleologue, _L'Art chinois_ (1887): S.W. Bushell, _Chinese
Art_, vol. i. (1904); J. Fergusson, _History of Architecture_;
Professor Chuta Ito, articles in _The Kokka_, Nos. 197, 198.
(L. B.)
4. _Sculpture_.--Except in the casting and decoration of bronze vessels
the Chinese have not obtained distinction as sculptors. They have
practised sculpture in stone from an early period, but the incised
reliefs of the 2nd century B.C., a number of which are figured in
Professor E. Chavannes's standard work,[81] while they display a certain
spirit, lack the true plastic sense, and though the power of the Chinese
draughtsmen increased rapidly under the T'ang and Sung dynasties, their
work in stone showed no parallel progress. The feeling for solidity,
which in Japan was a natural growth, was always somewhat exotic in
China. With the impulse given to the arts by Buddhism a school of
sculpture arose. The pilgrim Fa Hsien records sculpture of distinctive
Chinese type in the 5th century. But Indian models dominated the art.
Colossal Buddhas of stone were typical of the T'ang era. Little,
however, remains of these earlier times, and such true sculpture in
stone, wood or ivory as we know dates from the 14th and succeeding
centuries. The well-known sculptures on the arch at Chu Yung Kuan (A.D.
1345) are Hindu in style, though not without elements of breadth and
strength, which seem to promise a greater development than actually took
place. The colossal figures guarding the approach to the Ming tombs
(15th century) show that the national taste rapidly became conventional
and petrified so far as monumental sculpture was concerned, though
occasional examples of devotional or portrait sculpture on a smaller
scale in wood and ivory are found, which in power, grace, sincerity and
restraint can rank with the work of more gifted nations. Such pieces,
however, are extremely rare, and at South Kensington the ivory "Kwanyin
and Child" (274. 1898) is a solitary example. As a rule the Chinese
sculptor valued his art in proportion to the technical difficulties it
conquered. He thus either preferred intractable materials like jade or
rock-crystal, or, if he wrought in wood, horn or ivory, sought to make
his work curious or intricate rather than beautiful. There is,
nevertheless, beauty of a kind in Chinese bowls of jade, and there is
dignity in some of the pieces of rock-crystal, but the bulk of the
carving done in wood, horn and ivory does not deserve a moment's serious
thought from the aesthetic point of view. The few fine specimens may be
referred to the earlier part of the Ming dynasty when Chinese art in
general was sincere and simple. After the middle of the 15th century
there set in the taste for profuse ornament which injured all subsequent
Chinese work, and wholly ruined Chinese sculpture.
_Bronzes._--In Chinese bronzes we have a more consistent and exceptional
form of plastic art, which can be traced continuously for some three
thousand years. These bronzes take the form of ritual or honorific
vessels, and the archaic shapes used in the service of the prehistoric
religion of the country are repeated and copied with slight changes in
decoration or detail to the present day.
The oldest extant specimens, chiefly derived from the sack of the Summer
Palace at Peking, may be referred to the Shang and Chow dynasties
(1766-255 B.C.). These ancient pieces have a certain savage monumental
grandeur of design, are usually covered with a rich and thick patina of
red, green and brown, and are decorated with simple patterns--scrolls,
zigzag lines and a form of what is known as the Greek key-pattern
symbolizing respectively waves, mountains and storm clouds. The animal
forms used are those of the _tao-tieh_ (glutton), a fabulous monster
(possibly a conventionalized tiger) representing the powers of the
earth, the serpent and the bull. These two last in later pieces combine
to form the dragon, representing the power of the air. In the Chow
dynasty libation vessels were also made in the form of a deer, a ram or
a rhinoceros. These characteristics are shown in figures 9-17, Plate II.
Fig. 9 is a temple vessel of a shape still in use, but which must date
from before 1000 B.C. With this massive piece may be contrasted the
flower-like wine vase shown in fig. 10, a favourite shape which is the
prototype of some of the most graceful forms of Chinese porcelain and
Japanese bronze. Its date is about 1000 B.C. The large wine vase shown
in fig. 11 is some 400 years later. On the body appears the head of the
tao-tieh, on the handles are superbly modelled serpents. The technique,
which in the previous pieces was somewhat rude, has now become perfect,
yet the menacing majestic feeling remains. We see it no less clearly in
fig. 12, a marvellous vessel richly inlaid with gold and silver and
covered with an emerald-green patina. It may date from about 500 B.C.,
and indicates that even in this remote epoch the Chinese were not only
daring and powerful artists but also master-craftsmen in metal.
It is indeed at this period that the art reaches its climax. The
monumental grandeur of the Shang specimens is often allied to
clumsiness; the later work, if more elaborate, is always less powerful.
Nevertheless, it is to a later period that ninety-nine out of a hundred
Chinese bronzes must be referred, and the great majority belong either
to the Han and succeeding dynasties (220 B.C.-A.D. 400), or to the
Renaissance of the arts which culminated under the Ming dynasty a
thousand years later.
The characteristics of the first of these periods is the free use of
small solid figures of animals as decoration--the phoenix, the elephant,
the frog, the ox, the tortoise, and occasionally men; shapes grow less
austere and less significant, as a comparison between figures 11 and 13
will indicate; then towards the end of the 2nd century A.D. the
influence of Buddhism is felt in the general tendency towards suavity of
form (fig. 14). This vase is most delicately though sparingly inlaid
with silver and a few touches of gold. Some small pieces, very richly
and delicately inlaid and covered with a magnificent emerald-green
patina, belonging to this period, form a connecting link between the
inlaid work of the Chow dynasty and that of the Sung and Ming dynasties.
The mirrors with Graeco-Bactrian designs, a conclusive proof of the
external influences brought to bear upon Chinese art, are also
attributed to the Han epoch.
The troubled period between A.D. 400 and A.D. 960, in spite of the
interval of activity under the T'ang dynasty, produced, it would seem,
but few bronzes, and those few were of no distinct or noteworthy
style. Under the Sung dynasty the arts revived, and to this time some
of the most splendid specimens of inlaid work belong--pieces of
workmanship and taste no less perfect than that of the Japanese, in
which the gold and silver of the earlier work are occasionally
reinforced with malachite and lapis-lazuli. The coming of Kublai Khan
and the Yuen dynasty (1280-1367) once more brought the East into
contact with the West, and to this time we may assign certain fine
pieces of Persian form such as pilgrim bottles. The vessels bearing
Arabic inscriptions belong to the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), with which
the modern history of Chinese art begins.
The work done while the Ming dynasty was still young provides the
student of Chinese art with many problems, and in one or two cases
even the South Kensington authorities assign to pre-Christian times
pieces that are clearly of Ming workmanship. The tendency of the
period was eclectic and archaistic. The products of earlier days were
reproduced with perfect technical command of materials, and with
admirable taste; it is indeed by an excess of these qualities that
archaistic Ming work may be distinguished from the true archaic. In
fig. 15 we see how the Ming bronze worker took an earlier Buddhistic
form of vase and gave it a new grace that amounted almost to artifice.
A parallel might be found among the products of the so-called _art
nouveau_ of to-day, in which old designs are revived with just that
added suavity or profusion of curvature that robs them of character.
Fig. 16 again might be mistaken almost for a piece of the Chow
dynasty, were not the grandeur of its form modified by just so much
harmony in the curvature of the body and neck, and by just so much
finish in the details as to rob the design of the old majestic vigour
and to mark it as the splendid effort of an age of culture, and not
the natural product of a period of strength.
It is, however, in the inlaid pieces that the difference tells most
clearly. Here we find the monstrous forms of the Shang and Chow
dynasties revived by men who appreciated their spirit but could not
help making the revival an excuse for the display of their own
superior skill. The monstrous vases and incense-burners of the past
thus appear once more, but are now decorated with a delicate
embroidery of inlay, are polished and finished to perfection, but lose
therewith just the rudeness of edge and outline which made the older
work so gravely significant. At times even some grandly planned vessel
will appear with such a festoon of pretty tracery wreathed about it
that the incongruity is little short of ridiculous, and we recognize
we have passed the turning-point to decline.
Decline indeed came rapidly, and to the latter part of the Ming epoch
we must assign those countless bronzes where dragons and flowers and
the stock symbols of happiness, good luck and longevity sprawl
together in interminable convolutions. When once we reach this stage
of contortion, of elaborate pierced and relief work, we come to the
place in history of Chinese bronzes where serious study may cease,
except in so far as the study of the symbols themselves throws light
upon the history of Chinese procelain (see CERAMICS). One class of
bronze alone needs a word of notice, namely, the profusely decorated
pieces which have a Tibetan origin, and are obviously no older than
the end of the Ming period. Of these fig. 17 will serve as a specimen,
and a comparison with fig. 9 will show how the softer rounded forms
and jewelled festoons of Hindu-Greek taste enervated the grand
primitive force of the earlier age, and that neither the added
delicacy of texture and substance nor the vastly increased dexterity
of workmanship can compensate for the vanished majesty. (C. J. H.)