"Ladies Under Trees". Not Japanese ladies walking under Japanese
trees--that is to say, trees peculiar to Japan, planted and fashioned
according to the mode of Japan--but merely ladies walking under trees.
True that the costumes are Japanese, the writing on the wall is in
Japanese characters, the umbrellas and the idol on the tray are
Japanese; universality is not attained by the simple device of
dressing the model in a sheet and eliminating all accessories that
might betray time and country; the great artist accepts the costume of
his time and all the special signs of his time, and merely by the
lovely exercise of genius the mere accidents of a generation become
the symbolic expression of universal sensation and lasting truths. Do
not ask me how this transformation is effected; it is the secret of
every great artist, a secret which he exercises unconsciously, and
which no critic has explained.
Looking at this yard of coloured print, I ask myself how it is that
ever since art began no such admirable result has been obtained with
means so slight. A few outlines drawn with pen and ink or pencil, and
the interspaces filled in with two flat tints-a dark green, and a grey
verging on mauve.
The drawing of the figures is marvellously beautiful. But why is it
beautiful? Is it because of the individual character represented in
the faces? The faces are expressed by means of a formula, and are as
like one another as a row of eggs. Are the proportions of the figure
correctly measured, and are the anatomies well understood? The figures
are in the usual proportions so far as the number of heads is
concerned: they are all from six and a half to seven heads high; but
no motion of limbs happens under the draperies, and the hands and
feet, like the faces, are expressed by a set of arbitrary conventions.
It is not even easy to determine whether the posture of the woman on
the right is intended for sitting or kneeling. She holds a tray, on
which is an idol, and to provide sufficient balance for the
composition the artist has placed a yellow umbrella in the idol's
hand. Examine this design from end to end, and nowhere will you find
any desire to imitate nature. With a line Utamaro expresses all that
he deems it necessary to express of a face's contour. Three or four
conventional markings stand for eyes, mouth, and ears; no desire to
convey the illusion of a rounded surface disturbed his mind for a
moment; the intention of the Japanese artists was merely to decorate a
surface with line and colour. It was no part of their scheme to
compete with nature, so it could not occur to them to cover one side
of a face with shadow. The Japanese artists never thought to deceive;
the art of deception they left to their conjurers. The Japanese artist
thought of harmony, not of accuracy of line, and of harmony, not of
truth of colour; it was therefore impossible for him to entertain the
idea of shading his drawings, and had some one whispered the idea to
him he would have answered: "The frame will always tell people that
they are not looking at nature. You would have it all heavy and black,
but I want something light, and bright, and full of beauty. See these
lines, are they not in themselves beautiful? are they not sharp,
clear, and flowing, according to the necessity of the composition? Are
not the grey and the dark green sufficiently contrasted? do they not
bring to your eyes a sense of repose and unity? Look at the
embroideries on the dresses, are they not delicate? do not the
star-flowers come in the right place? is not the yellow in harmony
with the grey and the green? And the blossoms on the trees, are they
not touched in with the lightness of hand and delicacy of tone that
you desire? Step back and see if the spots of colour and the effects
of line become confused, or if they still hold their places from a
distance as well as close...."
Ladies under trees, by Utamaro! That grey-green design alternated with
pale yellow corresponds more nearly to a sonata by Mozart than to
anything else; both are fine decorations, musical and pictorial
decorations, expressing nothing more definite than that sense of
beauty which haunts the world. The fields give flowers, and the hands
of man works of art.
Then this art is wholly irresponsible--it grows, obeying no rules,
even as the flowers?
In obedience to the laws of some irregular metre so delicate and
subtle that its structure escapes our analysis, the flowers bloom in
faultless, flawless, and ever-varying variety. We can only say these
are beautiful because they are beautiful....
That is begging the question.
He who attempts to go to the root of things always finds himself
begging the question in the end....
But you have to admit that a drawing that does not correspond to the
object which the artist has set himself to copy cannot be well drawn.
That idea is the blight that has fallen on European art. The goodness
or the badness of a drawing exists independently of the thing copied.
We say--speaking of a branch, of a cloud, of a rock, of a flower, of a
leaf--how beautifully drawn! Some clouds and some leaves are better
drawn than others, not on account of complexity or simplicity of form,
but because they interpret an innate sense of harmony inherent in us.
And this natural drawing, which exists sometimes irrespective of
anatomies and proportions, is always Utamaro's.
I do not know how long I stood examining this beautiful drawing,
studying the grey and the green tint, admiring the yellow flowers on
the dresses, wondering at the genius that placed the yellow umbrella
in the idol's hand, the black masses of hair above the faces, so
charmingly decorated with great yellow hair-pins. I watched the beauty
of the trees, and was moved by the placing of the trees in the
composition, and I delighted in the delicate blossoms. I was enchanted
by all this bright and gracious paganism which Western civilisation
has already defaced, and in a few years will have wholly destroyed.
I might describe more prints, and the pleasure they have given me; I
might pile epithet upon epithet; I might say that the colour was as
deep and as delicate as flower-bloom, and every outline spontaneous,
and exquisite to the point of reminding me of the hopbine and ferns.
It would be well to say these things; the praise would be appropriate
to the occasion; but rather am I minded to call the reader's attention
to what seems to me to be an essential difference between the East and
the West.
Michael Angelo and Velasquez, however huge their strength in
portraiture and decoration, however sublime Veronese and Tintoretto in
magnificent display of colour, we must perforce admit to Oriental art
a refinement of thought and a delicacy of handicraft--the outcome of
the original thought--which never was attained by Italy, and which so
transcends our grosser sense that it must for ever remain only half
perceived and understood by us.