THOSE personal predilections and idiosyncrasies which we each possess,
those differences of temper and qualities of perception which affect
our sense of colour and form, which account for those variations of
treatment in the rendering, in design or drawing, of the same objects
by different persons--what are these and whence do they come? They
belong to the very constitution of our minds and bodies; they are
beyond our own control, and beyond almost our own consciousness,
oftentimes. They belong to our progenitors and ancestors perhaps as
much as to ourselves, and are lost in the broken records of past family
histories; we can only say that certain forms and colours appear so and
so to our eyes, that we delight in some more than others--because we
are made that way. Such indications of character and preferences are
generally traceable, where clues and records exist, to _the race_, or
mixture of races from which we have sprung. We attribute, for instance,
certain imaginative faculties to our Celtic origin; certain calculating
and analytical capacities to Teutonic sources; while as a mixed race we
call ourselves Anglo-Saxon, and as such are supposed to be especially
distinguished by practicality, the racial type gradually, in the
process of time, being formed by the collective action of such small
individual characteristics--somewhat as great geological deposits, such
as our chalk hills, have been formed by the gradual accumulation and
aggregation of the minute shells of minuter marine creatures.
These typical racial characteristics in art--these preferences in
colour, form, pattern, treatment, sentiment, and idea, have left their
marks upon the history of art, which indeed becomes, finally, the
_only_ history of races--the only record left of peoples to tell us of
their intimate life, their hopes and fears, their struggles and their
aspirations, so that a scrap of wall-painting, a fragment of an incised
slab, a piece of broken pottery, a weapon of bronze, or a jewel, become
in course of time full of significance--eloquent books of the life of
peoples and powers long ago covered by the drifting sands of time.
The desire to record and to perpetuate seems to have stimulated the
primitive artistic instinct in all races; and, indeed, it may still be
said to be a living factor and motive in art production.
Each race seeks an image of itself (as every individual desires a
portrait), and strives to put in imperishable form the character
of its own life, and the ideas or ideals dearest to it. Thus, the
prehistoric hunter left images of the animals he hunted, and his
hunting reminiscences, scratched upon bones and smooth slates and
stones; much as the Assyrian kings, in a more elaborate way, having the
resources of a powerful civilization at command, loved to have recorded
on sculptured slabs, lining their palaces, their prowess in arms and
the chase; more especially as hunters and slayers of lions, though in
their case the lion hunting was done in a more luxurious modern way,
the animals being driven into special inclosures, and let loose on
purpose to be slain by the king and his men--a system of a piece with
the generally tyrannical and cruel methods of despotic persons. Still,
no doubt, there was considerably more risk and danger involved than in
a modern battue in a pheasant cover--barring the chance of being shot
by your neighbour's gun.
Certainly the general tenor of the story told in ancient Asiatic art is
that of the conqueror's triumphs, of the strong overcoming the weak,
the glorification of kings and warriors in battle, of beleaguered
cities, and the carrying away of captives and spoils. No doubt, if this
conquering spirit had been absent, if each branch of the great human
family had remained within its primitive borders, their art would have
presented sharper and more distinct contrasts, while remaining simple
in character. It is the restless, exploring, conquering, acquisitive
spirit which mixes and blends elements originally distinct--well, it
may be it also acts as the stormy wind that scatters the winged seeds
of design and, bearing them to new soils, produces new varieties.
It is difficult, of course, to disentangle the strictly racial
characteristics in art entirely from those other strong influences
which, in fact, may be said to have helped in their formation--the
influence of climate, habit, and local materials, which we have
previously touched upon. Yet the purely human element appears to
come in, and the final form which art takes among a people must bear
the stamp of individual choice as well as of collective sentiment and
climatic influence.
In primitive communities, however, the individual is less apparent
than the collective racial influence. The forms of art are typical and
symbolical rather than imitative or graphic. The great Asiatic races of
antiquity, to judge from the remains of their monuments, the palaces
of their kings, and their temples and tombs, adopted certain typical
methods of representation which, in the case of the ancient Egyptians,
became, in association with a strictly ordered and carefully organized
social existence under an elaborate religious system and ritual, actual
forms of language and record in the hieroglyphic. These consisted of
certain abstract representations of familiar forms and figures inclosed
in a kind of cartouche, incised upon stone walls, or stamped upon
plaster and filled with colour.
The lotus flower served as a symbol of the annual overflow of the Nile
(at the summer solstice) so important to the Egyptians; the ram and the
sun symbolized Amru-Ra, the king of all gods; other animals, with and
without wings, the cat, the dog, the sparrow-hawk for the soul, the
beetle (_scarabæus_) for creative energy, generation and perpetuation
of life, the snake for continuity of time, etc.; and even differently
arranged lines, the zigzag for water, the circle, square, waved line,
spiral, labyrinth, etc., betokened the divine and secretly-working
powers of nature.
[Illustration: EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPHICS. TOMB OF BENI HASAN. NINETEENTH
DYNASTY.]
Such forms inclosed in cartouches massed together, sometimes in
horizontal lines, sometimes in vertical, formed a striking wall
decoration in themselves. A wonderful pitch of abstract yet exact
characterization of natural form was reached by very simple means in
this picture-writing. The birds especially are remarkable for their
truth. Every object had to be clearly defined so as to be recognized at
once and easily deciphered. The profile view of an object is always the
most characteristic and typical, and lends itself best to a system of
representation where all objects are on the same plane. So the glyphic
artist kept strictly to profile.
Love of typical form, definite outline and mass, flat and vivid
coloration--these are always characteristic of ancient Egyptian art,
even when, as during the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties, a freer
style and greater naturalism is apparent in their portrait sculpture
and wall-paintings.
[Illustration: ALTAR WITH OFFERINGS. EGYPTIAN MURAL PAINTING, THEBES.]
The love of clearness of statement and their conception of art, as in
the nature of a decorative record, seems to be emphatically expressed
in their ways of representation. For instance, in painting an altar
piled with offerings they give the altar front in elevation, but the
offerings, in order that each and all should be seen drawn in profile,
are arranged in ground plan. Thus we may say that their statements were
pictures, their pictures were statements.
[Illustration: EGYPTIAN WALL-PAINTING (BRITISH MUSEUM).]
[Illustration: ASSYRIAN TREE OF LIFE.]
[Illustration: ASSYRIAN BAS-RELIEF. PAVEMENT SLAB (BRITISH MUSEUM).]
There is a wall-painting in the British Museum showing a fish pond or
tank in a garden, surrounded by trees. The inclosed water is rendered
by a flat tint of pale blue, with horizontal zigzag lines in a second
tint across it. Lotus flowers and buds spring vertically from it, and
on its surface ducks and fish are painted in profile. The trees are
painted on the upper side and ends with their stems springing from the
edge of the pond; but the row of trees on the near side grows with the
tops towards the water; while the row at each end sprouts outward. The
whole forms a very pretty piece of ornament, and would embroider well
for a table-cloth centre, or lend itself to a treatment for a mosaic
floor. Note the way in which the trees alternate (apple trees and date
palms), and the grouping of the ducks and the fish alternating with the
lotus flower. It is freely painted with direct brush touches on the
white plaster.
[Illustration: ASSYRIAN TREATMENT OF NATURAL FORM SLAB 76 BRIT. MUS.]
In the ornamental treatment of tree forms all the eastern races seem
to have excelled. Trees have always been associated with religious
belief, and have had mystical and symbolical significance--as the tree
of the garden of Genesis, the tree of life, and the fatal tree of the
knowledge of good and evil. Trees, too, were man's first shelter and
dwelling; no wonder a race descended from arboreal ancestors should
revere them and hold them sacred.
[Illustration: VINE & FIG TREES FROM ASSYRIAN SLABS BRITISH MUSEUM N.25.]
It is interesting to compare this Egyptian rendering of the date palm
tree with an Assyrian rendering of the same tree, though the latter is
sculptured; or, again, with the Græco-Roman version at the house of
Icarius. The typical and sacred tree with the Assyrians, however, was
the tree of life, which became with them a formal piece of ornament.
In it we seem to see, too, the original form of a type of ornament
constantly recurring in the art of all the Asiatic races, and which was
apparently carried by them, or from them, into Europe; reappearing in
Persian, Greek, Roman, and Renascence work in all manner of variations,
remaining a typical horizontal border motive to our own day.
The lotus appears in sculptured Assyrian pavements on the outer border,
the open flowers alternating with the buds, as in Egyptian work. Then
we have another typical and constantly recurring border motive in the
rosette, which has a rich and sumptuous effect, closely filled in this
way. Then comes in the palmette, or tree of life, while the centre
filling, a network formed of a six-petalled flower form, again recalls
the suggested textile origin of the ornamental motive of the whole, to
which I have before alluded.
Other interesting and characteristic renderings of flowers and trees
may be found in bas-relief upon the Assyrian alabaster slabs used as
wall decorations, such as those showing the vine, the fig, the lily,
and the daisy here given, the sculpture of which, in general, is
remarkable not only for the combination of great power of expression
and energy of action with a very dominant formalizing and ornamental
and typical treatment of form, but also for great delicacy of
chiselling; in one slab there is a small figure of a king in his
chariot, inclosed within larger work, as finely cut almost as a gem or
seal. Note, as illustrating the ornamental treatment of animal forms,
so characteristic of these Assyrian or Semitic sculptures, the way the
lions are carved, the masses of the hair of the manes carefully marked
and ornamentally designed, the muscular lines of the face emphasized
in the same ornamental manner. The result is a typical lion, stately,
monumental, sculptural, and decorative, yet in no way wanting in energy
of action, character, and vigour.
[Illustration: ASSUR BENI PAL. ASSYRIAN LION FROM BRITISH MUSEUM.]
[Illustration: ASSUR BENI PAL. ASSYRIAN LION FROM BRITISH MUSEUM.]
Nothing could be more different in spirit and style from the ordinary
modern European sculptor's treatment. The Assyrian grasped the
essential leonine character, but expressed it in typical and ornamental
terms. The modern English, French, German, or Italian generally seeks
a naturalism which struggles to escape from the conditions of the
material; he seeks accidents rather than essentials, and, in his horror
of formalism, tries to treat the masses of hair and mane as if he
wielded the painter's brush rather than the sculptor's chisel--though
it is generally modelled in clay first before it is carved. The result
is loss of dignity, typical character, and monumental feeling. Alfred
Stevens saw the importance of a certain formalism, and his little lion
on the uprights of the outer railing of the British Museum remains
unequalled, so far as I know, in modern work.[8]
[8] For some unexplained reason these lions have been removed and the
London people deprived of perhaps their finest bit of monumental work.
The Hellenic race, the Greeks, whose art has had, and still possesses,
such an influence over that of the modern world, while in their archaic
period differing little in method of treatment and in use of ornament
from the Asiatic races, the Assyrian and Egyptian and Persian, the
elements of each of which they seemed to fuse and adapt, gradually
developed a freer style, and, while never losing their monumental sense
in sculpture, carried the human figure in sculpture to the greatest
pitch of perfection. Their invention in purely ornamental forms was not
conspicuous, nor was it needed, since they treated the human figure
as their chief element in decoration. Their leading ornamental types
may be traced to Asiatic prototypes--the palmette and the rosette, for
instance. The scroll, perhaps, they may particularly claim to have
developed, and the anthemion, from their primitive types.
This latter type of ornament, so generally used by the Greeks as a
crest or crown upon their upright obelisk-like tombstones or steles, or
to crest the angles of the pediments of their temples, is suggestive
in its general form of a flame, or pair of wings.
[Illustration: LION, FORMERLY CRESTING THE OUTER RAILING OF THE BRITISH
MUSEUM. MODELLED BY ALFRED STEVENS, AND CAST IN IRON.]
[Illustration: GREEK STELE OR HEAD-STONE.]
[Illustration: INDIAN (BRAHMAN)
FLAME HALO IN BRONZE SURROUNDING IMAGE OF THE GOD SIVA DESTROYING THE
DEMON TRIPURASURA.
(ZINC) FLAME HALO ENCLOSING IMAGE OF SURYA THE SUN GOD.]
It is noteworthy that a similar form occurs, treated in detail in a
variety of ways, as a glory or halo placed behind Buddhist images made
in ancient India, Japan, and Burmah, often in carved wood and gilt
metal or bronze, pierced and ornamented in a variety of ways--sometimes
suggesting leafy trees, but generally radiating in their principal
lines from a centre, like the anthemion. The flame was a sacred symbol
with many ancient peoples, and it remains with us as the fitting emblem
of inspiration.
[Illustration: PERSIAN POMEGRANATE FORMS (FROM A GOAT-HAIR CARPET,
SOUTH KENSINGTON MUSEUM).]
[Illustration: CELTIC ORNAMENT FROM A CROSS AT CAMPBELTOWN,
ARGYLLSHIRE.]
The gilded, almond-shaped glory inclosing the figure of the Virgin
and of Christ in Gothic painting and sculpture seems to be another
form of the same emblem, and a similar form is common in all Persian
and Eastern ornament design. It generally appears as a kind of fruit
or many-petaled flower, or flower and fruit combined. I am inclined
to think that it may have originally had a religious significance
associated with fire or life,[9] while its beauty of contour and
adaptability in decoration of all kinds were sufficient to perpetuate
it even if the original meaning were lost. If the Persians invented it,
it might have had some reference to their own primitive fire-worship,
while with the Arabs, and wherever the faith of Mohammed spread, it
would still be significant of the prophetic fire, and it is certainly
universally found in the ornament of Mohammedan countries. We might
trace it back to its primitive form in the Assyrian tree of life, and
this on the face of it seems its most likely source; and we find it in
Persian work definitely taking the pomegranate form within the rayed
leaves. The rayed flower or leaf form curiously reappears in a late
Celtic cross in Argyllshire, in association with the characteristic
knotted work, a kind of tree form, and filling of pattern carved in the
stone and culminating in the cross.
[9] Prof. Fischbach, indeed, traces the relationship of a whole series
of patterns to the influence of fire worship and its symbolism.
Whatever race may really claim its invention or first effective use,
it appeals now universally to the ornamental sense, and has become the
common property of designers, who do not usually disturb themselves
with the question whether they have stolen a fruit from the tree of
life, or sacred fire from an unknown hearth, so long as they can fill a
space effectively or make an attractive and adaptable design.
Another form, now no less universal, is probably Persian in origin,
although it has found a settled home in India--I mean what is known as
the Indian palmette, so familiar to designers for Manchester calico
prints.
I am told by Mr. Purdon Clarke that this palm shape denotes benison
or blessing, or a message of goodwill of some kind. This answers to
the symbolical meaning of the palm in the Bible, as carried by benign
and holy persons and angels. Here would be a symbolical reason for
its longevity in ornament, as it would naturally commend itself to an
eastern race in a sun-burnt land, to whom the suggestion of shady palms
would always be grateful. But here, again, the beauty of its contour
appeals to the ornamentist on independent grounds. He values it for its
graceful mass in a pattern, for its bold and sweeping curves, for its
value as an inclosing form for small floral fittings.
To the Persian and Hindu designers, with their exquisite and subtle
sense of ornament, with their passion for elaborate intricacy,
such a form as this is utilized to its utmost capacity, both in
counter-balancing and superimposed masses upon flowery fields, and as
inclosures for smaller fields of pattern; while the abundant flora of
their spring-time blossoms in a new and translated existence in their
richly patterned printed and woven textiles, and in the carved ornament
of their buildings.
[Illustration: TYPICAL ORNAMENTAL FORMS IN PERSIAN, INDIAN, AND CHINESE
DESIGNS.]
The influence in Arabic ornament of the Mohammedan faith, too, in
forbidding the representation of living forms, turned the ingenuity and
invention of the Arabic and Eastern designer in a purely ornamental
direction, and as a result we get extremely elaborate patterns, either
purely geometric, or filling the interstices of a geometric framework
in inlays and carved and pierced work. These patterns from the pulpit
of a mosque at Cairo, now in the South Kensington Museum, work of the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, show how fine and delicate Arabic
ornament became. We may note the star-shape formed by the intersection
of the lines. The star is an emblem of the Deity (Allah).
The plateaus and slopes of the Himalayas, which are the northern
mountainous boundary of India, were supposed to be the cradle of that
great wandering, colonizing, adaptive, speculative, and organizing
race, the Aryans, from which we Western people, according to one
theory, have sprung, dispersing over the world, and settling in
different countries and climates. The race has greatly differentiated
in speech, customs, and forms of art; and yet through them all it is
rather differences in similarities, or similarities in differences,
that we trace.
Latin, Teutonic, Celtic, suggest great divergences both in spirit
and form, yet perhaps the correspondences are more frequent than the
divergences. When we see how greatly members of the same family
differ from one another in tastes and habits, can we wonder that
members of the _greater_ human family should be so different in tastes
and habits, under different skies and conditions of life?
[Illustration: ARABIAN FOURTEENTH CENTURY CARVED AND INLAID PULPIT,
CAIRO (SOUTH KENSINGTON MUSEUM. DRAWN BY W. CLEOBURY).]
When we turn further east the difference seems greater, the gaps
larger. The Mongolian race seems further apart and suggests a remoter
antiquity. Their geographical remoteness and their persistent adhesion
to their ancient customs seem to have fixed more or less of a gulf
between them and the western peoples, and there is a corresponding
contrast in the forms of their art. It is familiar, and yet remains
strange; it has been constantly imported amongst us, and has more than
once influenced European fashions in decorative design, as in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries through the Dutch, and in the last
century in England in Chippendale furniture and porcelain, while China
has given its name to the finer ware of the modern potter, of which
it taught him the secret. To this day the willow pattern in blue upon
plates and dishes, with its Chinese legend, scenery, and personages,
remains a popular pattern, wonderfully little changed by its English
translator. All the typical characteristics are found in its details,
the typical Chinese house raised upon its first story of stone--with
its bamboo trellises and quaintly curved tiled roof. The Chinese
dragon remains a distinct breed, influencing here and there the form
of the mythical beasts in design of other races, such as the Persian
and Indian, but remaining as characteristically Chinese itself as the
Pagoda.
[Illustration: ARABIAN FOURTEENTH CENTURY CARVED AND INLAID PULPIT,
CAIRO (SOUTH KENSINGTON MUSEUM. DRAWN BY W. CLEOBURY).]
The love of trellis-like backgrounds and diagonal diapers for floral
designs is a very marked feature with the Chinese designer, and it
suggests the native fantastic and ingenious bamboo constructions used
in the framing and panelling of their dwellings and temples, dominated
by that distinct love of quaintness and queerness which seems a part of
the artistic sense in the yellow race, and is as marked as their love
of bright colour and emphatic pattern.
Their formidable neighbours, relations, and rivals, the Japanese,
exhibit in the art up to a certain stage much the same qualities and
influences, their art indicating a gradual transformation in style from
the primitive mythical and religious and symbolical towards the more
domestic, familiar, and naturalistic. But before coming into contact
with European forms of art they began to develop a naturalistic feeling
in their art which in the present century has become the dominant
note, and, joined with a certain inventive quaintness and ornamental
reserve, has had so tremendous an influence upon the art of Europe,
more especially modern French art.
Only about forty or fifty years ago Japan was practically in a
mediæval condition, its arts and handicrafts in a most fertile and
flourishing condition of living traditions; but that very quickness
and alertness, that receptivity and artistic impressionableness
which has enabled them to produce such a mass of wonderful work in
so many branches of cunning craftsmanship, have exposed them to the
modern European influences, which, however they may have, in the
process of rapid assimilation, contributed to their material power
as a nation in the modern capitalistic and industrial sense, have
had most disastrous commercializing and deteriorating effects upon
Japanese art and handicraft, leading to hasty work and cheap and gaudy
production--merely to catch the demand.
[Illustration: PANEL IN CARVED AND INLAID WOOD FROM THE MOSQUE OF
TOOLOON IN CAIRO. FOURTEENTH OR FIFTEENTH CENTURY SARACENIC.]
Artistic and racial traditions, however, die hard. Even in Western
Europe, in constant intercourse and intercommunication as we now
are, and while international influence tends to soften and blend
racial differences, and social relations to mix them, elements which
differentiate the Teuton from the Latin, the Celt from the Saxon, still
survive. In the process of the adoption of even the same ideas each
race, each nation, gives a different interpretation to them, just as
different individuals will give a different interpretation in drawing
from the same model. The character is not changed by the new dress, and
the dress becomes influenced by the wearer. Thus, in adopting ideas and
forms of art, a new direction or character is developed owing to the
racial instincts of the people adopting them.
German Renascence work, for instance, may be full of details, the
forms of which come from Italy or Greece, but the combination and
treatment, the application of them, become characteristically
German--characteristically full of detail, and fantastic, with a
tendency to be overloaded and restless, like their Gothic work. Such
variations of the same type among different peoples may be likened to
the variations of language in the same country, where the same language
is spoken, but with a different accent.
It is this difference of _accent_ now, under our complex modern life,
which makes the chief difference in forms of art, and which betrays
racial influence. The actual systems of building pattern, of pattern
forms, methods of drawing and modelling figures, and the various
handicrafts have all been discovered long ago, but it is in their
recombination and adaptation--our interpretation and use of them, and
in the power of variation and expression, that modern invention and
predilection tell.
It would be interesting to endeavour to symbolize the fundamental
racial characteristics and preferences by certain typical forms and
colours in procession.
The races inhabiting the warm countries, southern and eastern, would
be distinguished by emphatic contrasting colours and patterns. Just
as the tiger owes his barred coat to his habit of hiding in coverts
and jungles, where the bright sunlight falls through the tall grasses
and palms in stripes; so where the contrast of light and shade is so
sharp as in Africa, there appears to be a deeply-rooted preference for
barred colours and striped patterns among the dark race, which they
have carried with them to America, and which curiously reappears as a
necessary part of the equipment of the sham Ethiopian serenader in our
streets.
The black and white or red and white barred courses characteristic of
Arabian and Moorish architecture have been alluded to before, and,
though they have been used in other countries, they always suggest the
country which seems to have given them birth.
Supposing, then, we wanted to express in a typical symbolical way the
racial preferences and characteristics in ornamental art, a black and
white barred shield and a palm might be appropriate pattern emblems
for the African or the Moor; while the Egyptian would naturally bear a
lotus and a scarabæus, with a winged globe for a standard; the Assyrian
a tree of life; the Persian would bear the flame-shaped flower, and
the device of Ormuzd and Ahrimanes contending for the mastery; the
Indian would carry the palmette and a peacock, and would share with the
Arab the geometric star-form and richly floriated robes; the Chinese
would show the dragon blazon, and carry the peony; the Japanese the
red disk of the rising sun, and a bough of plum blossom; the Turanian
the crescent and the star; the Greek the anthemion, and the figure
of Pallas Athene; the Roman an eagle standard, and an image of Mars;
the Scandinavian a raven, and a runic knot. These might represent the
ancient world of art. The modern and western races it would be more
difficult to symbolize in so primitive and typical a manner, since all
of them have borrowed so largely from the ancient sources, and are
themselves composed of such mixed and complex elements.
Italian art could only be represented by a fusion of most of
the foregoing elements and types, and would require a crowd of
distinguished retainers in architecture, sculpture, painting, and all
the arts of design; but perhaps she might bear a typical classical
scroll for a standard, as the typical designer of that form of ornament
in so many varieties, from Roman times downwards, that Italy may be
said to have made the scroll form essentially her own.
Germany might follow, great in bold and brave heraldry, or with a
Gothic accent in richly-scrolled mantling, and a redundant display of
Renascence ornament.
France, as a more volatile Pallas Athene, might, perhaps, bear the
wavering lamp of executive and imitative skill, and dramatic instinct
in design.
Spain would look coquettishly under a fan, wrapped in faded embroidery,
bearing the Alhambra, like a pendent jewel: while for England, what
artistic emblems are left? Well, we have been described as inveterate
colonists, even in art. We can only make up in a fancy costume of
historic patchwork, beginning with fragments of Roman mosaic pavement,
by way of sandals, Saxon and Norman hose, Gothic surcoat and body
armour, a classical cloak, and a Victorian Queen Anne gable by way of
headgear, and perhaps a banner of eclectic wall-paper or printed cotton.
For all that, and perhaps because of it in some measure--did we take
art seriously as a nation, and make it really a natural and essential
part of our life, as it is its final expression; should we determine
to set our house in order, and make England again "merrie," strong in
her own borders, self-supporting, and self-reliant, not suffering the
natural beauty of our land or our historic monuments to be ruthlessly
defaced, in the supposed interests of trade; putting our trust in the
capacity of the people, rather than in the multiplication of machines;
uniting hand and brain in our work, thinking more of the ends of life
and less of the means, when the means of an ample, simple life shall be
within the reach of every citizen, then, well--_then_ we might fairly
expect to win the palm of life, as of art, without despoiling the
African.