PAINTERS AND THEIR METHODS
The methods of painters all over the world are very much alike. In fact,
the methods of great masters (no matter of what nationality, and whether
of this period or of centuries past) are often precisely similar, while
there can be no doubt but that some of the finest masterpieces ever
painted very closely resemble one another. I was once taken to see two
photographs, one a portion of a figure by Michael Angelo, and the other
a portion of a Japanese buddha by one of Japan's greatest masters; and
to my surprise I found that it was almost impossible to detect which was
which. This particular statue of Michael Angelo's I had studied and knew
well; yet here was a portion of a Japanese god that looked exactly the
same--the same broad handling, the same everything. In both there was
the same curious exaggeration of the bones and muscles, wrong from the
anatomical standpoint, yet conveying an impression of terrific strength
that is so typical of the work of Michael Angelo--indeed, one masterly
hand might have executed both pictures. Yet the little Japanese artist,
the creator of this Buddha, was but a modern, and in all probability
had never so much as seen Michael Angelo's pictures, much less had he
been in the slightest degree influenced by him.
Japanese painters have a great admiration for Michael Angelo's work, and
for Italian painters in general. If you were to show a Japanese artist,
any ordinary little minor artist, some photographs of masterpieces by
men such as Velasquez, Rembrandt, and Botticelli, you would find that he
would at once spring on to the early Italian work, peer into it, hold it
up, devour it, muttering to himself the while--nothing could tear him
away. Rembrandt does not appeal to him much; Velasquez not much; but
Botticelli--yes. Still, I have often thought that could Hokusai and
Velasquez, Kiosi and Whistler, have met and talked, they would have had
much in common with one another; for there is in the works of each,
although in many senses so widely different, that simplicity,
truthfulness, and restraint which render them all so very much alike.
[Illustration: AFTER THE FESTIVAL]
The broad principles of art are much the same all the world over; but it
is between the lesser artists of Japan and the myriads of comparatively
unknown artists of Europe that there is so great a gulf fixed. Japanese
minor artists are artists indeed. Our minor artists are, I fear,
anything but artists. The veriest Japanese craftsman is an artist first
and a tradesman afterwards. Ours is a tradesman first and last and
altogether; and even as a tradesman he is, I fear, a failure, for the
honest tradesman has at least something worth the selling, whilst our
men--the jerry builder, the plumber, the furniture maker, and the
carpenter--give in return for solid money an article which it would
break the heart of the merest artisan in Japan to put forward as the
work of his hands. But perhaps nowhere is the difference between
European and Japanese art so sharply accentuated as it is in the
teaching of it in the great schools of the East and of the West. We
Westerners are taught to draw direct from the object or model before us
on the platform, whereas the Japanese are taught to study every detail
of their model, and to store their brains with impressions of every
curve and line, afterwards to go away and draw that object from memory.
This is a splendid training for the memory and the eye, as it teaches
one both to see and to remember--two great considerations in the art of
drawing. You will often see a little child sitting in a garden in Japan
gazing attentively for perhaps a whole hour at a bowl of goldfish,
watching the tiny bright creatures as they circle round and round in the
bowl. Remarking on some particular pose, the child will retain it in its
busy brain, and, running away, will put down this impression as nearly
as it can remember. Perhaps on this first occasion he is only able to
put in a few leading lines; very soon he is at a loss--he has forgotten
the curve of the tail or the placing of the eye. He toddles back and
studies the fish again and again, until perhaps after one week's
practice that child is able to draw the fish in two or three different
poses from memory without the slightest hesitation or uncertainty.
It is this certainty of touch and their power to execute these bold,
sweeping, decided lines that form the chief attraction of Japanese works
of art. Their wrists are supple; the picture in their minds is sure;
they have learnt it line for line; it is merely the matter of a few
minutes for an artist to sketch in his picture. There are no choppy
hesitating lines such as one detects in even the finest of our Western
pictures, lines in which you can plainly see how the artist has swerved
first to the right and then to the left, correcting and erasing,
uncertain in his touch. The lines will probably be correct in the end;
but when the picture is finished his work has not that bright crisp look
so characteristic of the Japanese pictures. Then, again, when a Japanese
artist draws a bird, he begins with the point of interest--which, let us
say, is the eye. The brilliant black eye of a crow fixed upon a piece of
meat attracts his attention; he remembers it, and the first few strokes
that he portrays upon his stretched silk is the eye of the bird. The
neck, the legs, the body--everything radiates and springs from that
bright eye just as it does in the animal itself.
[Illustration: THE LEMON BRIDGE]
Then, again, let us say a Japanese artist is painting a typical Japanese
river-scene, such a one as inspired many of Mr. Whistler's graceful
Thames etchings--a quaintly formed bridge under whose dim archway a
glimpse of shipping and masses of detail can be seen in the distance. To
a Japanese artist the chief charm and interest of such a scene would lie
in that little view beneath the bridge, and he would begin by drawing
in, line for line, every little mast and funnel just as he sees it,
or rather as he remembers it. The picture slowly expands as it reaches
the margin, ending in the bridge, which forms, as it were, a frame
through which to view the dainty richness of detail of the busy scene
beyond. If you were to arrest this picture at any moment during its
career you would find that it formed a perfect whole, every line
balancing the other; whereas, according to our methods, if we were to
draw the bridge first, timidly suggesting the distance and leaving the
detail and all the fine lines to be put in afterwards, as so many
artists do, the picture until it was completed would appear spotty and
uneven. And even when finished there would be no balance, for we neither
understand nor realise the importance of that quality without which no
work of art can be perfect.
The Japanese methods of drawing and painting are entirely opposed to our
Western methods, and in order to give a slight insight into the works of
the Japanese painters I must describe these methods as minutely and as
clearly as is possible. To begin with, the size of an ordinary picture
is two feet by four and a half long, and as a rule three times as much
space is left at the top as at the bottom of the picture. The brushes
consist of a series of round ones; they are flat-ended and vary greatly
in breadth, being named after the character of work they are fitted for.
Straw brushes are sometimes used for coarse work. The silk that they
paint upon is prepared in the following manner. First the edges of the
wooden frame are pasted and the silk is rolled loosely over, great care
being taken to keep the grain of the silk level. The surface of the silk
is prepared with alum and size, the proportion of which is about an
egg-spoonful of alum to a small tea-cupful of size. The size is boiled
and strained and diluted with water, and the alum is added over the
fire; it is again strained, and is then ready for use. Finally, it is
put on to the surface while hot with a large brush. It is usual to put
on two coats, and a contrivance in the shape of a cross piece of wood at
the back of the frame is used for straining the silk more tightly after
the first coat of size. The colours that the Japanese use are mixed and
prepared in the following manner. Whitening, which is the basis of most
colours, is pounded with a pestle and mortar into a very fine powder;
then a little size which has been boiled and strained is poured in, and
the whole is beaten up and worked into a ball. This ball is thrown over
and over again into the mortar until it is well beaten. A little water
is poured over the lump, which is then heated over a fire until it
breaks and spreads. In this state, after cooling a little, it is well
worked up, with perhaps the addition of water, until a white pulpy putty
is produced; the artist is very careful all the time to avoid grit.
Other colours are principally prepared from powders, which are beaten up
in little porcelain cups with small pestles, and are mixed with a little
size and water into saucers, stirred all the while with the finger and
heated over the fire until dry, or nearly so. When required for use they
must be worked up again with the finger and water, and it is a good plan
when first mixing the colours to paste paper over the saucers, leaving
a small hole for the insertion of the brush. Gamboge and a vegetable red
resembling crimson lake are both used without size. The latter is
prepared from a woollen material which is torn up into shreds and put
into a saucer; then it is mixed with boiling water and afterwards
strained through paper. It is drawn off in small quantities into several
saucers and carefully dried over the fire. There is a colour which is
much used called Taisha, which is like burnt sienna; then there is Tan,
a sort of orange, and Shi, a vermilion red. The red is prepared in two
different ways, first by being mixed cold in a cup with a pestle, a
little size, and water. In this preparation the colour separates into a
deep red and orange, the latter floating on the top. The orange is
afterwards saved and used instead of Tan--Tan, not being permanent,
turns black and disappears; it is used sometimes to shade ladies' faces,
but fades very much. In using this preparation of orange and red, the
brush must be first dipped in yellow and then the tip of it in the red,
so as to take up both portions of the mixture.
Another way of preparing Shi is to heat a saucer until the finger can
hardly bear the touch, and then pour in some size and put the powdered
pigment in it while still on the fire. When it has dried it is taken off
and mixed with the finger very hot, a little water being added
gradually, until it is of a thickish consistency. Shi thus mixed is of a
deep red without any orange precipitate, and is used for upper washes,
for, having a great deal of orange in it, it would be too black if used
for undertones. In mixing indigo blue from a cake, the saucer is put
over the fire to dry, and a little size is added. It is then rubbed with
the finger, and water is gradually added. Taisha, when in a cake, is
also prepared in this way. Taisha is used for the face and hair. The
hair is shaded off with Indian ink, and the muscles of the face are
washed in with Taisha having no white but a little black mixed with it;
the feet and hands are handled in the same way. Then the face is washed
over again with the same colour, only a little lighter. Broad masses of
shading are introduced, and the nose, mouth, and edge of the cheek are
generally left to be shaded in. It is considered better to use a number
of light tones than one dark tone, and the washes on the face are
repeated two or three times. The hair also is washed over with a large
brush and rather dark ink; the eyebrows are put in in a single wash;
also the corners of the eyes and mouth, which are flicked in and then
washed off again. The lips are put in with vermilion and shaded off with
another brush. A mixture of red, white, and Indian ink forming a dull
purple is used for the pupils of the eyes, and the same mixture with a
greater proportion of red, and consequently a little lighter, is used
for going over the outline, and the ends of some of the lines are washed
off with another brush. The same purple colour, but lighter still, is
used as a backing to the outline in order to soften the edges, and a few
touches of purple are painted in under the eyes and ears. The lips are
touched with carmine, and the teeth and eyeballs with a little white.
The under-lip and corners of the eyes are touched with lines or dots of
light Indian ink, and the top eyelids and tops of lower eyelids are
outlined with thin lines. The outline of the pupil is very fine; but the
dot of the eye is made very black; the nostrils are painted in in light
ink, shaded off afterwards and outlined in black. The hair round the
mouth is put in in very light ink with a finely pointed brush.
[Illustration: BEARING A BURDEN]
There are many ways of painting the hair. Sometimes a fine brush is used
with single parallel lines, and sometimes it is washed in with a broad
brush with light ink below and darker above. In old silk pictures great
depth used to be obtained by painting the hair on the back of the silk
as well as on the front. For painting leaves a mixture of indigo and
gamboge is generally used with a full brush, the tip of the brush being
dipped in indigo. By this method, the dark colour on the tip of the
brush being after a time exhausted, the lighter green appears, and thus
a natural variety of gradation is given to the colour of the leaves.
Trees and rocks, etc., are often scrubbed in with a rather dry brush
worked sideways and forming broken lines.
Another method of drawing a figure is to outline in charcoal, after
which the face with its markings is outlined with a kind of Indian ink.
Then with the same Indian ink, but with broader lines and a large brush,
the drapery is boldly swept in with lines that should break in parts and
form a drag. This drag must come naturally by pressing the brush firmly
on the silk or paper; any attempt to force it would end in failure. The
hair should then be worked in with a large spread brush, care being
taken to give the hairs a radial tendency and not let them cross
confusedly. Sometimes this hair is painted with a fine brush and with
single lines. For the background two large brushes are used, one fitted
with light ink and the other with plain water to shade off the black.
The face and the breast are treated in the same way. The outlines of the
drapery are sometimes washed in with a lighter tone to project over the
edge and soften them. The face is washed with a mixture of red and ink,
leaving only the eyes. The work is finished by using a small brush and
very black ink for the markings of the mouth, centre of the eyes, under
the eyelids, nostrils, and ear-rings.
Japanese artists study a great deal from life, and in order to draw a
figure full of spirit and action they will often work in this way.
Beginning with a very full brush, they sketch in the general swing of
the figure with a few well-chosen broad black lines--as, for instance,
when drawing the legs of a horse or a lobster they will put them in with
one broad wash. Then they strain thin Japanese paper over this spirited
sketch, and begin to elaborate on it with finer work, until in the end
they produce a picture that has high finish, but possessing all the
action and spirit of a first impression.
[Illustration: THE END OF THE DAY AND THE END OF THE FESTIVAL]
The Japanese system of studying Nature in detail, but not with a view to
creating a picture, is perhaps especially noticeable in their drawings
of women. It would be considered coarse and vulgar in the extreme to
paint a woman in the glaring light of a studio, copying every feature
and wrinkle, line for line, as you would copy a man. Kiyosai explains
that it is impossible to create a beautiful face by drawing direct from
life, especially in line. The only way in which it can be achieved is by
suggesting a natural beauty on paper, and by imitating a conventional
type away from nature. The Japanese have a conventional type of beauty
just as we have, and just as the Greeks had years ago--an ideal that has
been evolved from the aggregate of myriads of beautiful women,--and this
ideal of theirs must be a woman possessing small lips, with eyelids
scarcely showing, and eyebrows far above the eyes. The forehead must be
narrow at the top and widening towards the base, looking altogether very
like a pyramid with its top cut off; the nose should be aquiline, and
the whole woman must appear to be the personification of softness and
delicacy. The conventional type of a Japanese man has always the legs
and arms placed in impossible positions to denote strength, and the
muscles are greatly exaggerated.
In the old masters of Japan great importance is attached to flesh
markings, more especially in pictures of men. In a sketch of a fat man
trying to lift a heavy weight, the action would be suggested in a few
swift lines with no shading, but just two small horizontal lines at the
back of the neck. Those two little flesh markings portray the fat man to
perfection, admirably suggesting both the strain of the action and the
bulk of the man. But in talking of the art of Japan and the methods of
the Japanese painter, I feel that I cannot do better than describe a day
that I once spent with that greatest of all living artists, Kiyosai, at
the house of Captain Brinkley. This gentleman invited Kiyosai to come to
his house one morning, and I was asked to watch and follow the whole
process of his work, and as far as possible to learn from him his
theories about painting. It was a splendid chance for me as a painter,
especially as Captain Brinkley, who has resided in Japan for many years,
and is a Japanese scholar of high attainment, acted as interpreter
between Kiyosai and myself.
Kiyosai, I may say, is known all over Japan. From the highest noble to
the lowest ragged child in the streets, all know the artist and love his
work, for the pictures of a popular painter get abroad in Japan much as
they get abroad here--Kiyosai's pictures and sketches being reproduced
and published in the Japanese papers just as they would be published in
Western magazines. When any drawing by Kiyosai appears a rush is made
for the paper. These drawings of his are really superb work, and I could
not help feeling how great a privilege it was to come into contact with
such a man.
[Illustration: IN FRONT OF THE STALL]
I arrived at my host's quite early in the morning, for I was to have a
whole day with my Japanese fellow-worker. I was introduced at once to an
old man, grave and very dignified in bearing, and I found it difficult
at first to realise that this was the painter of whom I had heard so
much. He was sitting on the floor smoking, while his assistant was busy
stretching silk and preparing colours. As a rule, to see a Japanese
smoke is to get at once a clue to the nature of the people. But Kiyosai
was peculiar even in this. He was one of the few men who would take only
one draw from his pipe; in the most dignified manner possible he would
take that one whiff and then knock out the contents of his pipe,
repeating the process as long as he continued to smoke. He had the most
remarkable hands, too, ever seen, with long and slim thumbs--more
sensitive, artistic, capable hands, from the chiromancer's point of
view, could hardly be. He was enthusiastic, but prodigiously dignified,
and used his hands just a little, yet in the most impressive way. He
never rose from his sitting posture, and every time I said anything that
was at all complimentary he received it with charming ceremony, by
bowing to the very ground.
No sooner was I introduced than his face seemed to light up, his eyes
became intensely brilliant, and his conversation not less so. He was
enthusiastic in his desire to learn about English painters and English
art generally, and eager to tell me his own views of art, and all he
felt about it. To my pleased confusion, he seemed to regard me with an
interest equalling mine for him. He put many questions about English
art, and told me much that was interesting about his own. He spoke of
the effect made on him by some English pictures. "I have seen a number
of English and European pictures," he said; "but they all appear to me
very much alike. I hear that in England and all over Europe they say
the Japanese pictures look to them all alike. Why is this?" The
explanation was not immediately forthcoming, for at first sight it
seemed so extraordinary that to this man English pictures looked all
alike. But immediately the truth forced itself upon me, as it will force
itself upon the reader. European pictures are all wonderfully alike. It
struck me that when, not long before, I was on a "hanging committee,"
and had passing before me several thousand pictures, it was only here
and there that my attention was arrested by the individuality of some of
the work. For the most part they were the same pigments, the same high
lights, and the same deep shadows; and mentally seeing this procession
of pictures pass before me, I could not avoid seeing how grievously
alike European pictures were. I had in some sort, indeed, felt this
before, and was delighted on having the impression "fixed," so to speak,
by the Japanese master.
I saw a number of Japanese pictures, and I certainly found them far more
individual than our work is. We say these Japanese works are insipid,
out of perspective, and all pretty much the same. Here is a painter of
Japan who brings a similar charge against our much more complex
pictures--this, surely, is a new and a valuable lesson, full of
suggestion for the thoughtful painter!
[Illustration: THE STALL BY THE BRIDGE]
Kiyosai next began to discuss drawing, and, as he was speaking to an
Englishman, English drawing in particular. "I hear that when artists in
England are painting," he said, "if they are painting a bird, they stand
that bird up in their back garden, or in their studio, and begin to
paint it at once, then and there, never quite deciding what they are
going to paint, never thinking of the particular pose and action of the
bird that is to be represented on the canvas. Now, suppose that bird
suddenly moves one leg up--what does the English artist do then?" He
could not understand how an English painter could paint with the model
before him. I naturally told him that they copied what they saw; that
they got over the difficulty as best they could. "I do not quite
understand that," he said. "In my own practice I look at the bird; I
want to paint him as he is. He has got a pose. Good! Then he suddenly
puts down his head, and there is another pose. The bare fact of the bird
being there in an altered pose would compel me to alter my idea; and so
on, until at last I could paint nothing at all." I asked him what, then,
was his method. "I watch my bird," he replied, "and the particular pose
I wish to copy before I attempt to represent it. I observe that very
closely until he moves and the attitude is altered. Then I go away and
record as much of that particular pose as I can remember. Perhaps I may
be able to put down only three or four lines; but directly I have lost
the impression I stop. Then I go back again and study that bird until it
takes the same position as before. And then I again try and retain as
much as I can of it. In this way I began by spending a whole day in a
garden watching a bird and its particular attitude, and in the end I
have remembered the pose so well, by continually trying to represent
it, that I am able to repeat it entirely from my impression--but not
from the bird. It is a hindrance to have the model before me when I have
a mental note of the pose. What I do is a painting from memory, and it
is a true impression. I have filled hundreds of sketch-books," he
continued, "of different sorts of birds and fish and other things, and
have at last got a facility, and have trained my memory to such an
extent, that by observing the rapid action of a bird I can nearly always
retain and produce it. By a lifelong training I have made my memory so
keen that I think I may say I can reproduce anything I have once seen."
Such, then, is Kiyosai's method of work. It is purely natural, and one
that has obtained for generations, and that is the Japanese whole theory
of art. Captain Brinkley told me a story, the outcome of that
conversation. Kiyosai came one day to work at a screen which Captain
Brinkley was very anxious for him to complete; but he could not finish
it at the time, do what he would. He said nothing; but it came out that
he had a fresh impression in his mind, and he could not go on with the
old impression until he had worked off the new one--something he had
seen on his way up to the house.
The painters always live with fish, and birds, and animals of different
sorts. They have fish in bottles and in ponds in their gardens. I went
to many studios in Japan, and I found each one with its ponds and fish
in the little garden surrounding the studio, and birds as well. They
always study nature, and I believe that is the keynote of their art.
The technique of Kiyosai's work was most fascinating. I had come away
from England with all sorts of theories concerning the technical part of
an artist's work, and when I got to Japan I found there was absolutely
nothing that was not known to this man. His method of work, too,
interested me exceedingly. To begin with, the assistant brought his
stretcher of silk--a lovely piece of silk stretched across a wooden
frame--and placed it in front of him. Then, taking a long burnt twig, he
thought for a few minutes, looking all the while at his silk--thought
out his picture, indeed, before he put a single touch on his canvas. How
different is this from the man who so often, with us, puts on a lot of
hasty touches in the hope that they will suggest the picture! When this
artist saw his picture complete in his mind, he began with the little
burnt twig to trace a few sure lines. I never saw such facility in my
life. A few swift strokes indicated the outline on the silk of two black
crows; then he took up his brush and began at once with the Indian ink,
with full powerful colour; and in about seven minutes he had completed a
picture, superbly drawn and full of character--a complete impression of
two black crows, very nearly life-size, resting on the branch of a tree.
Kiyosai never amid any circumstances repeats himself: every picture he
paints is different, while for his work he asks but a small price. After
he had done his crows he painted a coloured picture, beginning with
Indian ink. First he tried all his colours, which were ready prepared
in different little blue pots and placed around him. These little
shallow pots or saucers had each its own liquid, which the assistant had
prepared to a certain extent beforehand. They contained flesh tint,
drapery colour, tones for hair, gold ornaments, and so forth. These
colours had evidently been used before, as they were in their saucers,
merely requiring dilution before immediate use. The saucers were
arranged chiefly on his right, with a great vessel of water, of which he
used a great deal. All his utensils were scrupulously clean. When he
began there was no fishing for tones as on the average palette. No
accident! All was sure--a scientific certainty from beginning to the
end. The picture was the portrait of a woman. It displayed enormous
facility and great knowledge, and his treatment of the drapery was
remarkable; but altogether it pleased me less. No attempt was there at
what is called broken colour. A black dress would be one beautiful tone
of black, and flesh one clean tone of flesh, shadows growing out of the
mass and forming a part of the whole. As this work was a very simple
impression, he finished the coloured picture in a few minutes. But on
the whole, in one sense, it was less satisfactory. It appeared as if he
had studied his subject less, for it was a little conventional. He was
less happy in it; but, of course, he did not admit this to himself.
[Illustration: ARCHERS]
He did four pictures, and each of them took from about seven to ten
minutes, these constituting the finest lesson in water-colour painting I
ever received in my life. Here is his idea of finish: once the
impression of the detail and the finish of the object is recorded you
can do nothing better; so far as the painter's impression of finish
goes, so far must the rendering go, and no farther. Artistically he had
become exhausted by doing these four pictures--in invention, I mean. You
see, the man was heart and soul in the work. He lives, poor fellow, on
almost nothing. He is a very independent man, refusing to work for
money, and declining to paint for the market.
Nearly every artist in Japan has his own favourite stick of Indian ink,
which he values as his very life. It is essential that this ink should
be of the very finest quality, for they drink so much of it. In order to
execute those fine lines ending in a broad sweep that is so
characteristic of Japanese pictures, an artist must first fill his brush
with Indian ink and then apply it to his lips until the tip becomes
pointed. The ink is of course swallowed; but if it is of a good quality,
to drink pints of it would not do a man the slightest harm. A practical
proof of this can be found in the fact that Kiyosai, who is an old man,
has been drinking Indian ink steadily with every picture he has painted
all through his lifetime. He possesses a small piece of Indian ink which
is hundreds of years old, and which all the money in the world could not
buy. It is far too precious for broad washes, and is only used here and
there for bright touches.
I noticed the tender way in which Kiyosai handled this one precious
piece of Indian ink, and that led to a very interesting conversation on
blacks, after which I realised that the variations and gradations to be
procured with black alone were enormous. Kiyosai told me that when he
was very young he was puzzled by the exceedingly rich quality of black
in one of his master's pictures. It was a deep, velvety, luminous black,
and young Kiyosai struggled for weeks and weeks to match it, but in
vain. He came to the conclusion that there must be some work going on at
the back of the picture, and at last one night he became so desperate
that, stealing into his master's room while he lay asleep, he soaked off
the picture which had been pasted on to a board, and looked at the back
of it. One glance was enough, and little Kiyosai, with a throb of
pleasure, hastily pasted the picture together again and stole away to
experiment all that night on silk and on paper, "painting black both on
the front and on the back."
I inquired of Kiyosai if he had ever painted in oils, and he assured me
that he had not; but a few days later Captain Brinkley showed me a
little picture painted in lacquer by Kiyosai which, in my opinion,
rivalled for brilliancy any oil picture that has ever been painted, or
has still to be painted. The surface was as brilliant as glass; yet the
picture had a depth which no ordinary oil pigment could hope to reach,
while its deep luminous shadows would put to shame the finest of Van
Eyck's pictures.
An English friend of mine resident in Japan once told me a story of
Kiyosai which struck me as being typical of that great master. A friend
of his had prepared four magnificent sliding panels covered with the
finest silk, and had given them to the painter with the request that he
would execute some of his masterpieces on them for him. For eight or
nine years Kiyosai had kept those panels, and they still remained bare;
but great masters are always erratic, and the would-be purchaser never
gave up hope. One day, however, he burst in upon my friend with the
terrible intelligence that Kiyosai was dead drunk and had ruined his
panels. "He's smashing away at them on the floor, and he is simply
crawling over them," he said in a towering rage. My friend agreed to go
round with him to Kiyosai's house to try if possible to stop the
outrage. When they arrived they found the master in a high state of
fever, and looking more like a wild animal than a human being, with his
tusk-like teeth and his poor pitted face, sweeping and hacking about all
over the silken panels. As they entered, Kiyosai left the room, leaving
behind him the panels scattered irregularly over the floor, but each one
smothered with work. "Look here," said my friend very generously: "it
was I that introduced Kiyosai to you, and it was I that suggested his
painting these doors; therefore it is only fair that I should relieve
you of them and find you a new set, which I will willingly do." But the
owner of the panels, shrewdly guessing that my friend had not made this
magnanimous offer without some good reason, changed his mind and said
that he could on no account receive so costly a gift. He kept them, and
wisely too, for these four panels are now universally considered as
some of Kiyosai's greatest masterpieces.
[Illustration: REFLECTIONS]
Strange to say, Kiyosai, when painting his finest work, is nearly always
drunk, and his weakness is often taken a mean advantage of by the people
around him. I remember once attending a party given by a Legation person
who had invited a dozen or so of Japan's finest artists--among them the
great Kiyosai, the master--to paint pictures on the floor for the
edification of the assembled guests--a rather vulgar proceeding. Kiyosai
resented this indignity with all the force of his passionate nature, but
out of kindness allowed himself to be over-persuaded by his host. They
made him drink and keep on drinking to build up his enthusiasm; but,
boiling over with rage and indignation, he kept on putting off his time
until the whole twelve artists had finished the sketches, although,
fearing that the effect of the drink would wear off, the guests begged
him to start at once. At last Kiyosai's time came. The silk lay prepared
on the floor, with the ink and brushes ready for him to begin. Mad with
rage and hating his unsympathetic audience, Kiyosai stood, or rather
knelt, before his silk, fiercely grasping the brush, holding it
downwards with all his fingers round it and thumb turned outwards. He
looked like a god as he knelt there, gripping his brush and staring at
the silk--he was seeing his picture. He executed a flight of crows, a
masterpiece--Kiyosai knew it was a masterpiece--and, proudly drawing
himself up to his full height, quivering in every limb, he threw down
his brush, skidded the silk along the floor towards the spectators,
and, saying "That is Kiyosai," left the house in disgust. The dignity of
the little man cowed his spectators. Every one unconsciously felt the
magnetism of the man, and realised that a master had been among them.
PLACING