JAPAN
to make peonies blow on a briar stem. In the field of art, however, his estimate of her capacities was different. He could not hide from himself that the revival of decorative art in Europe had been stimulated and guided by the study of first-class Japanese work, and that types of the highest aesthetic quality were to be found among Japanese chefs d'œuvre.
But what, after all, was Japanese art? Must it be regarded as simply decorative, or might it also be considered representative? That question pressed for an answer. People were unwilling to admit that a new star of the first magnitude had really risen on the horizon. They found something slight, something trivial, in Japanese pictures; a lack of emotion-inspiring motive; an absence of massiveness and breadth of treatment. It could easily be detected that the range of the painter's fancy was limited by a logical canon; that he forbade himself to transfer to his canvas any scene too extensive to be revealed by a single glance of the eye; that, in short, just as Japanese poetry never rose to the dignity of an ode but stopped short at a couplet, so Japanese pictures, instead of telling a complete story, merely suggested an incident. But that they displayed remarkable directness of method and strength of line; that the artist knew exactly what he wanted to draw and drew it with unerring fidelity and force; that the very outlines of the picture were in themselves a picture, and that the whole was pervaded by an atmosphere of tenderness and grace indicating a refined conception of everything beautiful in nature,—these were facts that forced themselves upon the attention of every close observer.
What, then, was the fundamental difference between this art and the art of the Occident? It seems a little
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