1841.
Notices of Japan, No. LX
279
ART. III.
Notices of
of Japan, No. IX.: arts and manufactures among the Japanese: lacker-ware, paper, commerce, tea, &c. THE state of the arts in Japan is another point upon which there is some dif. ficulty in forming an opinion, partly from a little distrust in the connoisseur-ship of the members of the factory at Dezima, and partly from the unanimous assu- rances that the best specimens in any department are utterly unattainable by fo. reigners. Some notion might, indeed, be formed upon the subject from the station of the artist in the classification of society, but for the possibility that this may denote rather a past than the present state. All that can, therefore, be safely affirmed is, that the arts are more advanced in that country than in China.
Respecting the art of music, there needs no addition to what has been already stated. We are told that the Japanese are extremely fond of painting, and eager collectors of pictures; that they sketch boldly with charcoal and often in ink, never having occasion to efface; that their outlines are clear, and their drawing as good as may be compatible with ignorance of perspective and anatomy. From this ignorance, probably, arises their acknowledged inability to take a likeness, the professed portrait-painters bestowing their care rather upon the dress than the features of their sitters. In birds and flowers they succeed better; and two folio volumes of paintings of flowers, with the name and properties of each written on the opposite page, the work of a Japanese lady, and by her presented to Heer Titsingh, her husband's friend, are spoken of as beautiful. Delicate finishing seems to be the chief excellence of all Japanese artists.
Of the higher department of the art, landscape and figures, some specimens are afforded by the writers upon the subject, but so various in merit, that they perplex almost as much as they assist the judgment. Titsingh's plates of weddings, funeral processions, &c., from paintings by native artists, are, as nearly as may be, on a level with Chinese pictures. Meylan's are a shade better, and such as the qualified praise bestowed might lead one to expect.* Siebold's, although he visited Japan prior to Meylan, are far better, at least those of them which are taken from pictures painted for him: and this he explains, by stating that the young native artist whom he employed was studying the European principles of his art. But the plates in Overmeer Fischer's splendid volume are of a character so very superior to all the others;—they are so highly finished, and have so much of light and shade, though defective enough in drawing and perspective, that it is difficult not to suspect some few improving touches to have been given in Holland
A story, told by Meylan, of the proficiency of Japanese artists two centuries ago, might startle those who have read the opinions of these writers, or looked at most of their plates. It is that, when the ceremony of image-trampling was first ordained, there being a scarcity of Portuguese pictures of the Madonna and Child for simultaneous trampling, a Japanese painter was ordered to make a copy of one, and the copy was not to be distinguished from the original. It is to be ob served that the president never saw the copy, and the connoisseurs who had pro- nounced upon its undistinguishableness were Japanese. The painter was rewarded with decapitation. This story, however, is quite compatible with very poor de signing on the part of the artists, for, like the Chinese, they are no doubt excellent
imitators.