Dr. J. C. Fergustn on the Aims of Its Creators: Lack of Realism 'Dr. J. ©. Ferguson, _Vice-Pre-dent of the China' Society of Science and Arts and an authority on Chinese objets dart, gave 8 Jecture on Chinese paintings at the Lyceum Theatre on Thursday evening. Mr. A. de ©. Sowerby, the Preident, occupied the chair. the principles of Chinese literature and Jnting were the same, just they were in Greece, both being founded on examples. Chinese pain' ing, he said, was memory, reproduction and imaginative reconstruction. It did not imitate a model but reproduced a memory picture based upon repeated observation and constant reflexion. This memory reproduction did not—reproduce the entire view which came into the artist's experience in any particular instance, but only those which were most typical. The attitudes of figures were chosen for their permanent characteristics, not like photography, which constantly represented men and animals' in positions on which the mind never rests.
Chinese painting, Dr. Ferguson continued, was done with great simplicity, Its perfection consisted of thorough control of brush strokes together with freedom of conception. It Had never been influenced by the selentifie spirit, Tt had its own perspective which was freer than the Correct, mathematical perspective of the West. Clyinese artists. considered. their isometric perspective est suited to bring out the essential and permanent, In order to} appreciate Chinese painting we had te reconstruct our daily life, filed with practical hard facts, and place ourselves in a world of classic ideals such as that of Virgil and Ovid, Homer and Euripides, Wordsworth and Keats. The world of the; Chinese artist, said Dr. Ferguson, yas a world of contemplation and reflexion rather than action,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.