But allowing all due weight to such considerations, it is, I think, surprising how nearly akin to the finest European feeling is that which inspires the great creative art of China, Chinese art appealed to Western nations originally almost entirely in virtue of its technical ingenuity, its brilliant and tasteful execution, and the "quaintness" due to its unfamiliarity. As we get to know it better, as we explore more and more the great classic periods, We are led to treat it with the same respect and the same concentrated attention which we have to devote to Jour own great masters if we would apprehend the nature of their states mind."—Mr. Royer Fry, on "Chinese Art'
The Old Masters "Twenty-five years ago, if one talked of the beauty and grandeur of Chinese painting, people stared Jand looked incredulous. Englishmen who had passed their lives in Shanghai would become quite heated in their denials of the very existence of this art, But in the short interval all has been changed, The names of Chinese masters do not yet, it is true, come readily to the lips of their"Western admirers; but ese painting is in fashion, and examples attributed to the most Famous names of all the classic periods are to be seen in the Western world. This material requires to be severely" sifted. What we know for certain amounts to very little. But how for sift it? There is the radical difficulty of this study.
In European art, the spectator is imagined to be on level ground: the mid-distance is out across by the Korizon-line: and to break this, and unite sky and earth, masses of trees, broken ground, distant. hills supply lines of vertical or diagonal direction, The Chinese convention lifts the spectator above the earth: the high horizon is always filled with mountain-forms, often tower-1g over mist, There is no teasing of detail in the foreground, The eye is led to the grander shapes, the liberating spaces. The mood loftier than we are wont to feel Janglseape art, These characteris ties are especially the mark of the later Sung paintings, when so many spirits, oppressed by the material misfortunes of the empire, turned inward to reverie and solaced them~ selves with the delights of solitude.
Mr, Lawrence Binyon, on "Paint ings."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.