1892.] on Japanesque. 555 



can fail to discern in these extraordinary designs a striving after 

 something new, an effort to be original, a desire to shake off the 

 fetters of formalism and pseudo-classicism. You will not need, I 

 think, to be reminded that these j^lates are fair samples of a species of 

 art-work with which we are now familiar : nor will you fail to recog- 

 nise the cause which called these artistic strivings and desires into 

 being. A light had dawned suddenly on British artists in design, at 

 a time when they were beginning to weary of the stencil plates and 

 tracing-papers which are the handmaids of formalism. That light 

 dawned from the far-eastern Islands of Japan, which, though their 

 existence had been long known, were for us practically discovered 

 not more than forty years ago. And in the pathway of this light 

 there came these revelations, which to the designers of those days 

 must have been simply startling : that it was not then essential to 

 good ornament to divide a circle into eight, sixteen, or thirty-two 

 parts, in each of which the same amount of pattern was to be stencilly 

 repeated ; that it was not then essential to find the true centre of an 

 object, and fixing a flower there to let all the stems radiate from it in 

 ordered arrangement ; that it was not then essential to make every- 

 thing balance truly from that centre, of equal size, and at equal 

 distances. In the work which came from Japan these and many 

 other traditional rules which we deemed to be of the essence of art 

 were cast to the winds, ignored in most insolent fashion : and yet the 

 work was strangely delightful : had a grace of infinitely more charm 

 than anything our traditions had ever produced for us : revealed a 

 feeling of proportion and balance whose laws, if indeed there were any, 

 were wrapped in deepest mystery. The efi'ect of this on the Western 

 workman was strange. Broad and pleasant paths of artistic wicked- 

 ness seemed to open straight before him: to walk in them, he forsook 

 the narrow path which his education bade him follow ; he too, would 

 cast his traditions and his stencil-plates to the winds. And when he 

 had so done his work became sprawly, his designs began to lack 

 unity, he cultivated irregularity, and in proportion as he developed 

 these peculiarities his execution deteriorated : a dabby, spotty, eccen- 

 tricity pervaded everthing he did. The great art-spirit of the 

 Japanese had been true to the first of artistic principles : she had 

 concealed herself. Without any very great attempt to track her to 

 her hiding-place we contented ourselves with a poor parody of her, 

 and formulated a style which has no laws to guide it, and which for 

 want of a better name I have christened Japanesque. 



I think I am not exaggerating when I describe the result as 

 execrable ; nor in saying that the revelation which came with the 

 dawning light was startling am I using a mere rhetorical figure of 

 speech. "The Times' of 1854 contains an account of one of, if not 

 the earliest, exhibitions of Japanese things in London. A certain 

 Dutch merchant " wishing to ascertain whether the taste of the English 

 nation was in accordance with the works of Japan," held an exhibition 

 in Pall Mall in January of that year. ' The Times ' wondered 



2 p 2 



