556 Mr, F. T. Piggott [March 11, 



" whether the same thing would happen to the Japanese as had already 

 happened to the Hindoos, whose art work had been depreciated by 

 the stupid conceit of the European, who must needs tie down their 

 exuberant fancy to his own meagre or vulgar designs. . . . Such 

 delicate and beautiful ornamentation had never been seen in the same 

 perfection in this country. . . . Our papier-mache manufacturers 

 ought to feel themselves under special obligations to this Dutch 

 merchant for enabling them to see how immeasurably the artisans of 

 that barbarous island (as we thought it then) excel them." Thus 

 * The Times ' : and I have heard too how in this theatre, very nearly 

 thirty years ago, the audience was so enraptured with a lecture 

 delivered by Mr. Leighton on Japanese art, and with the objects ho 

 exhibited, that it was past midnight before this staid Institution could 

 close its doors. 



I may attack at once one of the chief vices of Japanesque, 

 which is an abortive attempt to grasp one of the leading char- 

 acteristics of Japanese work; it is the fragmentary spray work 

 with which our pots, and pans, and plates are nowadays orna- 

 mented, the angulate sprig of flower or fruit which comes from 

 nowhere in particular and sprawls everywhere in general. Without 

 putting you in darkness again let me picture to your mind's 

 eye a very familiar dessert-service, the shape of dishes and plates 

 unexceptional, the price a sum unmentionable, the colour a greenish- 

 grey, which is itself but a weak vibration of the pure celadon of 

 the East. Thereon straggle various boughs and sprays of flowers 

 coming, " a la Japonaise," from beyond the edge, with birds hovering 

 about them. But the drawing of these birds is horridly impossible, 

 and as to the proportion between them and the flowers, why, either 

 they must have been snared in Lilliput, or the flowers culled in 

 Brobdignagian gardens. But even this is a small matter compared 

 with the execution of them. The whole subject is first drawn in 

 black outline, and the petals, stalks, and leaves simply dabbed or 

 splashed with colour. This is not an unfair description of average 

 Japanesque work. 



Now the points which the draughtsman fights for, on the supposed 

 authority of Japanese art, are : visible irregularity of design coupled 

 with haphazard composition ; a suggestion of an invisible shrub 

 growing somewhere, which has allowed one of its branches to trail 

 across the plate ; and a sort of conventional naturalism which serves 

 as an excuse for hasty and poor workmanship. In this respect, 

 indeed, his work does not approach even that of those palmy old days 

 of British art when the potters painted just in the centre of a plate a 

 posy of flowers as like to nature as they could make them. The 

 Japanese work which this feeble stuff attempts to copy belongs essen- 

 tially to the domain oi pictorial art, and is governed by the same laws 

 as the pictorial art of Japan. The greatest purist among decorators 

 would never deny that pictorial art may very properly be applied to 

 the purposes of decoration ; but he would insist, and rightly, that 



