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



yet again, whether they work with liquid pigment or stiff enamel, 

 with threads of silk or with metal inlay, all craftsmen alike possess a 

 complete mastery over the gradation of their tones, even to the 

 vanishing point. And thus the art of all of these craftsmen is 

 identical both in spirit and in execution with the art of the painter ; 

 the result, monochrome pictures in shades of gold or steel, in patina 

 of varied lustres, in dyes or in silk embroidery, which are as effective, 

 and which are endowed with the same charms as the painted picture 

 in black and white. Thus it comes about that the lacquer boxes, the 

 porcelain, the silk or cotton raiment, and all the thousand things 

 which add to the charm of life to the Japanese, are embellished with 

 pictures, executed in precisely the same way, with the same firm 

 lines and evenly-covered surfaces, with the same gradations of tone, 

 the same dark shadows and fleecy clouds, as those which came from 

 the studios of the Kano masters. 



I will ask you to look at my Japanesque plates once more. 

 Mr. Lennox has very kindly turned them upside down ; he evidently 

 thought it made the boughs of the trees a little truer to nature, 

 though the birds now fare rather badly. They are full of extraordinary 

 angles, which, considered as a mere arrangement of lines, are bad 

 enough, but looked at as an interpretation of nature are impossible. 

 There is little of either Eastern or Western pictorial art about any of 

 them ; the one in which the spray comes on at three places might 

 perhaps be taken as giving the idea of a plate hidden in a bush. 



I'he Japanesque designer delights to dwell on the fragmentari- 

 ness of his design, insists on the existence of the remainder of the 

 boughs ; his designs are clumsily composed, and still more clumsily 

 set upon the surface. These are among the chief characteristics 

 of Japanesque which I will ask you to bear in mind. 



Now let me endeavour to explain to you how essentially this 

 Japanesque work differs from the Japanese work upon which it is 

 based. In point of mere execution it lacks two of its essential 

 qualities, the smooth swelling surfaces which are produced by gradual 

 pressure on the long j)liant brush, and the strength and sweep of the 

 lines. I will not dwell upon this point ; but I think you will follow 

 me at once when I say that the free lines which are drawn by a man 

 kneeling, as the Japanese do, over his paper laid upon the floor, must 

 be essentially different from the free lines drawn by a man facing 

 his canvas, and working with a mahl-stick, or sitting on a chair with 

 his material on a table in front of him. The part of the body which 

 forms the axis of the free lines is in each case different. The line 

 drawn, for example, with the axis at the wrist must have a different 

 character from that drawn with the axis at the shoulder. The 

 methods of drawing in the East and the West have each produced 

 characteristic results. I do not wish to compare them, only the 

 quality of Japanese work is so intimately connected with the method 

 of its execution, that it is impossible quite to catch the spirit of it 

 unless we adopt the method, pro hac vice of course. 



