1802.] on Japanesque. 659 



But the drawing of most Japanesque work is execrable from a 

 Western point of view. Western art does not sanction smudges as 

 substitutes for rose-leaves ; Western art requires some observance of 

 proportion between the different objects of a picture ; therefore in 

 the most elementary essentials, Japanesque sins against both the East 

 and West. That it cannot catch the trick of the Eastern line is, as I 

 have said, not exactly the fault of the draughtsmen. They do not 

 profess to copy Japanese models, but rather to adapt Japanese 

 principles to their own work. And the first point, on which I would 

 not have dwelt so long did it not pervade the whole subject, is that 

 they have missed the pictorial quality of this form of Japanese 

 decoration, and have parodied it with crude outlines and haphazard 

 smudging. It is the failure to recognise the pictorial quality of this 

 Japanese work that has led to the Japanesque arrangement of 

 branches which makes them appear as if they came from somewhere 

 else, and the insistence on the existence of the rest of the branch, 

 both of which are entirely foreign to the Japanese idea. 



Now, in the first place, it must be clearly understood that the 

 Japanese do both profess and practise a rigid adherence to the struc- 

 tural principle of ornament. Their art never allows them so to 

 ornament a surface as to make it appear part of something which 

 is non-existent. Perhaps the corresponding principle in pictorial 

 art may be stated concisely, thus : a picture should not look as if it 

 were a slice cut out of a panorama, with more to follow at either 

 end. 



Japanese pictorial art, in its very nature, delighting to paint one 

 incident, not many, enables the principles of focus to be more care- 

 fully observed than they are in the West. 



Now the bough of plum or cherry-tree, with its buds and blossoms, 

 is one of the most familiar subjects in Japanese paintings, for a very 

 sufficient reason ; it is one of the most familiar objects in a Japanese 

 house. In the floral pictures with which, week by week, they 

 beautify their homes, the Japanese use everything that nature gives 

 them, not the bud and flower alone, nor the twig and leaf alone, but 

 the whole 'bough. Whole branches of flowering shrubs are set in 

 their vases, and these branches reappear in their pictures. And I 

 think the simple secret of their being set close to the edge of 

 the paper or the plate, is, that that is precisely how the branch is 

 seen in the house, cut in a sharp line by the edge of the vase or hanging 

 basket in which it is placed. Then too a sort of artificial focus is 

 obtained by the pruning of twigs and flowers at the base of the 

 branch. But of suggestion of the rest of the tree, the suggestion of 

 which Japanesque is so full, there is not the slightest trace. Such 

 an idea as that a spray should come on to the plate in three different 

 places would be quite impossible for a Japanese artist even to 

 imagine. 



Far more important even than the points I have already touched 

 upon is the composition of the design for picture or ornament. And 



