THE ART OF CASTING BRONZE IN JAPAN. 623 



Mr. Alfred Cock, is an excellent example of the Buddhist art of the 

 period. 



The period is also marked by an important naturalistic monument 

 in the schools of both pictorial and glyptic art. 



They had up to this time followed the older men in basing their 

 designs on the traditious of Buddliism and the forms and motives of 

 Chinese and occasionally of Indian art, but now they began to break 

 away from the trammels by which they were bound to these old con- 

 ventional forms and motives, and to go to nature for their inspirations 

 and models. 



It should, however, be remembered that much as the works, espe- 

 cially of Chinese artists, were admired, mere slavish copies were never 

 or rarely made of them; thus in the bronzes even of the early days, the 

 figures of Buddhist divinities, there is a serenity of expression and 

 graceful arrangement of drapery which we look for iu vain in the mas- 

 terpieces of Chinese art. Nearly contemporaneous with the establish- 

 ment of the Shijo-rui — the school of naturalistic painting — in Kioto, 

 by the famous painter Okyo, we find the art founders adopting these 

 new motives and new modes of representing the old. Stiff geometric 

 designs give place to those based on natural forms, and even in repre- 

 sentations of the mythical dragon we see, as has been pointed out by 

 Professor Anderson, "distinct evidences of direct study of snake form." 



Students of natural objects, of plantr*and animal life, were now made, 

 the designs of the naturalistic paiuters were followed, and an impulse 

 was given to the art of bronze founding greater than had been known 

 since the Kara period. 



For a little more than three-quarters of a century we have another 

 golden age in its history, during which a succession of brilliant artists, 

 distinguished by marvelous technical skill and originality of design, 

 worthily maintained the best traditions of the founders' art, and Japan 

 attained a position in cera perduta casting which she had never reached 

 before. 



Two men, Seimin and Toiin, stand out prominently during the closing 

 years of the last century and the first quarter of the present. Others, 

 among whom should be mentioned Harutoshi, Kunihisa, Kamejo, Teijo, 

 Taiichi, approach these great masters in skill, even occasionally proving 

 their equals. The work of these famous artists is well represented by 

 the specimens on the table, the most important of which are from the 

 collections of my friends Mr. Alfred Cock, Mr. Mills, Mr. Alfred Par- 

 sons, and Mr. J. M. Swan, and by PI. LXVIII, fig. 1, a group of tortoises 

 from the collection of Mr. J. M. Swan, and PI. LXVIII, fig. 2, a brazier 

 from the collection of Mr. Alfred Cock. 



In examining their works it will be noticed that, as among the paint- 

 ers, several were specially distinguished for their skill in the repre- 

 sentation of certain motives — Sosen as a painter of monkeys, Gauku 



