“Waga kokoro waga te woyaku
Waga te waga kokoro ni ozuru.”
Our spirit must make our hand its servitor;
Our hand must respond to each behest of our spirit.
SOUSA CARDOZA
Stronghold
The Japanese artist is taught that even to the placing of a dot in the eyeball of a tiger, he must first feel the savage, cruel, feline character of the beast, and only under such influence should he apply the brush. If he paint a storm he must at the moment realize passing over him the very tornado which tears up trees from their roots and houses from their foundations. Should he depict the seacoast with its cliffs and moving waters, at the moment of putting the wave-bound rocks into the picture he must feel that they are being placed there to resist the fiercest movement of the ocean, while to the waves in turn he must give an irresistible power to carry all before them. Thus, by this sentiment called living movement (sei do), reality is imparted to the inanimate object. This is one of the marvelous secrets of Japanese painting handed down from the great Chinese painters and based on psychological principles—matter responsive to mind.[62]
In the light of the foregoing, one begins to understand why Winslow Homer painted such wonderful realizations of the sea and rocky coasts—he lived removed from men, his most intimate friends the rocks and waves.
One also begins to understand how painters who show great strength and promise in their earlier works, based upon surroundings they know, lose both strength and promise when, flushed by prosperity or attracted by tinsel and glitter, they establish their studios in cities and still try to paint the sea or the country.