THE STALL BY THE BRIDGE
Kiyosai next began to discuss drawing, and, as he was speaking to an Englishman, English drawing in particular. “I hear that when artists in England are painting,” he said, “if they are painting a bird, they stand that bird up in their back garden, or in their studio, and begin to paint it at once, then and there, never quite deciding what they are going to paint, never thinking of the particular pose and action of the bird that is to be represented on the canvas. Now, suppose that bird suddenly moves one leg up—what does the English artist do then?” He could not understand how an English painter could paint with the model before him. I naturally told him that they copied what they saw; that they got over the difficulty as best they could. “I do not quite understand that,” he said. “In my own practice I look at the bird; I want to paint him as he is. He has got a pose. Good! Then he suddenly puts down his head, and there is another pose. The bare fact of the bird being there in an altered pose would compel me to alter my idea; and so on, until at last I could paint nothing at all.” I asked him what, then, was his method. “I watch my bird,” he replied, “and the particular pose I wish to copy before I attempt to represent it. I observe that very closely until he moves and the attitude is altered. Then I go away and record as much of that particular pose as I can remember. Perhaps I may be able to put down only three or four lines; but directly I have lost the impression I stop. Then I go back again and study that bird until it takes the same position as before. And then I again try and retain as much as I can of it. In this way I began by spending a whole day in a garden watching a bird and its particular attitude, and in the end I have remembered the pose so well, by continually trying to represent it, that I am able to repeat it entirely from my impression—but not from the bird. It is a hindrance to have the model before me when I have a mental note of the pose. What I do is a painting from memory, and it is a true impression. I have filled hundreds of sketch-books,” he continued, “of different sorts of birds and fish and other things, and have at last got a facility, and have trained my memory to such an extent, that by observing the rapid action of a bird I can nearly always retain and produce it. By a lifelong training I have made my memory so keen that I think I may say I can reproduce anything I have once seen.”
Such, then, is Kiyosai’s method of work. It is purely natural, and one that has obtained for generations, and that is the Japanese whole theory of art. Captain Brinkley told me a story, the outcome of that conversation. Kiyosai came one day to work at a screen which Captain Brinkley was very anxious for him to complete; but he could not finish it at the time, do what he would. He said nothing; but it came out that he had a fresh impression in his mind, and he could not go on with the old impression until he had worked off the new one—something he had seen on his way up to the house.
The painters always live with fish, and birds, and animals of different sorts. They have fish in bottles and in ponds in their gardens. I went to many studios in Japan, and I found each one with its ponds and fish in the little garden surrounding the studio, and birds as well. They always study nature, and I believe that is the keynote of their art.
The technique of Kiyosai’s work was most fascinating. I had come away from England with all sorts of theories concerning the technical part of an artist’s work, and when I got to Japan I found there was absolutely nothing that was not known to this man. His method of work, too, interested me exceedingly. To begin with, the assistant brought his stretcher of silk—a lovely piece of silk stretched across a wooden frame—and placed it in front of him. Then, taking a long burnt twig, he thought for a few minutes, looking all the while at his silk—thought out his picture, indeed, before he put a single touch on his canvas. How different is this from the man who so often, with us, puts on a lot of hasty touches in the hope that they will suggest the picture! When this artist saw his picture complete in his mind, he began with the little burnt twig to trace a few sure lines. I never saw such facility in my life. A few swift strokes indicated the outline on the silk of two black crows; then he took up his brush and began at once with the Indian ink, with full powerful colour; and in about seven minutes he had completed a picture, superbly drawn and full of character—a complete impression of two black crows, very nearly life-size, resting on the branch of a tree.
Kiyosai never amid any circumstances repeats himself: every picture he paints is different, while for his work he asks but a small price. After he had done his crows he painted a coloured picture, beginning with Indian ink. First he tried all his colours, which were ready prepared in different little blue pots and placed around him. These little shallow pots or saucers had each its own liquid, which the assistant had prepared to a certain extent beforehand. They contained flesh tint, drapery colour, tones for hair, gold ornaments, and so forth. These colours had evidently been used before, as they were in their saucers, merely requiring dilution before immediate use. The saucers were arranged chiefly on his right, with a great vessel of water, of which he used a great deal. All his utensils were scrupulously clean. When he began there was no fishing for tones as on the average palette. No accident! All was sure—a scientific certainty from beginning to the end. The picture was the portrait of a woman. It displayed enormous facility and great knowledge, and his treatment of the drapery was remarkable; but altogether it pleased me less. No attempt was there at what is called broken colour. A black dress would be one beautiful tone of black, and flesh one clean tone of flesh, shadows growing out of the mass and forming a part of the whole. As this work was a very simple impression, he finished the coloured picture in a few minutes. But on the whole, in one sense, it was less satisfactory. It appeared as if he had studied his subject less, for it was a little conventional. He was less happy in it; but, of course, he did not admit this to himself.
ARCHERS
He did four pictures, and each of them took from about seven to ten minutes, these constituting the finest lesson in water-colour painting I ever received in my life. Here is his idea of finish: once the impression of the detail and the finish of the object is recorded you can do nothing better; so far as the painter’s impression of finish goes, so far must the rendering go, and no farther. Artistically he had become exhausted by doing these four pictures—in invention, I mean. You see, the man was heart and soul in the work. He lives, poor fellow, on almost nothing. He is a very independent man, refusing to work for money, and declining to paint for the market.