Naturalistic Photography for Students of the Art.

by P. H. Emerson

Fourth period.

Mr. Anderson says, “The fourth and last era began about thirty years before the close of the last century, with the rise of the |Shijo school.|Shijo naturalistic school of painting in Kioto, and a wider development of the artisan popular school in Yedo and Osaka, two steps which conferred upon Japanese art the strongest of those national characteristics that have now completed its separation from the parent art of Amia.”

He goes on to say “that the study of nature was admitted to be the best means of achieving the highest result in art by the older painters of China and Japan, but they limited its interpretation.”

Ōkio[Ōkio].

We are told that Maruyama Ōkio was the first painter who seriously endeavoured to establish naturalistic art (1733-1795). He preached radical ideas in art at Kioto, the centre of Japanese conservatism, and gathered a school around him. In summing up this school, Mr. Anderson remarks, “The chief characteristics of the Shijo school are a graceful flowing outline, freed from the arbitrary mannerisms of touch indulged in by many of the older masters; comparative, sometimes almost absolute, correctness in the interpretation of the forms of animal life; and lastly, a light colouring, suggestive of the prevailing tones of the objects depicted, and full of delicate harmonies and gradations.” Their naturalistic principles do not, however, seem to have fully developed, and their works show ignorance of the scientific facts of nature, except, perhaps, in the painting of plants, birds, and animals. Yet the work has a verve which renders it very fascinating.

Hokusai.

One great man, Hokusai, appears as the last of the race purely Japanese and uninfluenced by European ideas, as all the Japanese artists are now.

So we find that through various phases the Japanese developed to impressionistic landscape-painting, and no doubt when they have got more scientific knowledge, they will make for themselves, by their wonderful originality and patience, a position in art which will surpass all their past efforts.

Japanese art at the British Museum.

Since writing this section, a collection of Japanese and Chinese art has been opened at the British Museum, which the student must by all means study, for there he will see works of most of the masters cited in these notes. |The Japanese Commission.| In connection with this subject our readers may have seen the very interesting report on Art by the Japanese Commission that visited the galleries and schools of Europe; wherein the conclusion of the commission on the best European art is very interesting,—Millet being the greatest painter to their mind. They think, too, that Japan will soon be able to show the world something better than anything yet accomplished, which we very much doubt.