Naturalistic Photography for Students of the Art.

by P. H. Emerson

Japanese art.

We feel, however, that wonderful as Japanese art has been, yet there is a great gulf between it and the best Greek and modern art. To us Japanese art is the product of a semi-civilized race, a race in which there is strong sympathy with nature, but a very superficial acquaintance with her marvellous workings. In short, we feel the Japanese need a deeper and more scientific knowledge of nature, and that their work falls far short of the best European work. At the present day there is a craze for anything Japanese, but like all crazes it will end in bringing ridicule upon Japanese work; for their work, though fine for an uncivilized nation, is absurd in many points, and this stupid craze by indiscriminate praise will only kill the qualities to be really admired.

Chinese art.

The earliest authentic records of Chinese painting date about A.D. 251. The earliest painters were painters of Buddhist pictures. |Wu-Tao-Tsz’.| Mr. Anderson mentions as one of the best known of the early masters, one Wu-Tao-Tsz’, whose animals were remarkable. He thinks that the art of China of to-day is feeble compared with that which flourished 1100 years ago. We are informed too that the “artistic appreciation of natural scenery existed in China many centuries before landscapes played a higher part in the European picture than that of an accessory,” and judging from the specimens he gives in his book of the work of the Sung Dynasty (960-1279 A.D.), the Chinese artists had a great feeling for landscape. We are told that the painters of the thirteenth century “studied nature from the aspect of the impressionist,” and their subjects were all taken from nature, landscape especially delighting them. In the fifteenth century we read “decadence began by their neglect of nature and their cultivation of decorative colouring, calligraphic dexterity, and a compensating disregard for naturalistic canons.” We are told, and can readily believe it, that in painting of bird life they were unequalled save by the Japanese, and that down to 1279 the Chinese were at the head of the world in painting, and their only rivals were their pupils, the Japanese. Korean art seems also to have degenerated since the sixteenth century.

Thus we ever find the same old story. China, when she painted from nature, was unequalled by any nation in the world; when she neglected nature, as she does now, she fell to the lowest rank.

The Renascence.

Renascence.

This is a period of a return to the study of nature, of a carrying out of the feelings which seemed to be developing even in Giotto’s time. No longer now was the artist to be separated from nature by the intervention of the Church, and though natural science was not advancing as fast as art was, still a growing regard for nature was the order of the day. |The Van Eycks.| This feeling first showed itself strongly in the Netherlands, with the brothers Van Eyck. We are told that the Van Eycks “mixed the colours with the medium on the palette and worked them together on the picture itself, thus obtaining more brilliant effects of light as well as more delicate gradations of tone, with an infinitely nearer approach to the truth of nature.”

The Van Eycks regarded nature lovingly, and tried truthfully to represent her, and though many of their works were of sacred subjects, yet they were evidently studied from nature with loving conscientiousness; and so successful were they that to this day the picture by one of the brothers (a portrait of a merchant and his wife), in the National Gallery, remains almost unsurpassed. |Portrait of a merchant and his wife.| It is well worth a journey to the National Gallery on purpose to see it, and we trust all those who do not already know the picture will take the trouble to go and study it well. It is wonderful in technical perfection, in sentiment, in truthfulness of impression. Note the reflection of the orange in the mirror, with what skill it is painted. In fact the whole is full of life and beauty,—the beauty of naturalism. It is a master-piece good for all time, and yet it is but the portrait of a merchant and his wife. No religious subject here inspired John Van Eyck, but a mere merchant family, yet in many ways the picture remains, and will remain, unsurpassed. Such powerful minds as the brothers Van Eyck of course influenced all art, and they had many followers; but it does not seem that these followers had the insight into nature that characterized the Van Eycks, and the work falls off after the death of the brothers, whose names represent, and ably represent, all that was best of the fifteenth century.

Quinten Massys.