Keen admirers of nature as the Japanese are, and fully alive to all the wealth of flower, foliage, and scenery in which their country is so exceptionally rich, it must not be supposed that their art is entirely the outcome of their own observation. Doubtless their love for nature produces upon the minds of the native artists certain impressions, which they more or less unconsciously produce in their works, but until within the last five or six years, when they began to follow European teachings—followed thus far with lamentable result—it is safe to affirm that their productions were rarely the result of deliberate or direct study from nature. The power of the artist’s effects, the wonderful facility of his execution, the beauty of the colouring and delicacy of drawing, all combine to give what may pass for a marvellous transcript of nature, but taken separately and examined critically, the objects depicted, be they bird, flower, leaf, or insect, will be found incorrect in form, proportion, and construction, if judged by a European standard. Yet in these very failings are found their highest merits as decorative artists. Decorative art does not admit of absolute fidelity to nature; slavish copyists of nature, lacking imagination, can never be true decorative artists. The very essence of decorative art is the power of conventionalizing nature, while retaining all the spirit and feeling of the object represented, and this is where the Japanese especially excel. Gifted with wonderful quickness of perception, and delicacy of hand, they can seize upon and reproduce, with extraordinary rapidity and power of touch, the characteristics of natural objects. Their method of writing is alone sufficient to give them great facility of execution, as all the letters—or rather characters—of the language are written with the brush, which they are thus accustomed to use from their earliest childhood. Thus they acquire that rapidity of hand and decision of touch which are such noticeable features in their drawings, and which have compelled the admiration of foreign art connoisseurs. The Japanese artist learns to draw as he has learned to write. He does not sit down opposite a model or natural object and endeavour to represent it as it appears to him; as he learns to form the innumerable and complicated characters of his language by constant repetition, so does he acquire the power of drawing certain designs and conventional forms, by long continued copying of accepted models, which have been handed down from generation to generation. This very method of procedure, while fatal to the excellence which he might attain as a student of nature, gives him that decorative power in design in which, as we have said, the Japanese artist stands pre-eminent.
A small manual of drawing, in which different designs are mapped out in squares, is placed in the hands of the student, who divides his drawing paper into the same number of squares, which he is taught to fill up in their fixed order. When he has learned these by heart, designs of gradually increasing difficulty are placed before him, and thus he learns by degrees to delineate flowers, birds, landscapes, figures, and other objects, in an artificial manner, without any reference to nature. One student may devote himself to birds and flowers, another may take up the subject of landscape, but in all cases the method pursued is the same, and thus the excellencies and faults of the originals are perpetuated. Individual talent in draughtsmanship—looking to originality of design—can scarcely exist. The excellencies of artists are therefore confined to the combination of conventional forms and the delicacy or power of execution and colour, in which alone their fancy can have free play. These elegant stems, those feathery petals, apparently thrown together without restraint, are thus executed after a number of models prepared long beforehand, and which every painter possesses.
