JAPANESE PICTORIAL ART
best of them seem to be those that show most clearly the impress of the naturalistic tendency to which Okio so powerfully contributed; but if his countrymen be asked to indicate his title to fame, they invariably refer to his delineations of the tiger. Now it may safely be asserted that Ganku never saw a real, live tiger; never had an opportunity for studying its anatomy and proportions. He formed his own idea of "a snarling, crouching, treacherous mass of energy," and he painted that idea with force and effect, but yet with so little resemblance to nature's original that the distortion of the modelling impairs all appreciation of the essence of the thing. He had, however, seen a tiger's skin, and a tiger's skin is just the kind of texture that lends itself readily to linear representation, and consequently comes within full range of the Japanese artist's brush. Ganku's tiger skins are marvels of brush work. Mori Sosen (born 1747, died 1821), one of the greatest of the Shi-jo masters, is as celebrated for his delineations of the monkey as Ganku is for his paintings of the tiger. But Sosen studied the monkey in nature, and acquired an extraordinarily intimate knowledge of its habits and attitudes. He may be called the Landseer of Japan; for though his fame rests chiefly on his pictures of the monkey, he has left paintings of deer, of badgers, of rats, of fishes, and of hares that would have won for him a great reputation even without his remarkable studies of simian life.
The reader will understand that no attempt is here made to separate the Shijo and the Ganku schools; their differentiation is scarcely a practical problem. He will understand, also, that if special reference is not made in this section to such painters
61
