Painting in the Far East - An Introduction to the History of Pictorial Art in Asia Especially China and Japan

The first edition of this book was published five years ago. In the interval much has happened. A quantity of new material has been brought to light interest in the subject has everywhere grown and widened. In most of the countries of the West collectors are beginning to collect, seriously and studiously, and no longer with a haphazard curiosity, specimens of the classic art of China and Japan. Museums begin to realise that these things are worthy of acquisition for their own sake and not merely as illustrations of ethnography or religion. At this moment an entire museum, exclusively devoted to the art of Eastern Asia and built expressly for the purpose, is being opened at Cologne. The example will doubtless be followed. It is a sign of the times. It is now possible, therefore, in Europe and America to get some first-hand acquaintance with Asian painting, both of early and modern times. But, as I pointed out in the preface to the first edition of this book, the student who cannot make the journey to the Far East will find indispensable the immense series of reproductions published in Japan.In my former preface He noted my indebtedness to the Kokka, the monthly magazine which was founded so long ago as 1889. The drawback to this array of volumes, treasure-house as it is, is that the Western student cannot easily find what he wants or bring the examples of each artist together for comparison. In the British Museum the plates of the Kokka have been detached from the text and arranged according to schools and artists for the convenience of the student. Besides the Kokka, there are numerous and splendid publications of the Shimbi Shoin. In the notes to the first edition of this book reference was made to the reproductions of famous and typical pictures scattered among the twenty volumes not all of them at that time published of the Shimbi Taikwan, or Selected Relics of Japanese Art. These references now seem hardly necessary, since there has appeared another not yet completed publication from the same house, the Tyo Bijutsu Taikwan, or Selected Masterpieces from the Fine Arts of the Far East, which has the great advantage of being arranged chronologically. To supplement this, there are separate works devoted to particular schools and artists. The coloured reproductions in all these Japanese publications are of a beauty and quality of texture which must be seen to be believed. I must reiterate the debt which the following pages owe to these volumes, as to the well-known works of viii Dr. Giles, Dr. Hirth, and others, mentioned in the text. The preparation of this new edition has brought home to me my great temerity in attempting the original enterprise. In the last five years the opportunity of studying the array of masterpieces so generously lent by Japan to England in 1910 and exhibited at Shepherds Bush, as well as the chief treasures of the Boston Museum, of the marvellous collection of Mr. Freer at Detroit and of other American collections, has been a stimulating experience, by which I hope the present edition has benefited. I have not tried to alter or enlarge the scope of the volume it does not profess to be more than an introduction to the subject. As stated in the original preface, it is an attempt to survey the achievement and to interpret the aims of Oriental painting, and to appreciate it from the standpoint of a European in relation to the rest of the world S art. It is the general student and lover of painting whom I have wished to interest. My chief concern has been, not to discuss questions of authorship or archzology, but to inquire what asthetic value and significance these Eastern paintings possess for us in the West.