ART.
THE FINE ART SOCIETY, AND THE GROSVENOR GALLERY.
ABOUT the time when Hogarth began to paint and engrave scenes of contemporary English life, the same sort of turn was being given to Art in Japan. There, as in Europe, painting was for centuries in the service of religion, and its subjects were mainly those of sacred myth and legend. At the end of the seventeenth century, a new school arose, the School of the Passing World. That is to say, painting ceased to be dependent on religion and history, and attained freedom of subject. As in England the new popular art made its way, not by the production of single designs in the old fashion, but by the mechanical reproduction of designs. In Japan the reproduction took the form of woodcuts, either in black and white, or in extremely skilful colour-printing.
In England, the "great heart of the people" is a conscience, and all art gravitates naturally to the form of the Sermon. This Hoga.rth found and traded upon. The Japanese seems to live more by fancy and delight. He thinks his land so desirable and divine, that there it is not necessary for men to pray. At all events, it is permissible to paint without moralising. It is true that he attaches an emblematic meaning to many of the dumb things painted,—the happy plum, the patriotic cherry, the cuckoo and the orange-flower, that bring up the merry past ; but in most of the flowers and creatures, the Japanese seems to find with a gay indiscriminate- ness the promise of longevity. The pine means that, and the crane, and likewise the tortoise, and things in general. They kept their promise in the ease of the greatest artist of the new school, Hokusai, who was born in 1760, and died at the age of eighty-nine. He considered that he was Cut off in his prime, for here is what he wrote about the work belonging to his youthful period of threescore years and ten :—" Ever since the age of six, I had a mania for drawing the forms of objects. Towards the age of fifty, I published a very large number of drawings ; but I am dissatisfied with everything I produced before the age of seventy. It was at the age of seventy-three that I had nearly mastered the real nature and form of birds, fish, plants,
&c. Consequently at the age of eighty I shall have made a great deal of progress ; at ninety I shall have got to the bottom of things ; at a hundred I shall have attained a. de-
cidedly higher level which I cannot define ; and at the age of a hundred and ten every dot and every line from my brush will be alive. I c,all on those who may live as long as I, to see if I keep my word. Written at the age of seventy-five by me, formerly Hoknsai, now Gwa-Kio-Rojin,--the Old Man Mad about Drawing."
These words are quoted by Mr. Huish, in his preface to the catalogue of an exhibition of Hokusars work at the Fine Art Society's galleries; and the visitor coining to the show with the ideals of Western oil-painting in his head, will find it interesting to ask himself what the art-student of seventy- five meant by "mastering the real nature and form" of birds and fish and plants, and other objects. He clearly did not try, as in the endless effort of the Western art, to fully realise effect, to give the object as it partly is in shape, and partly is lost in light and atmosphere. A glance round the room shows that the pitch of colour is consistently subdued and flat, as suited the means of reproduction. It is the hints of local colour arranged as a decoration. So with the drawing. It is an abstraction, not a complete rendering of subject and of form. Only so much of the scene is given as is to the artist's purpose. The rest is covered up by the forms of con- ventional cloud. Only so much of the form is given as is to the artist's purpose, and his purpose is to express as much character and action as possible, and at the same time get a design, a convention, out of the object. This is what Hokusai means by mastering forms. To learn by heart the action of a bird flying and the pattern of its feathers, and to construct a private arabesque out of these facts, is the procedure of the Japanese artist. His art was, to begin with, reckoned as one of the branches of caligraphy, and his ideal of rendering is still that of subduing objects to the writing-master's flourish. With a Hokusai, the flourish admits of a great deal of character (look, for instance, at the waves in one of the drawings exhibited), and by its very limitation in point of effect can make a wider draft on Nature in range of subject. The Western painter who tries to realise fully is condemned to still-life. The Japanese throughout, or the Western draughts- man who has learned the same lesson, can suggest a thousand moving subjects in a decorative shorthand.
In dealing with the last summer exhibition of the Grosvenor Gallery, we enumerated some of the services that it had rendered to English art. The sense of those services becomes all the keener now that we learn that the present exhibition is the last the public will be invited to see. In the notice we refer to, we congratulated Sir Coutts Lindsay on having secured so many pictures by members of the New Scotch School, commonly called for convenience the Glasgow School. It is interesting to notice that the School is winning a recogni- tion abroad that it hardly won in London. There lies before us an article from a Munich paper describing an exhibition there of works by the Scotchmen, and if the praise is not always discriminating, the enthusiasm is unmistakable. "Certain it is," says the writer, "that no one will be able to resist its influence who possesses even the slightest tincture of artistic feeling."
To its other services the Grosvenor has added the exhibition of works in Pastel. In 1888, the first was opened with a collection to which foreign masters of the art like Hellen and Besna.rd contributed, alongside of Englishmen. The present exhibition is the first of a newly formed Society, that of British Pastellists. Most of the leading artists, of whatever school, who practise the art are included ; but we miss the name of one of the finest of pastellists, Mr. Whistler. Foreigners like Messrs. Blanche and Raffaelli still contribute, and to their ranks are added the quaint Toorop and the solemn Knopff, who treats a tennis-party in hieratic style (89). The sketches by M. Th4ophile de Bock deserve notice as rapid shorthand landscape-notes. Besnard is not here, but he has an imitator in Mr. C. H. Shannon. The "Portrait" (279) is a daring arrangement in Reckitt's blue and emerald-green that is not without its charm ; but the " Marigolds " (207) is sadly jaundiced. Mr. A. J. Finberg is of the same school, with his "Diana" (352) and " Portrait " (326). Mr. Clausen and Mr. Muhrman are, in their familiar ways, admirable,—the former sending a study of a child's head and two landscapes ; the latter, several Hampsteads according to Muhrman. Mr. Guthrie sends a fine " Firelight " (172), and a " Primevere" (95) which is a good example of pastel method ; Mr. Melville is best in his little sketch of " Southwold Beach" (73) ; Mr. J. B. Pryde's "Little Girl in Black" (354) is a lovely sketch. Mr. William Stott's Swiss scenes (39 and 42) and " Sand- Pools " (83) are beautiful renderings of atmospheric colour. Good, too, are Mr. McLure Hamilton's sketches of Mr. Glad- stone (271), Mr. Paul Maitland's "Night in the Suburbs" (203), Mr. J. S. Hill's " Sundown " (99) and "Durham" (103), Mr. E. Sjoberg "Study in the Looking-Glass" (127), Mr. Millie Dow's "Springtime in Morocco" (157), and Mrs. Joseph's_ " Reflections " (177). Of Mr. Steer's contributions, the "Girl Sowing" (181) is the most successful.
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