bamboos of Wen Cheng-ming in the sixteenth
century.

In landscape, however, new elements appear which mark a decline. I have
already laid stress on the overladen composition which developed in the
Yuean epoch. This was still more noticeable in the Ming period. When
pictorial art has had a long series of masters, a certain eclecticism is
infallibly produced. This leads to the rejection of the direct study of
nature, in favor of viewing it only through the eyes of the old masters.
This phenomenon appeared in China as well as in Europe. The landscape
painters of the Ming period studied the technique of the T'ang and the
Sung epochs and codified their system of lines, arranging them in series
according to types and schools; in short, they drew from these a
ready-made technique by which they were controlled. Turning from nature
they yielded to imagination. They delighted in painting fanciful
landscapes and were inclined toward images that were more external and
less inspired than in the past. Their works, however, were invested with
great charm, and the impossible disposition of their clustering peaks and
oddly cleft rocks cannot but appeal to the imagination.

In these overladen compositions the unity of the picture is lost. We are
no longer in the presence of a simple and forceful idea, but behold a
thousand incidents, a thousand little details, exquisite in themselves,
but which require a search. It is a new conception of landscape. We may
possibly prefer the gripping formula of Sung and Yuean art, but we are
forced to acknowledge that this later work has great charm and extreme
refinement.

[Illustration: PLATE XXI. LANDSCAPE
Ming Period. Bouasse-Lebel Collection.]

To this general trend was added a new taste in color, which became
brilliant and complex like the composition itself, harmonious and graceful
in the paintings of the masters and always charming in the work of
painters of the second rank; but this was the herald of a blatant and
vulgar manner which gradually gained ground until it came to be generally
adopted by the artisans of the Ch'ing period.

While landscape under the Ming painters was assuming a different guise,
and, forgetful of the observances of the past, was beguiling the mind by
its charm and delicacy, a new type of figure was also developing. Here we
must pause for a moment.

We have seen that figures were treated before landscape by the painters of
periods preceding the T'ang dynasty. T