the drapery was
remarkable; but altogether it pleased me less. No attempt was there at
what is called broken colour. A black dress would be one beautiful tone
of black, and flesh one clean tone of flesh, shadows growing out of the
mass and forming a part of the whole. As this work was a very simple
impression, he finished the coloured picture in a few minutes. But on
the whole, in one sense, it was less satisfactory. It appeared as if he
had studied his subject less, for it was a little conventional. He was
less happy in it; but, of course, he did not admit this to himself.

[Illustration: ARCHERS]

He did four pictures, and each of them took from about seven to ten
minutes, these constituting the finest lesson in water-colour painting I
ever received in my life. Here is his idea of finish: once the
impression of the detail and the finish of the object is recorded you
can do nothing better; so far as the painter's impression of finish
goes, so far must the rendering go, and no farther. Artistically he had
become exhausted by doing these four pictures--in invention, I mean. You
see, the man was heart and soul in the work. He lives, poor fellow, on
almost nothing. He is a very independent man, refusing to work for
money, and declining to paint for the market.

Nearly every artist in Japan has his own favourite stick of Indian ink,
which he values as his very life. It is essential that this ink should
be of the very finest quality, for they drink so much of it. In order to
execute those fine lines ending in a broad sweep that is so
characteristic of Japanese pictures, an artist must first fill his brush
with Indian ink and then apply it to his lips until the tip becomes
pointed. The ink is of course swallowed; but if it is of a good quality,
to drink pints of it would not do a man the slightest harm. A practical
proof of this can be found in the fact that Kiyosai, who is an old man,
has been drinking Indian ink steadily with every picture he has painted
all through his lifetime. He possesses a small piece of Indian ink which
is hundreds of years old, and which all the money in the world could not
buy. It is far too precious for broad washes, and is only used here and
there for bright touches.

I noticed the tender way in which Kiyosai handled this one precious
piece of Indian ink, and that led to a very interesting conversation on
blacks, after which I realised that the variations and gradations to be
procured with bla