).
For current affairs see the authorities cited in the footnotes.

VI. CHINESE ART

1. _Painting._--Painting is the pre-eminent art of China, which can
boast of a succession of great painters for at least twelve centuries.
Though the Chinese have an instinctive gift for harmonious colour, their
painting is above all an art of _line_. It is intimately connected with
writing, itself a fine art demanding the same skill and supple power in
the wielding of the brush. The most typical expression of the Chinese
genius in painting is the ink sketch, such as the masters of the Sung
dynasty most preferred and the Japanese from the 15th century adopted
for an abiding model. Utmost vigour of stroke was here combined with
utmost delicacy of modulation. Rich colour and the use of gold are an
integral part of the Buddhist pictures, though in the masterpieces of
the religious painters a grand rhythm of linear design gives the
fundamental character. Exquisite subdued colour is also found in the
"flower and bird pieces" and still-life subjects of the Sung artists,
and becomes more emphatic and variegated in the decorative artists of
the Ming period.

Not to represent facts, but to suggest a poetic idea (often perfumed, so
to speak, with reminiscence of some actual poem), has ever been the
Chinese artist's aim. "A picture is a voiceless poem" is an old saying
in China, where very frequently the artist was a literary man by
profession. Oriental critics lay more stress on loftiness of sentiment
and tone than on technical qualities. This idealist temper helps to
explain the deliberate avoidance of all emphasis on appearances of
material solidity by means of chiaroscuro, &c., and the exclusive use of
the light medium of water-colour. The Chinese express actual dislike for
the representation of relief. Whoever compares the painting of Europe
with that of Asia (and Chinese painting is the central type for the one
continent, as Italian may claim to be for the other) must first
understand this contrast of aim. The limitations of the Chinese are
great, but these limitations save them from mistaking advances in
science for advances in art, and from petty imitation of fact. Their
religious painting has great affinity with the early religious art of
Italy (e.g. that of Siena). But the ideas of the Renaissance, its
scientific curiosity, its materialism, its glorification of human
personality, are wholly missing in China. For Europe, Man is eve