ime, till the very existence of a great school
of Chinese painting has been denied. Materials for study are scanty.
Fires, wars and the recent armed ravages of Western civilization have
left but little. The profound indifference of the Chinese to European
admiration has prevented their collections from being known. The
Japanese, always enthusiastic students and collectors of the
continental art, claim (whether justly or not, is hard to ascertain)
that the finest specimens are now in their country. Many of these are
reproduced in the invaluable Tokyo publications, the _Kokka_, Mr
Tajima's _Select Relics_, &c., with Japanese criticisms in English. Of
actual paintings the British Museum possesses a fair number, and the
Louvre a few, of real importance. Copies and forgeries abound.

See H.A. Giles, _Introduction to the History of Chinese Pictorial Art_
(1905); F. Hirth, _Scraps from a Collector's Note-Book_ (1905),
(supplements Giles's work and especially valuable for the art of the
Ch'ing dynasty); S.W. Bushell, _Chinese Art_, vol. ii. (1906); K.
Okakura, _Ideals of the East_ (1903); M. Paleologue, _L'Art chinois_
(1887); W. Anderson, _Catalogue of Japanese and Chinese Paintings_
(1886); Sei-ichi Taki, "Chinese Landscape Painting," _The Kokka_, Nos.
191, &c. (1906); _Chinesische Malereien aus der Sammlung Hirth_
(Catalogue of an exhibition held at Dresden) (1897); W. von Seidlitz,
article in _Kunstchronik_ (1896-1897), No. 16.

2. _Engraving_.--According to native historians, the art of printing
from wooden blocks was invented in China in the 6th century A.D., when
it was employed for the publication of texts. The earliest evidence we
have for the existence of woodcuts made to reproduce pictures or
drawings is a passage in a work by Chang Yen-yuean, from which it appears
that these were not made before the beginning of the T'ang dynasty,
under which that author lived. The method employed was to cut the design
with a knife on the plank of the wood, in the manner followed by
European artists till the end of the 18th century, when engraving with a
burin on boxwood ousted the older process. The Japanese borrowed the art
from China; and in Japan a whole school of artists arose who worked
specially for the woodcutters and adapted their designs to the
limitations of the material employed. In China the art has remained
merely reproductive, and its history is therefore of less interest.
_P