CXXXV

It is indeed ridiculous that most of our people are disposed to regard
Western paintings as a kind of Uki-ye. As I have repeatedly remarked, a
painting which is not a faithful copy of nature has neither beauty nor
is worthy of the name. What I mean to say is this: be the subject what
it may, a landscape, a bird, a bullock, a tree, a stone, or an insect,
it should be treated in a way so lifelike that it is instinct with life
and motion. Now this is beyond the possibility of any other art save
that of the West. Judged from this point of view, Japanese and Chinese
paintings look very puerile, hardly deserving the name of art. Because
people have been accustomed to such daub-like productions, whenever they
see a master painting of the West, they merely pass it by as a mere
curiosity, or dub it a Uki-ye, a misconception which betrays sheer
ignorance.

_Shiba Kokan_ (Japanese, eighteenth century).

CXXXVI

These accents are to painting what melody is to the harmonic base, and
more than anything else they decide victory or defeat. A method is of
little account at those moments when the final effect is at hand; one
uses any means, even diabolical invocations, and when the need comes,
when I have exhausted the resources of pigment, I use a scraper,
pumice-stone, and if nothing else serves, the handle of my brush.

_Rousseau._

CXXXVII

The noblest relievo in painting is that which is resultant from the
treatment of the masses, not from the vulgar swelling and rounding of
the bodies; and the noble Venetian massing is excellent in this quality.
Those parts in which there is necessity for salient quality of relief
must be expressed with a certain quadrature, a certain varied grace of
accent like that which the bony ridge develops in beautiful wrists and
ankles, also in some of the tunic-folds that fall behind the arm of the
recumbent Fate over the middle of the figure of the Newlands Titian; and
again in some of the happiest passages in the graceful women of Lodovico
Caracci, and in their vesture folds, _e.g._ the bosom and waist of the
St. Catherine.

Doubtless there is a choice, or design were vain. There must be courage
to _reject_ no less than to _gather_. A man is at liberty to neglect
things that are repugnant to his disposition. He may, if he please, have
nothing to do with thistle or thorn, with bramble or brier....
Nevertheless sharp and severe things are yet dear to some souls. Nor
should I unders