International studio (80.1925)

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"lotus blossom" print from "mustard seed garden"

a landscape without heights; (6) paint roads with- Miao is marvelous. The quality of the great

out whither and whence; (7) paint rocks with less painters, great in intellectual content and power,

than three faces; (8) paint trees with less than Neng is the quality of ease and power gained by

four branches; (9) paint men and things stunted; long study, not facility merely, but the quality

(10) paint high houses in disorder; (11) paint a which the foremost painters of their day possess,

mist obscure; (12) apply color without method. achieving likeness, as the master puts it, while

Just as Monet said "The chief person in a obeying the laws. Neng is for today, Miao for the

picture is the sun," so might the Chinese artist centuries, Chen for all time.

reply "The mountain," for round the mountain After the generalities of the first volume the

all Chinese landscape centres. The mountain is a master proceeds to take the student through every

living being wreathed in vapor, the personification phase of painting. The second volume, devoted

of humility, as Petrucci puts it, and woe to that to trees, starts with the bare twig, groups of twigs,

man who shall approach the mountain save in a a tree, a tree budded, in blossom, then clumps of

spirit of awe, sans veine d'aspiration. Thus the trees, and closes with examples from the old

third commandment is the greatest and the others masters.

are dependent on it. The source of water is the Rocks come in the next volume, and since the

mountain, therefore to paint water without the rock represents a world in microcosm, infinite

mountain from which it flows is to paint nature patience is devoted to its study. Where the

without acknowledgment to God. And the mist Western student is taught the anatomy of the

which caps the mountain is not a veil, but an human form, the Eastern studies the anatomy of

aureole. landscape. These rocks are like great twisted

And so the Chinese master passes on to his shells, fretted hollow by the slow corrosion of
final classification, the Three Qualities. Chen is water. From the hollows verdure will spring,
divine. Comes from God. Can not be studied. How necessary this training is may be seen from

Such is the quality of the greatest art of all time, the study of the mountain itself, considered in

january i 9.2 5

two seventy-three