Studio: international art (55.1912)

Reviews and Notices

gained through spiritual evolution; and really only
a few artists who know the meaning of love and
prayer can create it. I always wondered, while
witnessing the No performance here with the female
impersonator on the stage wearing the great old
“ Kowomote,” to see that player always in the
same mask, now smiling and now crying, a most
ghostly marvel; it is not satisfactory to explain
it away by saying that it is the the mask-artist’s
skill to make it appear so according to the
situation of the performance. While I admit that
our imagination helps to make the wood or clay
a living thing, I think there must be some secret
which could be told even by words from the mask-
carver’s point of view.

This art of mask-carving has a history as long as
the No performance, that is, a history of nearly five
hundred years; but the sad part is that, unlike the
No performance, which has risen up wondrously
to-day from the downfall of thirty or forty years
ago, the artists in this wood and paint were
completely extinguished with the passing away of
feudalism. The actors of the present day use the
old masks from their own family treasures, which
have fortunately escaped the boorish hand of ruin.
Happily the great works by the artists known as
“Jissaku” (the ten artists) or “Rokusaku” (the
six artists), including such names as Nikko,
Shazuru, Zoami, and others, can still be seen with
us. It is sad to think how these masks were sold
abroad, when our Japanese minds were doubtful,
many years ago, even of the stability of their own
existence; we never thought that the time would
come again when art would be far stronger than
a sword. The things we have sold cannot be
bought back when we need them; but it is a
matter of congratulation to have even one Mr.
Shimomura whose protest will not allow the art
itself to die away so easily. There may be some-
where many more like him, although I do not
know of them at present. Yone Noguchi.

REVIEWS AND NOTICES.

A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon.
By Vincent A. Smith, M.A. (Oxford: The
Clarendon Press.) ^3 3-f. net.—Until quite
recently there were many even well-educated
people who shared the oft-quoted opinion of Sir
George Birdwood, enunciated thirty years ago,
“ that sculpture and painting are unknown as fine
arts in India,” and there may still be not a few who,
in spite of what such authorities as Mr. Havell,

Mr. Murray, Mr. Fry, and Dr. Coomaraswamy
have written in recent years, fail to appreciate the
significance of Indian art. But interest is certainly
increasing, and those who wish to pursue the
subject cannot do better than consult Mr. Vincent
Smith’s History—the first complete chronological
record of the evolution of painting and sculpture
in the great peninsula and its island dependency.
Fully recognising the intimate correlation between
art and religion in Hindustan, he prefaces his ac-
count of the former with a brief explanation of the
tenets of the three chief forms of Indian belief,
Buddhism, Jainism, and Brahmanism, taking the
last first as the most ancient of all, “ sending,” he
says, “some of its roots into the Vedas while
others penetrate deeply into the hidden strata of
aboriginal belief,” whilst the other two, so far as
is at present known, may be regarded as offshoots
or sects of it. Though he remarks that he can
only cursorily treat architecture, in which the
originality of Indian art is most conspicuous, Mr.
Smith gives a capital and well-illustrated summary
of the leading characteristics of the Hindu styles,
passing thence to consider the sculpture of the age
of the great humanitarian Emperor Asoka. The
art of his time reflects the happy character of his
ambition, which was to secure the well-being ot
his people, and to save even animals from un-
necessary suffering. “The craft of the skilled mason
and stone-cutter, so closely akin to fine art, reached
perfection in the days of Asoka,” with which the
history of the aesthetic development of the country
really begins, not a trace surviving even of the
palaces and temples built by his mighty father.
After considering the most notable examples of
post-Asokan sculpture, Mr. Smith passes on to
review the better-known Hellenistic plastic work
of Gandhara and other contemporary schools, the
work of the Gupta period, and the mediaeval and
modern sculpture of Northern and Southern India,
every chapter being supplemented by a great
number of admirable illustrations, many of them
of works of art never before reproduced. The
second half of the volume, though not perhaps
quite of such enthralling interest as the first, is
equally full of well-digested information and
attractive pictures, the early schools of Hindu
painting, mediaeval and modern pictorial art in
Tibet and Nepal as well as in India, minor Hindu
and Indo-Muhammedan arts of design, Indo-
Persian and Mughal painting, with Indo-Muham-
medan styles of architecture being all dealt with at
considerable length.

A History of Painting. By Haldane Macfall.

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