A JAPANESE EXHIBITION. Rare Works of Art from the Realm of the Mikado.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 173, 9 October 1886, Page 5

A JAPANESE EXHIBITION. Rare Works of Art from the Realm of the Mikado.

The carved ivories, gilded laces, the hanging picture rolls, the elaborate metal work, the u varied ceramic ware of Japanese collections have always had a supreme attraction from their intrinsic beauty and their intrinsic merits. But they have suffered much in interest from the want of authentic information as to dates, periods, and masters. Japanese art, unlike[other Oriental art, is essentially personal and individual. The artists of the fuel daimios lived in the intimacy of thoir lord, and were themselves not uncommonly ennobled ; with certain exceptions they feigned their pieces, whether great or small (and especially the smaller), and the reputation of a great artiat was maintained by .the academy which he fou,nded and by the succeesors to whom he sometimes transmitted his signatory seal. But where was the beginning and where the end ? Who should decipher the f-ignatures, who record the historic succession of schools, and who unravel the> tangle of fable and tact which meshed the early stories of historic arL ? Mr Fraukß and Mr Anderson are doing much towards this end. But the collections of connoisseurs ar© still apt (to be rather magazines of bric-a-brac than ordorly series of authenticated and classified objects. A further attempt to remedy this defect is made this week, at the Society of Arts. where the council have arranged for the public exhibition of the very extensive private collections of Ernest Hart, which he has con&onted to lend for the next fotrnight, in illustration of three lectures which he is giving duriDg thia month on the historic a**ts of J apan. These collections were made with the assistance of Mr Wakai, of Tokio, the expert of the imperial house, and catalogued by Mr Hayashi. They range in order of succession through many centuries of art, and contain examples of the work of most of the founders of the leading schools of art work and their most famous successors. Of the Buddhist pictures of the ninth and twelfth centuries, the work respectively of Kanaoka and. Takuma, we may speak with reserve. So much of the colour is gone that we do not find in them the rich harmonies and the mystic beauties which the critics of France and Japan identify with these famous masters. In the paintings, however, of Motonobu (fifteenth century) I whose Tekkai exhaling hiB spiritual essence is a masterpiece of this school) ; in the dogs and birds by Okio ; in the stately dames of Cbosun ; the carp by Nagaki Shijo'a school mysteriously darting through gleaminglwater; in the ghostly apparition of a lovelorn spirit maiden bending over a skull hidden beneath the grass by Genki, date 1750 ; in the eagle of Masanobu, date 1430 ; in the birds and flowers of Hoyen, all will recognise charms of colour and feeling and magic of brush which justify the enthusiasm with which Burty, Gonse, De Goncourt, Bousseau, Millet and De Nittis have hailed the works of old Japanese masters hifcheito wholly unknown here The monkeys of Soson (eighteenth and nineteenth centuries) are recognised masterpieces, in which the utmost skill in delicate brush work 'is combined with an obviously affectionate appreciation of the simian character- He loved them to the extent of spending half hia life in their society and imitating their attitudes. The other great features of these collectionsare the lacks and sword-guards, which range from the fifteenth century to the first half of the present century, and the metal-work. "The history of lac is henceforth established. There are here the early and austere work of Kootsu and his predoceftsors, followed by the boldly impression ist incrustations of Korin, the delicately and often high-gilded works of Shiounsho and, the court Licquererß of Kioto, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centaries. Built up by months of labour bestowed on polishing and hardening layer after layer of a translucent varnish {rhits ourvtcifem,) oftentimes the most delicate work, it is said, was done in a punt on a lake, out of reach of aerial dust. Every petal and stamen ia delicately watched, and modelled with fidelity to nature. Centuries have not dimmed tbeir beauty, while modern lac quicklk spoils. The great triumphs of the Japanese artists, however, are in metals. The iron armour of Miochin, tenth century, i 3 hammered in high relief in thin plates of very hard cold iron : the mysterious suppleness and grace which this most untraefcable metal assumes in the twelfth century water-lily plateau ; | the living articulated iron lobstor and crab of the same academy of artists, are marvels j so too, the buttons and the pierced and the chased iron sword guards and the sabre ornaments which need to be examined with a magnifying glass. The chasing is masterly, the incrusation unequelled in boldness of design and delicacy of finieh. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries guards the mysterious alloys {sJiibucJi and sliakudo) supplement by their exquisite colours the poverty of nature and the coldness of ordinary metallic surface. The bronzes .of Tooun and ISiemin are the highest achievements of wax-casting. Cellini has more than one rival here. We have no epace to speak of the pories of carved ivory and wood net-sukis. They are of a class better known, although abominably travestified by the trash which is imported in masses. The ivory statuettes, known as kimonos, and manufactured for the European market, are not presented here. They are, without exception, a modern invention to please the European eye, and have no historic prototypes. A final word only may direct • attention to the old Satsuma faience, ot which so much poor imitation abounds ; to the Imari porcelain figure of a court lady of the seventeenth century by Kakiyema, the ne plus ultra of sculptures in porcelain,, and to the famous figure in faience by Kenzan ot mother and child at playi which wq reproduced (Kenzan waa the -greatest of Japanese potters, and this chief d'murve has been more than once illustrated) ; or the Temple Guardians of Nara, of- the sixth century, reproductions in miniature by Bitsono, mmusculous

colossi not unworthy of the Greeks. At* together the collection deserves its high. reputation and repays study. It is historical highly representative and filled with, authentic objects of singular beauty and; fascination. The catalouge by Tademasaw Hayaehi is a landmark in the history q£ Japanse art. — " Pall Mall Gazette."