LIBRARY OF THE University of California. GIFT OK- X^cLa^VW^ . ^iAA-'-V^vA' t)XVOVV Class \ Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2008 with funding from Microsoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/comparativeartOObalcrich COMPARATIVE ART COMPARATIVE ART BY EDWIN SWIFT BALCH Author op "Mountain Exploration" "GLACifeRBS OR Freezing Caverns" "Antarctica" 'Roman and Prehistoric Remains in Central Germany' " Savage and Civilized Dress," etc. PHILADELPHIA Press of Allen, Lane & Scott 1906 M 5 M^' Copyright, 1906 BY EDWIN SWIFT BALCH COMPARATIVE ART. PART I. INTRODUCTION. Idea op Book. Comparison of Arts. Comparative Sciences. Critical Faculty. Races of Men. Geodogical Time. Apology. The fundamental idea underlying this monograph is to make an examination and comparison of the fine arts of as many races as possible, and of the resemblances and differences between these arts, to see whether any new light can thereby be shed on man and his history. In other words, this is an attempt to look from an esthetic standpoint at what man has produced in the esthetic arts, and to see whether anything can be learnt about man therefrom, or to put it still differently, it is a study of art for the sake of science. A comparison of the arts of the different races of men of to-day should throw, it would seem, some light on the esthetic and mental similarities and di- vergences between these races. And in the same way, a comparison of the arts of the races of the present with those of the arts of the races of the past should enable us, to a certain extent, to gauge the develop- ment of our early ancestors. 15l(Vt7 6 COMPARATIVE ART. To carry out this idea, I have examined, either in their homes or in museums, as many art works of as many races as possible, then I have studied pho- tographs or illustrations of such objects, finally I have tried to cull from the statements of travellers and scientists something about the art of races from which I could see no art specimens. The only factilty or guidance I have relied on is my own critical faculty, so that I wish any reader to understand that this book only represents my own OPINIONS, and that I have not the slightest inten- tion of laying down any laws or dogmas. An analogous case to studying comparatively the arts of different races occurs when anyone studies their implements, weapons, dress, ornaments, cus- toms, languages, etc., and draws comparisons. Stone implements have a certain similarity the world over. Bone, wood, bronze, and iron imple- ments differ more among themselves than stone implements do among themselves. Works of art in various places differ still more than do implements. The difference between implements certainly gives some clue as to their makers, and the differences between works of art should lead to still greater knowledge of the races the artists belong to. Com- parative philology, comparative anatomy and com- parative archeology have become special sciences and have shed much light on ethnology, and it seems to me that another special science should develop INTRODUCTION. 7 under the name of comparative art with the likeli- hood of proving also a great aid to knowledge. A difficulty about the study- of comparative art is that of seeing a sufficient number of specimens, and it would be unsafe to judge of the art of any tribe, such for instance as the Zunis, from one or two specimens. Another difficulty consists in the lack of certainty anyone, not a specialist in a locality, must always be under as to whether the specimens he may see are genuine, representative, and whether they really come from the place and date from the time assigned to them. The only thing to do is to form the best temporary opinion one can, and be ready to alter it if fresh data turn up. The critical faculty about art every educated per- son possesses, or thinks he possesses, to a greater or less degree. The average educated person cer- tainly could probably learn to know the difference between a Giotto and a Turner, but there are plenty of experts who can tell with something like certainty the work of any well known painter. They do so from the quality or style of the painting, which varies with every art worker. Quality or style is inde- finable in words, and yet experts can often recognize by a mere glance at a picture, who it was painted it. And it has seemed to me that by applying what ability I possess of this kind to a study and a com- parison of the arts of many races, I might perhaps 8, COMPARATIVE ART. obtain results in pointing out resemblances and, differences between those arts, even if it were im- possible to express positively in words, wherein those resemblances and differences lay. And if there are resemblances and differences betweeen various arts, it is a fair inference that there are also resemblances and differences between their makers. The art of Mexico, and the art of France, for instance, each has its own characteristics, proceeding from the temper and morale, and envi- ronment and other characteristics of each race. And we know the peoples of Mexico are by no means the same as the peoples of France. The art of old Rome and the art of modern France, on the con- trary, are distinctly similar, and we know that the peoples of France are to a certain extent descendants from the peoples of old Rome. In fact, it is a toler- ably safe inference that when arts are similar, so are their makers; when arts are different, so also are their makers. It seems to me therefore, as if thru a study of art, a good deal might be found out about the rela- tionships and the ancestors of mankind. And the problem which to me is of particular interest, is whether all men evolved from one common ancestor in some definite locality, spreading thence all over the earth, or whether men evolved from different ancestors in different localities. Many persons hold that the human races all come from one stock; INTRODUCTION. 9 others believe there are five races, a white, a yellow, a red, a brown, and a black; some think that there are fotir races, a white, a yellow, a red, and a black; while still others believe that there are three main types: a white or brown type, Ejiropeans, Hindus, Semites, etc., with hairy face and body, long fine hair on head, and straight, well developed nose; a yellow type, Mongolians, Malays, Polynesians, Amerinds, with narrow eyes, high cheek bones, nar- row flattened nose, little hair on face and body and long coarse hair on head; a dark yellow or black type, Africans and Australasians, with flat, bridge - less, wide-winged nose, high cheek bones, head and body hair closely curled and woolly. The sciences of geology, paleontology and com- parative anatomy all tend to show that the various races of men are related to altho not descended from the ape. The evidence makes it almost certain that the earliest types of life on the planet were of a low order, and that with the successive geological epochs higher types appeared. Among these later ones a number of fossil apes have been found, the first about 1836, and the last, the pithecanthropus erectus, in 1893, and these establish, with something more than a mere possibility, the phylogenetic connection of the primates, of the lemurs, apes and men. Com- parative anatomy also seems to be all on the side of evolution and goes far to prove that the structure and composition of man and the apes are identical. 10 COMPARATIVE ART. But there is one point on which comparative anatomy and paleontology are silent and that is about the question, always a stumbling block in geology, of time. No one can say how long it took to evolve man, even if we accept the series of inter- mediate paleontological steps as complete. And the strongest evidence of all bearing on this question of time seems to me to be what early men left in the form of art. For however much we may believe in evolution, the remains we have establish beyond all cavil that thousands of years ago men, endowed with great art faculties, lived in Central Europe. The direct evidence, therefore, proves that some of them were intellectual men. It is certainly a curious fact that almost as far back as we can go in the his- tory of man, we find such good art as is that of the Pleistokenes, and it leads one to think either that they were of much later date than seems possible, or that the time occupied in perfecting man must have been an enormous one. Indeed, taken by itself, it points toward the conclusion that man is a direct creation and not a product of evolution. This idea of comparing the various fine arts of the world grew gradually with me. It started some fifteen or twenty years ago, with collecting a small number of Japanese paintings and then making a study of Japanese art ; with several visits to the Musee de Saint Germain to see the Pleis- tokene remains ; with receiving some Eskimo stat- INTRODUCTION. 11 uettes from Dr. Vincent ; and with a perusal of Professor Boyd Dawkins' Cave Hunting, in connec- tion with my explorations in glaci^res. One thing led to another, and the subject evolved slowly, until it became clear to me that there was a big, neglected field in the fine arts of the non-White races, and one which might be of great value to ethnology. Perhaps I should apologize for using " I " so frequently in this monograph: but it seems to me that it makes a book less formal if the personal " I " is employed instead of the impersonal " the writer" or "the author." The metric system and some simplified spelling are also used : for it seems to me that scientists are in duty bound to throw their influence to all such good things as the pro- tection of the birds, forestry, a system of weights and measures, and fonetik spelHng of the Ameri- can language. Fonetik spelling will evolve grad- ually, altho the process will not be carried thru in our generation. Some parts of this work also are much more developed than others, and it is, of course, an artistic mistake not to have harmony and balance in a work of the pen, as much as in a work of the brush. The elaboration of cer- tain chapters, such for instance as that on the art of the Chinese and the Japanese, comes because I know the arts of certain races much better than that of others. Moreover, I question whether 12 COMPARATIVE ART. anyone could really know such a vast subject as the fine arts of all mankind. My hope in writing this book is that it may have a certain value by bringing before ethnologists something a little new, namely, a comparison of the esthetic works and faculties of many races. ^ * Thomas H. Huxley: Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature, 1863. John D. Baldwin: Ancient America, New York, 1872. William Henry Flower: Fashion in Deformity, 1881. Rev. H. N. Hutchinson: Prehistoric Man and Beast, 1896. C. F, Keary: The Dawn of History, New York, 1898. J. Deniker: The Races of Man, 1900. Charles Morris: Man and his Ancestor, 1901. Alfred C. Haddon: The Study of Man, 1898. Edwin Swift Balch: "Savage and Civilized Dress," The Journal of the Franklin Institute, Vol. CLVII, May 1904, pages 321-332. Brand er Matthews : " How can we better our spelling :" Mun- sey's Magazine, June, 1906. The photographs from the collections in the British Museum, published by W. A. Mansell & Co., beginning 1872, are the most readily accessible illustrations of many of the arts mentioned in this book. PART II. TECHNICAL POINTS IN ART. Criticism. Technic. Art and Nature. Synthesis and Analysis. Decoration. Decorative Art. Spots op Color. Light. Color. Drawing and Line. Perspective. Values. Aerial Perspective. Subject and Motive. Effect. Plastic Idea. Action and Motion. Memory and Imagination. Quality, Style, Personality. Conventionality. Training. Photog- raphy. As this monograph is intended for scientists, and as these have not as a rule had an art training, it seems well to explain briefly a few technical points in art, so that the scientific reader may know in what sense I use certain art terms. Criticism. Art criticism is an intrinsically difficult matter. The word criticism itself unfortunately has come to mean an adverse judgment, because it is so much easier to pick out flaws than to find good qualities that most critics pick out flaws. Instead of that, criticism should be an intelligent appreciation of art, and an attempt to point out the good as well as the bad points. This is especially necessary when studying the works of other races than our own, and a critic should always remember that the fact that works of art are different from those he is used to, does not necessarily condemn them at once as bad. 14 COMPARATIVE ART. Artists are usually poor critics, because they are too much swayed by their emotions, and because often they have too limited a knowledge of the arts in general. They are apt to sneer at critics and, oblivious of the fact that any good criti- cism is a work of literary art implying knowledge, often say that the poorest work of art is better than the best qriticism. Connoisseurs, men who spend much time in examining pictures and sometimes much money in buying them, are also often uncer- tain critics, because of their lack of technical training. The combination of faculties, apparently, which is necessary for a critic, is that he should be both an artist and a connoisseur, and in fact, the only critics who have ever written valuable art criticisms are men who have had a thoro practical training, so as to know every technical point, and who have also made an extensive and thoro study of the works of a great many artists. Besides this a certain amount of literary ability is imperative. So difficult, however, is art criticism, that great critics of the graphic arts can be counted on the fingers of one hand. I know myself of only two : Philip Gilbert Hamerton and Eugene Fromentin; both artists, but also both men of wide general culture. Technic. The word technic is one which constantly comes to the fore. A good synonym for it would be TECHNICAL POINTS IN ART. 15 * mechanical performance. That is, technic refers to the manner in which a piece of art is carried out. Drawing, form, action, values, color, perspective, are some of the points which would come under the all covering term, technic.^ Art and Nature. Art is a world of its own, the product of human thought and emotion. It is based on nature, but it is separate from nature. Some art is close to na- ture, while some is far away from it. Either kind may be good art or bad art, according to the ability of the artist. In either case also art may seem good or bad to the onlooker according to his tem- perament and intelligence. These statements apply to the literary as well as to the graphic arts. Such a work as Newcomb's Astronomy is scientifically true, and yet good literary art, and there are a million or so of stupid and imnatural novels which many would dignify by calling them literature. In all criticism of art, therefore, it must be remem- bered that while art may be true, it has also the right of being absolute fiction. There are, in fact, no imiversal rules which can be laid down either 'The proper technic or method of painting in oils, so that a pic- ture should be sound and imp>erishable, was perhaps best explained by Vibert, in his capital book : La science de la peinture. Altho speaking principally of the permanency of art materials, yet Vibert did not know enough about book making to prevent his work from being printed on wood pvilp paper, so that the original edition is already dropping to pieces : a case of bad technic. 16 COMPARATIVE ART. for the production of works of art or for its criti- cism, because the individual mind of every person, whether artist or layman, is such a varying entity. In my opinion, the best explanation of the differ- ence between art and nature was made by Philip Gilbert Hamerton, in what I consider the greatest of art books: The Life of Turner. Synthesis and Analysis. All art work involves synthesis and analysis. Synthesis means the subordination of a part to the whole: analysis means the elaboration of detail. Synthesis is more important than analysis because it is necessary to get the masses, the great features, before getting the smaller bits. It is, for instance, necessary to get the proportion, the swing, the action, the center of gravity of a statue properly placed before getting the shape of the nose or of the ear. Analysis, however, is also necessary, for without a certain elaboration of details, works of art remain too crude, too sloppy or too hard to be of genuine value. But while detail is indispensable, detail must always be subordinated to the whole. As a good painter would say, a well painted picture hangs together and carries across the room; but at the same time, when it is examined near by, it reveals lots of careful detail which at a distance melts into the whole. The completest synthetic artist of the world prob- TECHNICAL POINTS IN ART. 17 ably was Richard Wagner. He is the only man who created in the poetical, in the musical, and in the plastic arts, and who succeeded in fusing in his work these three great arts into one synthetic whole. Decoration. All pictorial art is a decoration. Whether you paint an oil picture and hang it on a wall, or whether you paint a screen in water colors and put it in a temple, or whether you print an engraving from a block and bind it in a book, is all the same: the work is a decoration. This fact is usually either un- known or forgotten. As a rule, people get muddled about pictorial art being a decoration, because they imagine in some rotmd about way that if art is a decoration, it must be decorative art. A somewhat similar mistake is constantly made by people when they first hear of glacieres, as, owing to the English term " ice-cave," and its resemblance to " ice-cream," people jump at the conclusion that salt in some mys- terious manner must have something to do with the formation of imdergroimd ice.^ In both cases, it is a confusion of terms. Decorative art. Decorative art is a term properly applied to cer- tain forms of graphic art. It springs originally from pictorial art. Then by a curious process of retro- ' Edwin Swift Balch: Glacieres or Freezing Caverns, Philadelphia, Allen, Lane & Scott, 1900. 18 COMPARATIVE ART. gression, the esthetic and artistic feeHngs of many artists become crystalHzed, and their attempts at pictorial art become fixed and conventionaHzed and drift gradually far away from nature into set patterns.* Among painters the word ' ' decorative ' ' usually implies a condemnation. The term is not commonly applied to any art work supposed to be of a high type, such as Notre Dame de Paris, or the Venus of Milo, or the Syndics, nor is it employed to de- scribe a handsome woman, but it is apt to be used in derogation of fine color or brilliant colors by persons who do not feel color, or by painters who are imable to produce fine color themselves. I have heard painters speak contemptuously of plein-air paintings and of Chinese and Japanese art as deco- rative, but what they really meant to say was, not that these arts were decorative art, but that they did not like them. Spots of color. [ The fundamental fact in pictorial art is that it consists of spots of pigment, whether black or col- ored, on a flat plane. A piece of canvas, silk or paper with paint upon it, remains a piece of canvas with paint put upon it, and with all the paint upon the same plane, no matter how much people may ^Professor Alfred C. Haddon, Dr. P. Ehrenreich, Professor Karl von der Steinen and others have brought out this fact. See Alfred C. Haddon, Evolution in Art, 1895. TECHNICAL POINTS IN ART. 19 delude themselves into believing that the said piece of canvas is furnished with distance, atmosphere, perspective, light and shade, etc. All other facts connected with painting are secondary to the fact that it consists of spots of color on a flat plane, and in some respects these secondary facts are nothing but pictorial conventionalities, which from long habit, people deceive themselves into accepting as truths. It seems as if the art instinct of the Chinese and the Japanese had led them to discern that the one underlying technical point in a picture is that it consists of spots of color on a flat plane, and they apparently as a rule try, altho not always suc- cessfully, to make the spots of color agreeable to the eye. The Europeans, on the contrary, often appear not to tmderstand, or else they forget, that a painting consists of spots of color on a flat plane, and in tens of thousands of pictures the artist evidently never thought of making the spots of color "a thing of beauty" and "a joy forever," and the one absolute, fimdamental truth that the materials force on the man is lost sight of, or is treated with contempt as being decorative. The spots of color, it must be stated, do not refer to daubs or streaks of paint, to what is sometimes called pointing or confetti or serpentine work. It refers to the way the broad masses of red, blue, green and yellow or of black and white are laid in; 20 COMPARATIVE ART. whether there is harmony and balance between them in such a way as to please the onlooker. Some of the old masters, Titian, Memling, Giorgione, for in- stance, may be cited as instances of men who under- stood the importance of making their spots of color into a balanced harmony. Light. Light is always the first and most vital point in any picture. It is, curiously enough, by no means always known, or else it is ignored, that all details in any scene are subordinate to light. If a person shuts his eyes tight, and then opens them slowly, he becomes cognizant of light long before he sees any detail. In fact, if a person with sensitive eyes revolves slowly, with his eyes shut, before an open window through which sunlight is streaming, he will be aware of when he is facing the room and when he is facing the window. That is, a person with closed eyelids may be conscious of light when he is imconscious of any details or color. As far as I know, the attempt to paint white light is a recent discovery of the modem Europeans. No Greek, or Roman, or Assyrian, or Mexican, or any non- White artists have apparently ever tried to do anything like it, or indeed even to have had the faint- est glimmer of the problem. The Chinese and Jap- anese alone show some attempts in this direction, but even these are far removed from some modem Eu- TECHNICAL POINTS IN ART. 21 ropeans. The great Turner in much of his later work distinctly solved the problem, perhaps better than anyone else, of painting light, and Rembrandt in some of his works, and the Nightwatch is the best example, also seems to have thought more of the light than of his figures. Certain painters of our generation also, Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, and Miss Cassatt among them, directed their main efforts to trying to paint a bit of nature in such a manner as to suggest light, and they accomplished it, with one or two former sporadic exceptions, more effect- ually than any artists preceding them. Various names have been coined to describe these painters of light and sunshine among which the best are luminarist and plein-airist and the least accurate, indeed almost idiotic, and perhaps for this reason most widely used, is "impressionist." The problem and its explanation are really a simple matter. It is, of course, well known that a ray of sunlight which passes thru drops of misty water or thru a glass prism, becomes de- composed into the rainbow or spectrum. That is, the rainbow or spectrum is the equivalent in colors of a ray of white sunshine. But painters cannot, by leaving a piece of bare white canvas, reproduce the effect of sunlight on landscape, as this would imply leaving out all the forms and local colors. They are obliged, therefore, to resort to colors to produce their effects, and since they cannot imitate white 22 COMPARATIVE ART. sunlight, the only alternative is to decompose it and this leads inevitably to an attempt to paint the spectrum. It is in fact, I think, quite correct to say that the spectrum is really the center and the best of all luminarist pictures, and that luminarist painting is really nothing but an attempt to convey to the retina, thru pigments, something equivalent to the sensation of a ray of white light, cast on the various accidental forms, such as trees and build- ings, which constitute the landscape, and the only way to produce such a sensation is to clothe the accidental forms in the colors of the spectrimi. For example, suppose we take a clean white canvas, and a palette with cobalt, emeraude green, white, light cadmium yellow, and vermilion; then work in the forms of a landscape with these colors, toning the blue, green, yellow, and red, with the white, but never mixing the blue, green, yellow, and red. We will obtain a landscape probably garish in effect, inaccurate in its local colors, but one which at least will produce something like the sensation of sunlight. This would be then not so much an attempt to imitate the forms or the local colors of nature as to suggest simlight. It is doubtful how much the luminarist painters themselves imderstand the problem before them, but it is certainly not an exaggeration to say that in bringing, in many cases certainly unconscious of the scientific fact, white light decomposed into the TECHNICAL POINTS IN ART. 23 prismatic colors into art, the luminarists or plein- airists have made a distinct scientific and a per- manent artistic conquest. Can it be that the modem scientific spirit of the White race, which extends into all manner of labor, has had its effect on art and has been a cause of evolving the use of the spectrum, which after all is really a scientific fact, into the fine artsi^ Color. About color in art, it is never worth while argu- ing. It is unusual for two temperaments to seem to feel color alike : what is meat to one is often poi- son to another. Moreover it is always difficult to speak of color, for it may be taken as a rule, that what may be known thru language of a painting is its point of least power, and if one may be told all, it is a literary, not a graphic production. It is the pectiliar function of color to carry a painting or a colored print to its highest power as a work of pictorial art, separate from other arts and gain- ing nothing from them. Here painting goes alone and nothing follows her. If we cannot behold her, we cannot guess, and no one can tell us what she is. * The spectrum is always visible, often only faintly, in a clear sky. Towards the sun or svinset are the yellows and oranges, and further away in the blue the greens and purples. The color of the sky is the best local indication of the weather. If the blue is very pure, it is a sign of clear weather. If there is much yellow ochre near the horizon, especially when tinged with brown madder or garance foncie, it is an almost stire sign of rain. 24 COMPARATIVE ART. Drawing and line. Drawing is an attempt to represent, by means of lines, spots, and washes, natural objects on some plane surface. An immature mind, child or savage, generally begins by attempting to draw what is called the outline, that is the contours of the objects. Later he learns that there is no such thing as out- line in nature, which shows to the eye nothing but more or less big or minute spaces of color. After that he uses outline somewhat, but as a means to an end, and he draws also by the help of spots and masses of darks and lights, and of color and colors. Line in art is something altogether apart from out- line. If a river, a road and a fence are represented in a picture they each form a line, altho their several outlines may be entirely hazy and indeter- minate. Lines in art are one of its most vital points, but it is necessary to distinguish line from outline. According to the use of lines in a picture, different feelings can be produced. If, for instance, a river, a road, and a fence all start from the fore- groiind and lead off into the background a feeling of distance and space is produced; mountains look big, in fact it is only by some such artifice or ficelle that mountains can be made to look big. Run that same river and fence and road across the picture from side to side; immediately the mind concentrates on the foreground. Distance is no TECHNICAL POINTS IN ART. 25 longer suggested; a mountain painted precise^ like the other one looks two or three thousand meters less in height, in fact, by the use of the lines in the foreground, one can raise a mountain to enor- mous heights, or dwarf it to a mere hill. Perspective. In connection with drawing we find, of course, perspective, which may be defined as the science of representing objects on a plane in such a way that the eye sees them in the same position and of the same size as they appear in nature. Perspective is mechanical and geometrical rather than artistic, and barring one or two simple rules, such as "twice the distance, half the size," is principally useful in drawings of buildings and complicated machinery. There are professional perspecteurs in France, who will, for a consideration, put a pictiire into perspec- tive for you, and some painters, of rooms and buildings principally, sometimes have this done. In free hand drawings by artists, however, either of figures or landscapes, it is but seldom resorted to, as an accurate eye and ability to draw is all that is necessary to get perspective correct enough for art purposes.^ ' The great critic, Hamerton, Life of Turner, tells us exactly how a real painter works : " The real truth is that when he [Turner] came to practice he discarded theory altogether and used a perspective of his own in a wilful manner, infringing the mathematical rules. He even maintained in his own laconic way the necessity of such deviations. G. Barrett had once drawn a temple in a landscape of his by rule, 26 COMPARATIVE ART. Values. There is an expression in the language of artists which sometimes leads to great question and much mistmderstanding, namely, values. Next to draw- ing, values are the theme of the Paris art teacher's criticism, whilst of color, curiously enough, he says hardly a word. Roughly speaking, values means the quantity of light or dark, from absolute white to pure black, irrespective of color, in any given tone. Chiaroscuro, or light and shade, is nothing but a pleasant arrangement of values. To obtain fairly correct values necessitates close observation of the subject in a particular environ- ment, or imder an effect however impalpable of light and shade, and it implies also that the whole of the picture is covered by the paint. Despite the importance of values, however, yet they are some- thing of an artistic convention, for no one can really realize absolute values, since the scale of paint does not include light. Nevertheless, it is by careful attention to values, more than to anything else, that the European reaches his deceptive effects in imitating nature, that is, it is thru values that he obtains the illusions which are sometimes called realism or what and Turner said: ' You will never do it that way.' His own cannot be defined without illustrations which it is not worth while for such a purpose to engrave, but it may be said with perfect truth that al- though possessing accurate knowledge, he preferred taste to knowl- edge, and knowingly, refused to follow science wherever his artistic judgment suggested the policy of deviation." TECHNICAL POINTS IN ART. 27 the French more expressively define as a trompe VcbU. Aerial Perspective. Aerial perspective refers to the softening of colors and lights and darks by distance, and is really only a phase of values. Subject and motive. Subject, as we have anglicized the French sujet, is any object or scene which you draw, paint or sculpt. Anything in the natural world is a subject. When a painter is moved by any subject, then it becomes a motive to him. VoUon, for in- stance, took once for a subject a tobacco jar, a pipe and an ash dish, and they were a motive to him, for out of them he made a charming picture. A subject can also be imagined or made up, as is done in his- torical and genre pictures. Such a painting, for instance, as Repine's " Ivan the Terrible's murder of his only son", now in the Tretiakoff gallery at Moscow, is an example of a subject, imagined by the artist, which moved him so deeply, that he made of it one of the most dramatic of all figure pictures. Effect. ~' Everything out of doors in the world of nature is a subject, and equally so only becomes a motive when a painter is moved by it. This, however, only 28 COMPARATIVE ART. happens when there is an effect. The position and play of Hght, the time of day, the state of the weather, and many other factors, as well as the material ob- jects themselves, combine to make an effect, and it is when an effect becomes a motive to a landscapist that he is able to do his best work. A landscape subject, seen under some advantageous effect of light and shade and color, may be fine and artistic, when under some other circumstances, it may be commonplace and uninteresting. Plastic Idea. Idee plastique is a French term, which con- veys certain ideas for which there is no other ter- minology. It means the sense of form and might be anglicized into plastic idea. Plastic idea refers to the way in which figures are conceived sculpturally, in their proportions, in their action, in their motions, quite apart from their ostensible object. No one knows what the so-called Venus of Milo represented ; some think it a figure of Victory, others a figure of Venus, others something else ; what she does represent, however, is not of the slightest importance. What is of importance is her plastic idea, the wonderful sense of form, which places her among the best of all sculpture. Action and motion. Action and motion are not synonymous terms in the fine arts. Action is present in everything de- TECHNICAL POINTS IN ART. 29 picted in sculpture or painting. Motion is only- present when something is supposed to be in move- ment. A tree, a rock, a house, an animal or a man at rest, has a certain position, and this is termed its action. But if this tree is being blown by the wind or if the animal is nmning hard, it not only has its action, but it shows a movement, and this movement is its motion. Memory and imagination. It is a fallacy, commonly accepted among Euro- peans, that all sculpture, drawing and painting must be done while looking directly at nature. Many painters say "Look at the model: don't work from chic.'' Chic is the artistic slang word for memory or imagination, and painting from memory or imagination is generally held to be all wrong. The fact, however, is just the oppo- site. The greatest painters always paint largely from memory or imagination. They either make studies until they know their subject, or they look at it until they memorize it, or they invent. Fra Angelico, Leonardo, Tintoretto, Michael Angelo, Bocklin, Dore, and many other Europeans all painted more or less from memory or imagination. Will- iam Morris Hunt, one of the strongest American painters and certainly the best American art critic, always practised and preached painting from mem- ory. I have seen George Inness painting some of 30 COMPARATIVE ART. his beautiful landscapes in the center of New York city, without even a sketch to help him. The Chinese and Japanese masters all paint from mem- ory and imagination. When pictures are not painted at least partially from memory and imagination, the difference of method is usually shown in the work; the figures seem petrified: they are merely models posing; there is more detail, more model- ling than in imaginative work, but the life is arrested. When pictures are painted to some extent from memory or imagination, while there is usually less detail and sometimes incorrect anatomy, yet there is generally life and action, and the figures are sel- dom petrified and rarely posing. Quality. Style. Personality. The terms quaHty and style are frequently used in connection with works of art. It may be sug- gested that all good painting has quaHty, and that each strong individual painter has style. Quality is found in all good painting and it might be de- fined as meaning that all the technical processes are thoroly mastered and that the actual busi- ness of laying the paint is done in a proper way. As Hamerton^ truly says, any man who can put quality into a few square inches of canvas we may be sure has studied nature for years and years. Style may be said to be quality individualized ' The Graphic Arts. TECHNICAL POINTS IN ART 31 and to be practically synonymous with personality. The use of either term about an artist means that he puts enough individuality into his work for it to be recognized as its maker's at a glance. We say that Rodin or Corot or de Hooge are personal be- cause to a trained eye the authorship of their work is revealed in a moment without a signature. This principle applies to any of the great artists, whether they are Greeks or Chinese or Japanese or of any race. Each great artist has his own personal way of working, which is his style, and if one gets to know it, his work always has an individuality of its own, which is just as recognizable as a man's per- sonal appearance or his handwriting. Conventionality. Works of art are often spoken of as being con- ventional or imconventional. To a great extent all art is conventional, that is to say, it is always more or less similar to the art produced at the same place and time. No artist gets entirely away from his environment. When the works of an artist are spoken of as tmconventional it generally means that he has seen and done something a little different from his contemporaries. The working of the prin- ciple is that in all arts the master minds, either tired with what has been done before or urged on by their own power, do something fresh and branch off into some unbeaten track. Then come their 32 COMPARATIVE ART. followers, the so-called school, who follow their leader until they run into a groove and become mannered and conventional, when some other origi- nal mind always breaks away in some new direction. Look at the followers of Perugino, of Delacroix, of Fortuny, to see how this principle works with us, and then if you turn to the great Japanese, to Sesshiu, to Korin, to Ukio Matahei, to Okio, you will find that each of these strong men brought something new into art and broke away from what time had crystallized, and that in turn weaker men imitated them and developed and solidified their peculiarities and their imperfections into conven- tionalities. Training. When we find art with a certain amount of qual- ity, it is safe to infer that it shows training in its makers. Of course the great artists go beyond all training, but when the general level of art in any place is high, it implies that the artists had an amount of training which could only have come with a surrounding civilization. For instance, it is a matter of history how in Italy and in Flanders apprentices in studios had to grind the colors and prepare the canvas and that these apprentices after- wards sometimes rose to distinction as painters. In the same way, the training of the Japanese has much to do with his technical ability. For years TECHNICAL POINTS IN ART. 33 he is trained, first in copying writing, then in copy- ing works of art, repeating one form over and over again. Small Japanese children sit together copy- ing designs, not with our skimp watercolor boxes, but with great saucers of color, doing the same patterns many times, and this continual humble training is what eventually gives them their power. Photography. Photography is something radically different from drawing. It is as much a science as an art. It can do many things which hand made art cannot. For accuracy of detail, for exactitude of any scene, for a certain kind of imitation, miscalled the truth, painting is nowhere near photography. If imita- tive truth were the only basis of art, art would, after these fifty years of photography, be as dead as an Egyptian Pharaoh. But art is not necessa- rily the truth; art is the expression, the outlet of human emotion; art is the child of the artist's brain; art shows his selection, his power of com- position, his individuality; art is the outcome of thought. Photography is the work of a camera; and a camera has no brains. Photography is largely a mechanical performance, most of which can be done in a shop. The actual taking of the ordinary photograph requires just a little more ability than ringing a door bell. " You press the button, we do the rest," is the advertisement of 34 COMPARATIVE ART. the Kodak Company, and it describes accurately the amoiint of thought required to produce an illus- tration which no artist could possibly do by hand. Any imaginative artist, on the contrary, can make a sketch or model a sculpture which no photog- rapher could possibly originate thru his camera. A thoughtful photographer, however, can seek out and find subjects which compose, effects of light and shade, etc., so that some of the qualities of art may be introduced into photographs, and thru the use of their wits, and by various manipulations and alterations of negatives, some of the members of the curiously named "Photo Secession"^ are producing photographs which have many of the artistic qualities of modern realistic art: in their hands the camera is becoming an art tool. Photog- raphy is simply invaluable, and is one of the most important inventions ever made in this world, but it is as well to remember, when discussing art, that art and ordinary photography are dissimilar things. * C. Howard Conway, " The Artist of the Camera " : Munsey's Magazine, September, 1906. PART III. THE GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF ART. ^LEISTOKENE ArT. IEuROPEAN PoLISHED StONE PERIOD ArT. European Bronze Period Art., Greek Art. Etruscan Art. Roman Art. Byzantine Art. Flemish and Italian Art. "SEgyptian Art. Arab Art. African Art. Zimbabwe Art. Bushman Art. -^Kaldean Art. ^Assyrian Art. • Phenician Art. Persian Art. South Asiatic Art. East Asiatic Art.(^ Ainu Art. East Siberian Art. Australasian Art. Eskimo^ Art. West North Amerind Art. East North Amerind Art. Central Amerind Art. East South Amerind Art. Pleistokene Art. It is imknown when man first walked on the earth. We may guess at fifty thousand or two himdred and fifty thousand years, or any other figure we may prefer, all that is certain is that man has dwelt for many eons on this planet. It is possible that he dates back to the Tertiary, for some rough stones which appear to be implements, and which are possi- bly man's handiwork, have been fotmd in the Eocene, and hence are generally called eoliths. Man cer- tainly existed during the entire Pleistokene or Qua- ternary period, for chipped stone implements are found in all the strata of that epoch. These flint flakes and stone implements with rough surfaces have been discovered in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australasia and America, in some cases together with bones of extinct mammals, such as the mammoth, the rhi- 36 COMPARATIVE ART. noceros tichorinus and the machairodus and they are the earUest unquestioned relics of man known. These rough stone implements are generally called paleoliths, that is ancient stones, but the French term pierre eclaUe, that is split stone or chipped stone, is more accurate and descriptive. The roughest of these stone implements are also the earliest, and it is certain that chipped stone im- plements evolve in a progressive development. Nevertheless in the case of very rough and shapeless specimens, and a good many such are exhibited in museums, it seems to me that an observer should go slow in pronouncing them man's handiwork. For instance, three so called eoliths from Thenay, Loir-et-Cher,^ and some eoliths from Kent, Eng- land,^^ may or may not be implements, altho probably they are. The eoliths from Thenay are better than those from Kent, and are not much rougher than some of the exhibited specimens of the earliest Pleistokene implements. And whilst some of the early Pleistokene implements show a great advance on eoliths and are unmistakably man's handiwork, some of the rougher exhibited speci- mens seem to me extremely doubtful. None of the remains nor of the implements which has come down to us from the early Pleistokene men, however, gives us a clue by which they can be con- ' U. S. Nat. Mus. From Abb^ Bourgeois. *° U. S. Nat. Mus. From B. Harrison, Esq. PLEISTOKENE ART. 37 nected certainly with any race now living on the earth, and all we can say positively is that they were hunters and fishermen. Nothing has been dis- covered as yet in connection with the earliest Pleis- tokene implements which could in any way be termed art, and it is therefore impossible to say whether the oldest Pleistokene men had any art sense or any ideas of ornamentation or adornment. With the later Pleistokenes, however, art, great art, appears. It is undoubtedly correct to say that the later Pleistokene men are the earliest known great artists. For in the caves and refuse heaps of France, England, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland and Spain, specimens of excellent art have been found which are surely their work. They unquestionably had' the power of observing artistically natural objects and of recording their observations by sculpting or incising bone or ivory. Their art is naive, realistic, accurately characteristic and truly it may be called great. Relative chronology, depending on astronomical calculations of the glacial period, the depth of soil covering the specimens, the bones of extinct mam- malia found with them, etc., assigns various dates to the art remains of the Pleistokenes. All such cal- culations, however, seem to me uncertain and some- what in the nature of guesses. The fact that a frozen mammoth was found_in the region of the Lena river, whose flesh was eaten by the finders' dogs, shows 38 COMPARATIVE ART. that the mammoth may have become extinct not so very long ago. The depth of soil is also an uncer- tain proof, since accumulation is so varied and sometimes so rapid. At the Saalburg, for instance, remains of Mithras worship were found in 1904,^^ buried under about two meters of soil ; and yet those remains surely post date the beginning of the Christian era. All we can say positively, is that Pleistokene art remains date back a long time, cer- tainly not less than ten thousand years, and more probably twenty-five or fifty thousand years. Many Pleistokene art works, mainly from caves in the Dordogne, are now in the Musee de Saint Ger- main near Paris. The most valuable part of the collection is that made some years ago by Mons. Piette, many of whose finest specimens come from Mas-d'Azil. Mons. Piette's collection was all shown to me in 1905 by Mons. B. Charnpion, assistant director of the Musee. He stated that among the works of art, statuettes came in the lowest strata; then statuettes and bas-reliefs in the middle strata ; then statuettes, bas-reliefs and drawings in the upper strata. In other words, an untaught man first sees things artistically in the round and not on a flat plane. ** Edwin Swift Balch: The Saalburg near Hamburg (extract from Roman and Prehistoric Remains in Central Germany), published by the German Government for the World's Exhibition at Saint Louis in 1904, and by J. G. Steinhausser, Homburg, 1904, as an English guide to the Saalburg. J PLEISTOKENE ART. 39 The statuettes are exceedingly interesting. They are always most uncompromisingly nude. Some three or fotir of the earliest statuettes are of steatite, a dark greenish, somewhat transparent stone. They are some six to eight centimeters high, and unlike any art I ever saw. In several cases the belly sticks out abnormally, almost in the form of a cube. Mons. Champion said that some archeolo- gists had argued that these figures must represent some imknown form of man, because they were so misshapen, but he thought that perhaps they were caricatures. I am inclined to think, however, that the true explanation is that in time of famine these people ate mud. This was suggested to me by Dr. Charles William Fox of Philadelphia, who on my giv- ing him an account of these statuettes, said that some tribes of Amerinds, men, women and children, had these square, protruding bellies, and that it came from their eating mud, and that therefore they were sometimes called clay eaters or mud eaters. One of the statuettes of women is strongly steatypige and this would suggest negro blood. There are several ivory statuettes. These are better done and larger than the steatite statuettes. A couple of them may have been twenty or twenty-five centimeters high, but as none of the Pleistokene statuettes is entire, it is impossible to tell their exact dimensions. One of the female ivory statuettes has the protuberant mudeater belly, but the ivory statuettes have much 40 COMPARATIVE ART. less exaggerated proportions than the steatite statu- ettes. There are three small Pleistokene heads in Mons. Piette's collection. They are certainly well done. The first impression is that they are Egyptian heads, because the hair is long, hanging down over the neck. The type of the face also suggests rather a European than a Chinese, and certainly it is not negroid. The heads are too small, however, for any certainty as to the human type represented. There are two or three single hands. Curiously enough, the thumb is not clearly represented in these, and my brother, Mr. Thomas Willing Balch, called my attention to the fact that monkeys do not grasp with their thumbs as firmly or as fully as man, and that their thumbs are more like a fifth finger. There are many really beautiful Pleistokene bas reliefs or drawings. These are on stone, on ivory, on teeth, on bone and on horn. It is not known positively what tools were used, but it seems most probable that it was simply a pointed bit of flint. As a general rule these drawings represent animals and some of them are masterly. Among the mam- mals are mammoth, many horses, ibex, chamois, saigas, red deer, many reindeer, bison, wild cattle, wild boar, bears, wolves, foxes, lynxes, otters, rab- bits, seal. Among the few birds are swan and geese. Among the fishes are salmon and pike. There are a few drawings of plants. In several of the drawings PLEISTOKENE ART. 4t there are human figures, but these, as is also the case in the drawings of some other primitive races, are inferior artistically to the animals. Bison was one of the animals most often drawn, and a sketch of two bison heads from La Madelaine is noteworthy. The reindeer was a favorite sub- ject. From another cave near Les Eyzies comes a splendid carved reindeer bone knife handle, repre- senting a crouching reindeer, which in its lines, con- ception and execution is worthy of any sculptor. From the Kesslerloch near Thayingen in Germany was taken a magnificently drawn reindeer with its head down feeding on the herbage near some water. There are many excellent drawings of horses. A drawing of a horse's head found in the Robin Hood Cave, Cresswell Crags, Derbyshire, ^^ shows that some Pleistokene artists dwelt at one time in England. Some of the scenes in which horses appear show that they were a favorite quarry for the himters. But the most noteworthy drawings of horses are several which show the horses' heads harnessed, for this proves positively that the horse was domesti- cated. Probably the most interesting drawings, however, are those of mammoth and hairy rhinoceros, because they prove the contemporaneity of man with these extinct mammals. There are some striking draw- ings of mammoths on mammoths' tusks : one repre- ^^ British Mus. 42 COMPARATIVE ART. senting a mammoth with long streaming hair, and another from La Laugerie Basse, the head of a fu- rious mammoth charging with his tusks crossed and his mouth open, doubtless a memory sketch of an unpleasant incident. One head, well drawn on a piece of bone, must be a rhinoceros tichorinus, for it has a horn on the nose, and the shape of the head is different from either simus, bicomis, indicus, or sumatrensis. In many cases the drawing extends around the bone. Mr. Champion has invented a method of moulding the drawing and then flattening the mould, so that the reproduction is all on one plane, and it is extraordinary how accurate these draw- ings are then found to be. Many of the drawings show a decided sense of perspective. In one there are the legs and stomach of a reindeer, whose back and head are broken off, and just beyond is a naked woman lying on her back. In many cases there is only one drawing on an object. Often, however, there are two and even three which are all mingled together. In one case, for instance, a reindeer is lying on its back with its legs drawn directly thru the body of a second reindeer which is standing up over it. In other words, while the Pleistokene artists could do admirably one animal or several following one another in a line, they did not succeed so well in grouping a number and some of their efforts show a lack of visual apprehension. PLEISTOKENE ART. 43 A certain number of implements or at least small stones, almost all from one cave of the Dordogne, have some still unexplained marks on them. Some of them are almost like some kind of writing; a few of them represent something like a sun emitting rays. It has been suggested that these were ownership marks. A number of these stones have from one to nine red marks on them, while others have large dots. It is not known what these mean, but they may be some system of numeration. In southwestern France and in Spain there have also been found lately some remarkable Pleistokene paintings on the walls of different caves, Altamira, Fond de Gaume and others. Dr. Capitan and Abbe Breuil, two of their chief explorers, have told me much about them. There are sometimes three and even four superposed paintings which will not last long after the fresh air has access to these caves, which have for milleniums been blocked by rubbish. These paintings almost all represent the same kinds of animals as those of the specimens at Saint Germain. Mammoth are common ; there are several which show harness on horses; and there is at least one of a rhinoceros tichorinus. Some of these paintings are fairly big, not less than one and a half to two meters long. The colors used in them principally are black and some kind of red ochre. The reproductions by the Abbe Breuil show that they have all the identical 44 COMPARATIVE ART. characteristics of the specimens at Saint Germain, and therefore they must be the work of the same set of artists. Pleistokene art is distinctly an art of observation, ij The Pleistokene artists saw something in the sur- rounding wild fauna, which appealed to them artistically, and they recorded their impressions in perfect naiveU as well as their imperfect tools per- mitted. Most of the drawing is as simple and straightforward as possible. They omitted the feet of their models, perhaps because these were concealed from the observer by the herbage. In their work 1 they show observation, a sense of proportion, draw- \ ing, some little composition and a good deal of action. Vphere is no suggestion of symbolism, nor is there 1 much of what may be called picture making. The I Pleistokene artist was not trying to represent some { idea, some philosophical or religious or historical /conception, but he was trying to represent some- I thing which he had seen. He sought the \plastic idea, not the subject. His point of view, (' was, for instance, the exact opposite of the early Flemish missal painters, to whom he was immeas- / urably superior as an artist. His work must be \ ranked as frank, true sketching from nature or from I memory: it is portraiture and falls among what is I known to painters as a sketch, a study or an im- \ pression. As I have stated, the Pleistokene statuettes seem PLEISTOKENE ART. 45 to me to be decidedly sut generis. Not so with the drawings, however. Altho the animals drawn are not the same in both, yet from the artistic side it seems to me there is a decided resemblance between some Pleistokene work and that of some Chinese and Japanese painters. Mori-Sosen and Okio, for instance, it seems to me, looked at nature much as did the Pleistokene artists, and it may be questioned whether their art powers were any greater, for if their work is more advanced it must be set down partly to their better tools. There is a resemblance between some Pleistokene and some Eskimo draw- ings, with the advantage all on the side of the Pleistokene. There appears also to be decided similarity artistically between Pleistokene and Bush- men drawings, only here also the Pleistokene are the best. Whether we shall ever know the type of the Pleistokene man is at present uncertain. The hair of the heads suggest an affinity with the Egyptians, some of the figures show African characteristics, while some of the drawings suggest East Asiatic work and others Greek work and a few Eskimo work, and there you are! My own opinion is that the Pleistokenes were a Yellow race. Whoever the Pleistokene men were, however, it is certain that they had a high art faculty; one, all things consid- ered, quite as advanced as that of any other people. And this shows conclusively that some at least 46 COMPARATIVE ART. among these early men were distinctly intellectual beings. ^^ European Polished Stone Period Art. The Chipped Stone peoples were succeeded in Europe by a race of men who polished some of their stone implements. These smoothed stones are gen- erally called neoliths, that is new stones, and the term neolithic peoples has been applied to their *' Boucher de Perthes: Antiquites Celtiques et Antediluviennes Paris, 1847 and 1857. Boucher de Perthes deserves the credit of having forced the recognition of prehistoric stone implements as the works of man on a recalcitrant scientific world from 1847 onwards. He also forcibly enunciated the evolution theory in 1857. Prof. W. Boyd Dawkins: Cave Hunting, 1874: Early Man in Britain, 1880. Dawkins divided the Pleistokenes into "River Drift Men" and "Cave Men," which names are not scientifically correct, because the same kind of implements are found in river bed drifts and in caves. He was the first to point out that many Pleistokene implements closely resemble those of the Eskimo, and also that there are certain resemblances between the arts of these two peoples, and he concluded that probably they were related by blood. As far as my reading goes, this is the earliest attempt I know of, to deduce facts in ethnology partly by analogies in the fine arts, and the method Dawkins applied in this isolated instance is something like the one I am attempting to apply to all the peoples of the world by a comparison of their arts. Gabriel de Mortillet: Le Prehistoriqiie, Paris, 1883. De Mortillet believed in Tertiary man. He assigned at least two hundred and thirty thousand years to the Pleistokene period, which he divided into four epochs: the Chell^en, of seventy-eight thousand years; the Moust^rien, of one hundred thousand years; the Solutr^en, of eleven thousand years, and the Magdal^n^en, of thirty-three thou- sand years. He thought the oldest known art dates back fifty or sixty thousand years, to the Solutr^en, because at Solutr^, de Ferry found two sculptures on stone representing some deer and a human hand. His nomenclature is not a good one, because in each case the name is local, and the implements of each period extend into the next period. Sir John Lubbock: The Origin of Civilization and the primitive EUROPEAN POLISHED STONE PERIOD ART. 47 users in consequence. The French term of pierre polte, that is poHshed stone or smoothed stone seems, however, more descriptive. The poHshed stone implements, which show a distinct advance in certain ways over those of the Pleistokene men, are principally of the form known as axes. Many were intended to be mounted in handles and some- times they are pierced. Many of these tribes lived in the pile dwellings which have been discovered in the Swiss and Italian lakes, in Irish bogs, etc. It seems highly probable that the megaliths, menhirs, alignments, cromlechs, dolmens, of France and England were erected by some of the Polished Stone peoples, and if so they had a condition of man, London, 1870. Sir John Lubbock coined the names "PaleoHthic" and "Neolithic." Andrew D. White: A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, New York, 1896. Charles Morris: Man and his Ancestor, New York and London, 1900. Dr. S. V. Clevenger: The evolution of man and his mind, Chicago, 1903. S. Reinach: The Story of Art throughout the Ages, New York, 1904. Abb^ H. Breuil: "Manche de Couteau en bronze: " Revue Arche- ologique, 1902, II, 83-84. Abb^ H. Breuil: "La d^g^n^rescence des figures d'animaux en motifs omementaux a I'^poque du renne; " Academic des Inscrip- tions et Belles Lettres, 1905. Dr. Capitan, Abb6 Breuil, Mons. Ampoulance: "Une nouvelle grotte pr^historique : " Revue de I'Ecole d'Anthropologie de Paris, October, 1904. Dr. Capitan, Abb6 Breuil, Mons. Peyrony: "Une nouvelle grotte a parois gravies:" Revue de I'Ecole d'Anthropologie de Paris, No- vember, 1904. Mons. Peyrony: Les Eyzies et les environs, 1903. Marquis de Nadaillac: "Figures peintes ou incisdes:'! Revue des questions scientifiques, 1904. 48 COMPARATIVE ART. certain feeling for the art of architecture. There is practically no graphic art known in connection with European Polished Stone times, except that in some dolmens there are scratched a few lines, parallel, diverging and concentric. The best perhaps are those in the dolmen of Gavrinis, Morbihan, which can be seen by any tourist and at certain times, as happened to myself, when the tides are high and the current strong, only after an exciting sail. A few axes were represented, and the highest artistic achievement of the Polished Stone period seems to be the rude figure of a stone ax which one sees engraved on the roof of the sepulchral chamber of Dol-ar-Marchant, near Locqmariaker. This is about all that the Polished Stone peoples left in the shape of graphic art. As Polished Stone peoples were certainly more advanced in their implements than the Chipped Stone peoples, the marked infe- riority of their art is noteworthy, and would go to show that art is not so much a question of time, locality, environment or culture, as of race.^* European Bronze Period Art. The Polished Stone age was followed, in parts at least of Eur-Asia, by a Bronze period. There are some rocks in Scandinavia on which there are ^* Prof. W. Boyd Dawkins: Cave Hunting, 1874: Early Man in Britain, 1880. Gabriel de Mortillet: Le Prehistorique, Paris, 1883. EUROPEAN BRONZE PERIOD ART. 49 engravings believed to date from this period; and some illustrations^^ of them represent men, oxen and boats. The boats are evidently Viking ships, whose high curved stems and stems suggest an earlier model than the one from Sandefjord^® in Christiania. The remnant of Scandinavian art of the Bronze age is of a low order; it is an advance on the art of the Polished Stone men, but it is much inferior to the art of the Pleistokenes. The sculp-^ tures are evidently not symbolic, but seem rather/ to be representations of some event their maker had witnessed, and the figures and boats are so rude, evincing such a lack of drawing, form or perspective, that they seem more like picture writing than like works of art. ■'' Greek Art, The next art in Europe in point of time to Pleis- tokene art, appears to be the art of Greece. Some of it is supposed to date back to well before 2000 B. C, and this is sometimes spoken of as Pelasgic or Pre-Mykenian or Cyclopean art. A later stage of it is associated with the remains found at Mykenae, about 2000 B. C. to 800 B. C, and is usually called Mykenian art, while the latest and great develop- ment is known as Greek or Hellenic art, about 800 B. C. to 300 A. D. Perhaps as satisfactory division as any would be into Pre-Hellenic art and Hellenic " W. Boyd Dawkins: Early Man in Britain, 1880. "Edwin Swift Balch: "The Lange Skib of Sandefjord:" CUy and State, Philadelphia, September 7, 1899, page 153. So COMPARATIVE ART. or Greek art. The Pre-Hellenic period seems to have been in a bronze stage of culture. Pre-Hellenic art remains have been found in Greece, in the Greek Archipelago, especially Crete, and at Troy in Asia. An illustration of the gold cups of Vaphio^'' of the Mykenian period shows some men fighting with well drawn bulls; another reproduces a sword blade of about the same time with men fighting with spears some not so well drawn jumping lions, who have the scissor action. An illustration also of an octopus from Goumia^^ is a well drawn and well observed piece of most decorative work. It seems as if Pre-Hellenic and Greek art was mainly of autochthonous growth. The illustrations just mentioned rather strongly resemble some Pleis- tokene drawings and it looks somewhat as if Greek art might be a descendant of Pleistokene art, and it is barely possible that the Greeks inherited their great art abilities from the Pleistokenes.-^^ What militates forcibly against this view, which I do not believe is correct, is the length of time, the many thousand years, which must have elapsed between the Pleistokenes and the earlv Hellenes. There ^' The New International Encyclopcedia, "Archaeology," From Mykenae? or Tiryns? ^® Harriet A. Boyd: "Gournia." Transactions Dept. Arch., Univ. of Penna., 1904, pages 1-44. ^*Mons. S. Reinach, The Story of Art throughout the Ages, sug- gests that Greek art descended from Pleistokene art. GREEK ART. 51 are some small resemblances between Kaldean art and Greek art, as for instance the Kaldean Goudeas, which might have been done by a Greek sculptor, except that their pose is not Greek. It does not seem therefore as if much art influ- ence came to Greece from Asia. On the other hand, some little art influence must have come to Greece from Egypt, but not enough, however, to nullify the statement that probably Greek art grew, budded and blossomed mainly on its own soil. Some of the Greek pottery^ goes back probably to the eighth century B. C. and some bronze figtires to the fifth and sixth centuries. The early Greek terra cotta statuettes^^ are poor and grotesque. Some from Myrina, Asia Minor, and some from Smyrna are also rough and poor, and similar to early Greek. Of those from Tanagra, the earliest are poor, the later ones are better and some of these are good and graceful. One of these early Greek terra cotta grotesque statuettes in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts is labelled "doll or idol," and this label is an uncon- scious recognition of exactly what the so-called "idols" of non-White races are: namely, something similar to the figiires we make to amuse children and which we call "dolls." It is not a mystical '" Boston Mus. Fine Arts. British Mus. '* Boston Mus. Fine Arts. British Mus. 52 COMPARATIVE ART. instinct, but an elementary art instinct which is the underlying cause of both. I am inclined to think the Greeks were the founders of modem European painting. A painted grave- stone of the fourth century B. C.^^ of which both drawing and painting are poor, is an early attempt at a painted figure. The Greek paintings of heads found in the Fayum,^^ appear to be the first attempts at what we should consider portrait painting. Greek art certainly spread over much of the eastern Mediterranean. A good deal has been foimd in Egypt. It scattered also along North Africa as far at least as Tunis. From the Cyrenaica^* there are several good heads which are probably Greek. At Carthage many interesting specimens of art are being dug up and some of these are surely Greek. A seal with a horse in action on it is fine. One splendid work of art is the statue of a woman, which formed the lid of her sarcophagus. It is believed to be the statue of a Carthaginian priestess by a Greek artist. The statue is certainly in the best style of Greek art, but with a most original dress, probably the robes of the priestess, which en- velops her with two great birds', probably eagles',^* wings. It is one of the finest statues I ever saw. Greek art also spread to southern Italy, where " Boston Mus. Fine Arts. *' Univ. of Penna. Mus. Arch. National Gallery, London. '* Louvre. '* Mus^e Lavigerie. GREEK ART. S3 it left the beautiful temples at Paestum as its chief architectural relic. In Sicily, also, art is mainly of Greek extraction, altho in its earlier stages it shows Egyptian or Phe- nician influence. There are apparently no art remains from either the Chipped Stone or the Polished Stone period, both of which stages of culture, Sicily, like most of the rest of the world, went thru. There are specimens of chipped stone implements'^ from various parts of Sicily, among others from grottoes near Termini, which are all rather late in their forms. '^ There are also polished stone implements from various parts of Sicily. The most notable works of art in Sicily are the Greek buildings at Syracuse and especially the beau- tiful Greek temples at Girgenti. It is impressive to the visitor to the temple of Hero or of Concord, to feel how three or four centuries B.C., Girgenti must have been in an advanced stage of culture, while now the sight of the better dressed natives carrying a 44-40 Winchester carbine or a double-barrelled shotgun — there is no four -legged or winged game — makes one realize that southern Sicily has reverted to semi-barbarism. From Selinunte there are many remains'^ and a number of bronze implements found there show that the Greek Sicilian towns were in a Bronze stage. ^^ Museo Nazionale, Palermo. " Magdal^nden of Mortillet. '* Museo Nazionale, Palermo. 54 COMPARATIVE ART. There are some figures resembling those from Tana- gra, and some of these show a tendency to the ob- hque eye. On some stone metopes from the temple there are several early heads of Medusa putting out her tongue: the humans have thick arms and legs and rather staring eyes; the horses are better and more Athenian in style, altho when they show motion, and there is almost no motion in Sicilian art, it is the erroneous scissor action. There are one or two sphinxes with wings, somewhat Egyp- tian or Assyrian in style and these are probably Phenician. From Saluntum^® there are some paintings, which are surely Greek. A ntimber of colors are used and the tone is dark from age. They are decorative panels with well drawn and painted theatrical masks and garlands of fruit, the details of which are well carried out. Marble is imitated in some places, and light falls from the upper left hand comer as in modem architectural drawings. There is nothing Japanese about the masks, in fact these panels suggest purely modem European or American tech- nic. Etruscan Art. In the last millennium B. C, about 1000 B. C. to 200 B. C, there grew up an art in Italy which is known as Etruscan art. I do not think that there can be any doubt that this art was imported, for it " Museo Nazionale, Palermo. ETRUSCAN ART. 55 shows plainly some Greek and some Egyptian or Phenician characteristics. From Chiusi in Etruria come some interesting specimens. ^^ There are many small boxes to hold ashes ; many of these are painted. Among the colors are some bright yellows, a dull red and a little blue. There are many small tombs. These all have figures on them, all leaning on the left elbow and holding a round dish with a lump in the center, possibly the obolus for Charon, and this would mean, of course, a Greek ancestry. Some of the bas-reliefs on these boxes or tombs and one or two of the figures are distinctly Egyptian. One of these figures has movable head and hands of terra cotta; the body, according to the guardian of the Museum in Palermo, is tufa. This figure is sitting in a chair and is distinctly Egyptian or something like Goudeas. The influence of Egypt on Etruscan art is plainly visible here, and it shows to a certainty that Etruscan art was at least partly descended from Egyptian or Phenic- ian art. There are two Etruscan stone sarcophagi^^ which in conception and execution, are singularly like such monuments from the Middle Ages. On each side is a life size figure of a man and a woman, peace- ful in death, which in proportions and execution are certainly good. The sides of these coffins are ^° Museo Nazionale, Palermo. ^^ Boston Mus. Fine Arts. 56 COMPARATIVE ART. ornamented with bas-reliefs, which much resemble a Greek frieze. The figures of men and horses are fairly- well drawn and show observation. Some lions, however, are purely conventional and so inferior to the other figures as to make certain that the artist had never seen one. The men and horses are so well drawn that it seems probable that these coffins are of a late date. In the Grotta del Barone and the Tomb of Leop- ards, both at Cometo, there are some wall paint- ings,^^ which form a kind of frieze, done in red, black, gray and green. There are men, horses and trees: the figures are stiff and archaic and show no obser- vation, standing in a purely formal row without any- pictorial composition. Roman Art. Roman art, about 300 B. C. to 400 A. D., is un- questionably not of autochthonous growth, but a descendant from several other arts. It is principally an adaptation of Greek art but it must also have roots in Etruscan art. The expansion and the com- merce of the Roman Empire also brought the Ro- mans into contact with so many races outside of Italy that Roman art was surely influenced by extraneous influences from Egypt, from Western Asia, from North Africa, and possibly even from parts of Europe. ^^ Copies, Boston Mus. Fine Arts. ROMAN ART. 57 Still like all other races which have risen into what we call a civilized condition, the Romans evolved some art of their own to meet their needs. And it seems to me that their best efforts were principally in the direction of architecture. This architecture, with its temples, its aqueducts, its arenas and its fortifications, rose in Rome, spread over Italy, and then over the limits of the Roman Empire, in North Africa, in Germany, in Britain, in fact to wherever the Romans held sway. The arena was one of the peculiarly Roman forms of architecture. Splendid as is the Colosseum, the arena at Verona, those at Nimes and Aries, and the one at El Djem in Timis, yet, when one views those great structures and thinks of all the cruelties and public tortures and legal murders which took place in them, one can but look on their makers as semi- barbarians and feel glad that their power was wiped off the face of the earth by people whom they pre- sumed to call barbarians. Aqueducts were another branch of architecture developed by the Romans, and when one sees those in the Campagna or the one bringing the water from Zaghouan to Carthage, or the one in the Val Toumanche supplying Aosta, or above all the stu- pendous Pont du Gard, one feels inclined to think that not all the Romans were barbarians, but that some of them had some good traits. The long lines of fortifications erected in Germany, 58 COMPARATIVE ART. in Britain, in the Balkan country, and the great armed camps erected along them and also in North Africa are other essentially Roman architectural mommients. Only the Chinese in their great wall north and west of Pekin, ever built anything like the Pfahlgraben or Limes Imperii Romani which stretches five hundred and forty kilometers from Honnigen on the Rhine to Hienheim on the Danube.^^ The Romans left many art remains all over their empire. From North Africa, for instance, there are many relics^^ which are almost all Roman, altho a few are Greek. From Algeria and Tunis there are some fair bas-reliefs and several fair stat- ues and from Carthage there are many mosaics like those now in Tunis. Apparently mosaics were in favor at Carthage itself, for a number of mosaic floors, probably Roman, have been dug up in Carthage and its vicinity.^^ They are de- cidedly rough, not only in their texture, but in their ideas of drawing. Men, animals, fishes, plants, and some inanimate objects like boats are attempted, but they are decidedly formless. Pompeiian pictures^® are forerunners in every respect of European pictures. They show that the *' Edwin Swift Balch: "Roman and Prehistoric Remains in Central Germany:" The Journal of the Franklin Institute, vol. CLV., January, 1903, pages. 55-71. ^* Louvre. ^^ Carthaginian Museum at the Bardo, Tunis. .'* Naples Museum. ROMAN ART. 59 old Romans knew about as much about good paint- ing as the average painter of the Renaissance or of to-day. Some of the pictures are admirably composed. The figures are observed much as we do, and often they are well handled and well model- led. Some of the figures, such as tight rope dancers, have excellent action. One or two cupids with wings are perfect forerunners of angel heads in the pictures of such Middle Age painters as Raphael. A woman on a vase sports a parasol. Animals and birds are poorer than hiimans. There are a good many landscapes and a good many seascapes, generally with buildings in some part of the pic- ture. These are generally long and low in shape and show good feeling for composition and per- spective. Many of the pictures are rather large, perhaps two meters one way. Many of the de- tails, such as the eyes or hair of the figures, when looked at close, are hard in texture. This is pos- sibly due to the medium, water or egg color on plaster. Among colors, a dull red rouge de Pouz- zoles, a bright yellow, a pale blue, a green and black are the most prominent. There is no doubt that these old Pompeiian painters had many of the qualities of good ordinary European painters, how- ever with but little mystery and no luminarism. There is the strongest family resemblance to Greek art, none to Pleistokene, East Asiatic or Afro-Aus- tralasian art. 60 comparative art Byzantine Art. During the centuries when the Roman Empire was crumbhng politically, many of its subjects were gradually changing some of their ideas about mystical subjects, and they apparently in time con- sidered that a man's spirit was everything and his body of no importance, and possibly on this account the art of the Romans went to pieces and drifted into shapelessness and hideous angularity. The art of Europe, after being for some centuries in a state of coma, revived eventually after about 1000 A. D. in Italy and in the Netherlands. Mainly in the north eastern portion also of the debris of the Roman Empire, an art slowly evolved, which also was occupied with spiritual themes, and which evidently rather despised the human physi- cal form. As Constantinople was the chief politi- cal center of this second branch of degenerate Roman art, the latter has become known as By- zantine art. Form and drawing in Byzantine art are usually bad, infantile, from any artistic stand- point. In decorative color, however, the Byzan- tine artist, probably as the result of eastern in- fluence, showed a certain amount of feeling, and accomplished some good work. Specimens of Byzantine art, or at least of what was probably due to its influence, are found in a good many places on the Mediterranean. From Kabr-Hiram, near Tyr, in Syria, came some mo- BYZANTINE ART. 61 saics from the Church of Saint Christopher.^^ These are supposed to be Byzantine and altho not quite in the same style of drawing, yet they are some- thing Hke the mosaics from Carthage. Some By- zantine art also spread to Abyssinia.^^ Saint Sophia in Constantinople is considered per- haps the finest example of Byzantine art. San Marco in Venice is the best known one, however, and it doubtless was built as the result of Venetian intercourse with Constantinople. The Cappella Pa- latina at Palermo is fine : it has some pointed arches and is old gold in tone. The Duomo at Monreale near Palermo is also a notable specimen. This is sometimes spoken of as Gothic Romanesque, pos- sibly because of the pointed arches, but the decoration is decidedly Byzantine. The interior is one of the grandest I ever visited, and as there are no colored windows, it is easy to be seen. Colored windows, anyhow, are an architectural blemish, as the function of a window is to admit light. The walls within are all covered with golden mosaics representing biblical scenes. The whole color note is too purely yellow, and in this respect it is in- ferior to the Chiirch of the Savior at Moscow. Indeed Byzantine art, which is practically a relig- ious art, naturally went with the Greek Church to Russia, and its last expiring pictorial vestiges are ^' Louvre. 38 J. Theodore Bent: The Sacred City of the Ethiopians, 1893. 62 COMPARATIVE ART. found to-day in the copies still being painted there of the old ikons which one sees in Saint Peters- burg, Moscow and Nijni-Novgorod, ikons out of drawing and in villainous color, which the admiring tourist is told, mirabile dictu, were painted in oils by Saint Luke over a thousand years before oil painting was invented. The churches of the Russian people, however, are finer than their painting. Some of them are most impressive. The churches of the Savior and Saint Basil in Moscow are superb specimens of colored architecture, and on coming away from their beau- ties, Gothic cathedrals, with their cold gray stone walls and pillars, seem as if they were built of mud. The Russians use pure the most brilliant pigments, emerald green, ultramarine blue, vermilion, and gold leaf, but, to my eye at least, their architecture is harmonious and beautiful. One of their most interesting churches, from the ethnological point of view, is the one at Sitka, Alaska. For it is the last outpost of the east- ward movement of Byzantine art across Siberia. It is from the Russian Byzantine art that some of the natives of Alaska got some of their ideas of color, and such a totem pole as the one at Seattle, is an interesting example of how the art of one race was affected by and had grafted upon it a portion, in this case the color, of the art of another race. flemish and italian art. 63 Flemish and Italian Art. In the summer of 1902, an exhibition was held in Bruges, Belgium, of the works of old Flemish painters, which afforded to the fortunate visitor an opportunity to study, in a manner which has per- haps never been possible anywhere else, the evolution of early European painting.^^ In the Hotel du Gou- vemement Provincial, on the Place du Beffroy, there were brought together the Memlings from the Hopi- tal de Saint Jean, many Memlings and Van Eycks from private collections in England and France and a number of other early Flemish pictures. One of these latter of the beginning of the sixteenth cen- tury shows that the artist was striving for the effects of lighting attained by Rembrandt a hundred years later. In the Gruuthuus also there was placed a large collection of missals and illtiminated manu- scripts dating from about the tenth to the fifteenth centuries. Examined in connection with the oil paintings, these missals are an object lesson in the evolution of European painting, especially of that of the north- em countries. Beginning about the tenth century, the earliest illtiminations show an art knowledge on a par with that of an inartistic child about eight years old. As the centuries roll on, the illuminations ®* The substance of this chapter is contained in a letter which I wrote on July 8, 1902, and which was published in The Nation, New York, July 24, 1902, and in The Evening Post, New York, Jvdy 26, 1902. 64 COMPARATIVE ART. improve; drawing creeps in, so does color; glimpses of landscape begin to appear behind the figures, until at the end of the fifteenth century some really fine water colors are produced. Some of these show a close kinship with the oils of Van Eyck and Mem- ling. Indeed, so closely do some men at arms repre- sented in one of the manuscripts resemble the men at arms in the legend of Saint Ursula of Memling that it seems quite possible that the water color was painted by Memling himself. The conclusion to be drawn from the Bruges exhibit was that the earliest oil paintings were only enlarged prayerbook illustrations carried out more thoroly in a different medium. The aims and the methods of the painters, and possibly the painters themselves, were the same in both, and the only notable difference was that the oils were larger and more elaborate than the water colors. I am perhaps wrong in my interpretation, but it seems to me that this Flemish art was principally of native growth, and that it depended on starting on no older art except probably on the mystical monstrosities which we call Byzantine painting. It certainly lacks any of the qualities of Greek or Roman art, or indeed in its first stages it lacks any of the marks of any good art. The early illumi- nations reveal clearly that the painters thought only of one thing, namely, the subject. Their work is religious genre. It is an attempt to rep- FLEMISH AND ITALIAN ART. 65 resent some saint or some sacred scene. Mo- tive, observation of nature, beauty are totally lacking. There is no symbolism, it is not pic- ture writing; it is an attempt to represent what the artists thought about some event or personage connected with the church. At first it is hope- lessly rough and unintelligent and there is none of the observation of nature that we find among the Pleistokenes, the Babylonians, or the Bushmen, nor any of the beauty sometimes found in the decorative patterns of savages. And the point which strikes me as especially noteworthy and sig- nificant, is that Flemish and Italian art, practi- cally the beginnings of modem European art, began with the subject, and that drawing, form, values, color, were only slowly noticed and gradually in- troduced. Egyptian Art. Egypt is one of the centers where art probably grew up almost autochthonously. Some art may have come to Egypt from Kaldea, but the data are still too imcertain to make such a statement, altho there must have been intercommunication between the two coimtries at an early date. I have unfortunately never been to Egypt, and have only studied the art specimens in Boston, Washington, Paris and London. Therefore this chapter must be brief, but I hope, as far as it goes, that it is acciirate. 66 COMPARATIVE ART. Egypt has certainly been through a Chipped Stone and a Polished Stone period. There are some fine chipped stone hatchets from Egypt, ^^ of which one half is bleached by the sun and the other half darkened by lying in the ground. Mons. B. Cham- pion, curator of the Mus^e de Saint Germain, told me it was thought that they split naturally, and ap- parently one half was buried while the other re- mained lying on the desert sands. Mr. Upham, of the Smithsonian Institution, stated there could be no doubt of these differently colored halves of implements belonging together, because when the right pieces were found, the fracture coincided absolutely. From Somaliland also come many chipped stone implements of a somewhat advanced type,*^ much like the Egyptian specimens. These were found by an English acquaintance of mine, Mr. H. W. Seton-Karr, who, with Mr. Charles C. Binney and myself made in 1880 the first ascent of and christened the Piz Bevers in the Engadine.^ No art has been discovered from the Chipped Stone period, which may properly be called the Prehis- toric epoch, in Egypt. Egyptian art itself, altho antedating some parts of the Polished Stone and Bronze epochs in Europe, must be considered as belonging to the historic *^ Mus^e de Saint Germain. Smithsonian Inst. *^ Smithsonian Inst, *2 Alpine Journal, vol. X., 1882, page 162. EGYPTIAN ART. 67 period, because there are some bibliographical data in connection with it pretty much from the beginning. It certainly begins before 3000 B. C. There seems to be great diversity of opinion, however, among the specialists on Egypt, in regard to Egyptian chronology. Whatever the exact dates may be, some early Egyptian art is decidedly good. For instance, from as early as the Third or Fifth Dynasty, 4000 B. C. to 3500 B. C, we have three panels from the tomb of Hosi,*^ which show good art ability; the figure of a man on each of them bears a decided resemblance to an Amerind. There are also some reliefs from the tomb of Ti, Fifth Dynasty, 3500 B. C.,** which show many figures of animals, oxen, donkeys, geese, cranes, a gazelle, an oryx, which are well drawn and full of spirit and action; the figures of men, which are in profile, are rather stiff er ; nevertheless, they are the best early figure drawing I have seen. A really admirable piece of colored sculpture, known as the Egyptian Scribe,^^ also dates back to the Fifth Dynasty. Perhaps the chief characteristic of Egyptian art is its vastness: the huge pyramids, the enormous temples and the big statues seem to me to impress more by their size than by their beauty. Never - *^ Casts, Boston Mus. Fine Arts. ** Casts, Boston Mus. Fine Arts. *^ Louvre. 68 COMPARATIVE ART. theless, a good many of the sculptures in London and Paris,*® mostly from the later dynasties, have a decided sense of beauty. Egyptian figures, as a rule, are quiet and dignified, and there is less at- tempt at expressing violent motion in Egyptian than in Assyrian art. Action and anatomy are often well understood and expressed, and both, in their animals and in their human figures it is evident that the Egyptians observed nature care- fully. Some of their sculptures, however, as for instance two small figures of painted limestone of Nenhetefka and his wife Neferseshemes of about 2500 B. C.,*^ are rough and conventional. The Egyptians sometimes must have used color on their sculptures, for at least one Egyptian bas- relief*^ is painted a dull Pompeiian red. The Egyptians sometimes dug out their bas-reliefs below the surface of the stone, an unusual mode of work. For instance, in a granite column and on a granite slab,*^ the figures are cut out from the granite and the outline stands out as a deep shadow. The figures are conventional and in profile. One has the head of a sheep. Figures with animal heads are ntimerous in Egyp- tian art: a zoologically interesting one is that of the god Set, brother and murderer of Osiris, whose *' British Mus. Louvre. " Boston Mus. Fine Arts. *' Louvre. <» Boston Mus. Fine Arts. , EGYPTIAN ART. 69 head, after long puzzling archeologists, turns out to be the head of the okapi.^ This particular figure / proves that the Egyptians had intercourse in Central Africa at least up to the great Kongo forest. The number of figures with animal heads, however, brings up the thought, suggested by Mr. Stow^^ about the Bushmen, whether these animal headed figures did not arise from disguises of animal and bird skins used by hunters. Later some mystical significance may have become attached to them. A robe of justification'^^ and some mimimy cases^ show a rough, conventional and formal art. The heads, however, are painted small proportionally to the size of the case. This shows White art char- acteristics and not African art characteristics. A nimiber of casts of Egyptian sculptures, placed just alongside of some Mexican sculptures,^^ have almost no resemblance to Mexican art. There is none of the kind of ornamentation so prevalent in Mexico. Egyptian art is more developed, better proportioned, the faces are more the White type. Mexican art is much rougher, less beautiful, coarser, largely in square blocks. The ornamentation on the mummy cases I have seen is also totally distinct from the ornamentation on Mexican monuments. 5" La Nature, 31st year, 6 June, 1903. ^^ George W. Stow: The Native Races of South Africa, 1905. " Boston Mus. Fine Arts. *' Boston Mus. Fine Arts. U. S. Nat. Mus. " U. S. Nat. Mus. 70 COMPARATIVE ART. On the whole, I cannot see that Egyptian art shows much relation to other arts. There are undoubtedly some resemblances to Kaldean art, and Greek art may have drawn some early inspi- rations from it. It is a White man's art, for the figures always have good proportions, and never the big heads, short bodies, and tiny legs of African art. This would militate against the view that the Egyptians were a mixture of Semitic and Negro stock. There is little resemblance to South Asiatic art or East Asiatic art, and I can see nothing but accidental resemblances to Mexican art.^^ Arab Art. Arab art had its origin in Arabia and Egypt, in the beginning of the seventh century A. D. Its peculiarities and deficiencies are clearly due to the teaching of the religion of Muhammed to Orientals, and Arab art might therefore equally well be called the art of El Islam. The Muhammxedans, „ 55 c. F, Keary: The Dawn of History, 1898. Dr. Flinders Petrie: A History of Egypt. Dr. Petrie assigns the date 4777 B. C. as the probable beginning of the First Dynasty, and the date 1327 B. C. as that of the Nineteenth. He thinks art goes back to at least 4500 B. C, and that it rose to its height in the Fourth Dynasty, 3998-3721 B. C, when it was unique in its splendor; then that it deteriorated, to rise again in the Twelfth Dynasty, 2778-2565 B. C, and then that it deteriorated once more. Professor G. Steindorflf: Baedeker' s Egypt, 1902. Prof. Stein dor ff dates the earliest historic period before 2500 B. C, the Fourth to Sixth Dynasties from 2500 to 2200 B. C, and the Twelfth to Four- teenth Dynasties from about 2200 to 1700 B. C, and he thinks it was during these periods that art reached its high level. R. Talbot Kelly; Egypt, Painted and Described, 1902. ARAB ART. 71 Arabs and others, were forbidden by their reUgion from using human or animal figures in their art. But as the Arab race unquestionably has a love and feeling for color and decoration, they were impelled to satisfy their artistic desires in some way, and they did so in their dress, in their architecture and its decorations, and they certainly produced some ex- cellent art. It seems probable that Arab art was partly an evolution from Roman art and Byzantine art. The Arabs at first simply took the buildings the Romans and early Christians had left and adapted them to their own purposes. As they were not allowed to mimic the forms of humans, they began by applying colors in broad masses, and gradually developed a form of interior carving or plaster work with curiously interwoven designs and patterns, which often are most artistic. The most beautiful Arab art I have myself seen is the palace of the Bey of Tunis at the Bardo and the Musetim at the Bardo. There are many tiles which have decorations in black, blue, green, yellow, but almost no red. The patterns are almost all taken from flowers, altho there are some which are so conventionalized as decorations that it is impossible to tell the original motives. There are a few at- tempts at suggesting panthers and lions, but these are almost formless and show utter lack of drawing and observation. Still these attempts show that 72 COMPARATIVE ART. Moslems did not always altogether obey their pro- phet but that they sometimes tried to limn animals in defiance of his prohibition. It is from the Moors of Spain that the Dutch obtained their start in tile making, an art in which they have excelled. Ger- mans from the Rhine provinces brought this art of tile making in the eighteenth century to Pennsyl- vania, where it was then lost, and only revived within a few years by Mr. Henry C. Mercer, of Doylestown, Pennsylvania — a curious instance of the wandering of arts. A noticeable feature of Arab buildings is their coolness in hot weather. They are built with thick walls, and to enter one on a warm day is almost like going into a cellar. This comes because, doubtless unconsciously on the part of the builders, they are built something like a glaciere, with an opening at the top, generally over a court. There are rather massive doors and almost no windows. The re- sult is that the cold air of night sinks down into the rooms, and as there are few draughts, the hot air of the daytime floats above and does not displace the cold air which remains in the house because of its greater weight.^^ If the Arabs show but little sense of form, the sense of color is certainly a national characteristic, for in the thousands of native costumes one sees in ^^ Edwin Swift Balch : Glacier es or Freezing Caverns, Philadelphia, Allen, Lane & Scott, 1900. ARAB ART. 73 Tunis and Algeria the colors are usually pale and soft and almost never glaring. And unconsciously the men drape themselves as beautifully as Greek statues. This can hardly be said of the women's clothes, however, which seem to be made purposely with as ugly lines as possible. Arab art spread far and wide from its starting point. It went all over North Africa to Morocco, and thence into Spain, where it left the splendid remains of the Alhambra and the great Mosque at Cordova. It spread eastward into Persia and thence into Hindtistan and into Turkestan, to Khiva, Bok- hara and Samarkand. There is some of it in Russia, since there is an interesting, if plain, mosque at Nijni-Novgorod. The Spaniards naturally adopted Arab art to a certain extent, and took it over with them to Mexico, and even to-day, in New York and Florida, and Paris and London, there are structures and rooms whose architecture or whose decora- tions are taken directly from the art devised by the Arabs as a result of the behests of Muhammed.^^ African Art. All over Africa, practically, south of the Sdhara,^® one finds an art which is certainly independent of ^^ Eugene Fromentin : Une Annee dans le Sahel. Un Ete dans le Sahara. These two books are gems of literature, both as narratives of travel and as criticisms of the fine arts. R. Talbot Kelly: Egypt, Painted and Described, 1902. ^'' The name Sahara, is pronounced with the three "a's" broad, as in "all" or "art." The first and third "a" are long, the second "a" is very short. The English pronunciation is entirely wrong. 74 COMPARATIVE ART. Kaldean, Egyptian or East Asiatic art. This may be called African art. The specimens of this art which I have seen from Lagos, Dahomey, Ashantee, the Kongo, Bechuanaland, Matabeleland, Lake Mweru, Lake Bangweolo, and Uganda, are mostly wooden sculptures of a recent date. They are characterized by their big heads, small bodies, tiny legs, and the exaggeration of the salient points of the anatomy. From Ashantee^^ there are some remarkable wooden figures, from about thirty centimeters to one meter high. They are dead black, thin and perfectly straight. Their proportions are all wrong, the necks, for instance, being immensely and absurdly long. Some of the heads, on the contrary, render features and expression forcibly. From Dahomey, Lagos and other parts of the west coast of Africa there are a small number of figures from about twenty to seventy-five centi- meters high.^° These are painted over. They are evidently recent, and certain hats and clothes on these figures show that they date since the advent of Europeans. Nevertheless, they have the chief char- acteristics of African art, such as big heads and dwarfed legs, while the prominent parts of the anatomy are always exaggerated. These figures do not resemble the art of Great Benin, and it is curious ^» British Mus. •" British Mus. AFRICAN ART. 75 that at Benin some semi-European art character- istics should be foimd, while in the surroimding parts of West Africa, even where Europeans have traded, African characteristics kept to the fore. From Sobo Yakaba and other places in the lower Niger country®^ there are some interesting if hideous figures. They have large heads and short legs, and they are very black, with white and red eyes and mouths. From Yoruba and from North Nigeria^^ there are some door posts or sticks on which several fig- ures are carved one over the other. There is an apparent similarity in the art idea, but practically none in the technic, between these posts and Alaska totem poles. From the upper Kongo®^ come some rough wooden figures from about twenty centimeters to one meter high. The head is usually disproportionately large. The eyes are sometimes set in or painted. The legs are much too small. Among some specimens®* obtained from the natives of the lower Kongo are some elephants' tusks, with animals, birds and humans carved on them. These are modem, as shown by some buttons on a waistcoat. The bodies of these himians are small as compared to the head. Some ugly wooden '* British Mus. «2 British Mus. '^ British Mus. Bantu tribes: iron workers. " Carnegie Mus., Pittsburg. Collected by Mr. Walter Karl. 76 COMPARATIVE ART. figtires from the lower Kongo, also have enormous heads and small bodies; the eyes are white with black pupils. These Kongo natives have some glimmering notions of art, but the relation between body and head is remarkable. From Lake Mweru®^ there are some curious stools in which a woman with a big head supports the seat. These are rather grotesque. From the Zulus^® there are a few poorly done small wooden figures. From Mashonaland^^ come some instruments with pattern markings. From the Orange Free State there is a wooden figure, ^^ tinted red and black, which has a large head and small body, but the proportions are less extreme than in figures from the Kongo. From Uganda®^ I have seen no art work except some pottery with a few decorative lines. Some illustrations, ''^ however, show that the Baganda and the Hima make some rather elaborately decorated pottery. From Abyssinia''^ I have seen only a little deco- rative art. From Benin City come some extraordinary bronze ®5 British Mus. '* British Mus. The Zulus are said to be Bantu or Negro-Hamitic. «7 British Mus. ** Carnegie Mus., Pittsburg, Loaned by Mr. Bernard Lepper, 1903. "' British Mus. The Baganda are said to be Bantu or Negro-Hamitic. '" Sir Harry Johnston: The Uganda Protectorate, 1902. '* British Mus. AFRICAN ART. 77 castings/^ They are usually plaques, from about thirty to seventy-five centimeters high, with from one to seven figures on each plaque. These figures are, in almost all cases, modelled in high relief, fvill face. They all seem to have on helmets, generally with a piece going over the chin, and they wear a sort of skirt. The features are native, but there are a few plaques representing Europeans in costumes of the sixteenth century. The proportions of these figures are better than in the case of most African art, nevertheless the bodies and legs are imdersized in relation to the heads. There are also some high relief castings of animals, such as leopards, croco- diles, fishes and snakes. Besides these are some sculptures, not on panels, of cast bronze. One or two of the figures are good and show fairly good sciilpture; a large chicken is well observed and modelled. There are also some nicely carved ele- phants' tusks. It is evident that there was Euro- pean influence in the starting of this art, which is sui generis, in many ways imlike other African art, and interesting in showing what Africans can do artistically when started in an art which is not in- stinctive to them.^^ African art, in one instance, has wandered across the Atlantic Ocean. This has happened in the '^ British Mus. The inhabitants are stated to be pure negroes, who were discovered by the Portuguese in the fifteenth century. '^ H. Ling Roth: Great Benin, its customs, arts and horrors, 1903. 78 COMPARATIVE ART. case of the Republic of Haiti, for from there come two rather ancient rough wood carvings/* one of two figures, about forty centimeters high, the other of one figure, about seventy centimeters high. These have the characteristics of African art, and their parentage is self-evident. Zimbabwe Art. There are some remains in Abyssinia, principally megaliths, and in Southeast Africa a certain num- ber of towns and fortresses, with megaliths and some art works, about whose origin there is much diversity of opinion. The biggest of these ruins is Zimbabwe, which was reported by Portuguese already in the six- teenth century. Illustrations of Zimbabwe show massive walls, a nimiber of monoliths and meg- alithic stones, and a good deal of a rough kind of art. The best relics of this art are big birds which are carved sitting on the tops of soapstone beams. They are rather large, about a meter and a half high, and generally represent eagles or vultures which are decidedly conventional in design and poor representations of nature. Some of the travellers who have examined Zim- babwe incline to the opinion that the remains were built by ancestors of the tribes still living in the coimtry. Others think that the builders of Zim- ''* Smithsonian Inst. ZIMBABWE ART. 7f babwe came from a northern stock, and that they were related to the Phenicians, Egyptians and Arabs. The big birds, however, seem to ehminate an Arab origin, as the Arabs did not model animals. The illustrations published of them also are. not siifficient to decide whether they really resemble any Egyptian or Phenician work. Nor do they appear to resemble average South African art specimens. The Bushmen and the natives of Benin City, how- ever, could do as good and even better art work. Not having seen any original specimens from Zimbabwe, I feel I can only give the problem, namely that its builders may have been of Phe- nician or Egyptian stock, or that some South African tribe may have temporarily advanced into an im- usual state of social organization and later retro- graded therefrom, and state that my own opinion is in favor of the latter theory.^® Bushman Art. In various places in Africa, principally south of the Zambezi, art works, paintings, sctilptures, and bas reliefs, have been found, which are the work ""^ Dr. O. Dapper: Beschreibung von Africa " Map," Amsterdam, Jacob van Meiirs, MDCLXX. J. Theodore Bent: The Sacred City of the Ethiopians, 1893. J. Theodore Bent: The Ruined Cities of Mashonaland, 1892. P. C. Selous: Travels and Adventures in South-east Africa, 1893. R. N. Hall: Great Zimbabwe, Mashonaland, Rhodesia, 1905. David Randall Maclver: Mediaeval Rhodesia, 1906. 80 COMPARATIVE ART. of the interesting and now almost extinct race of the Bushmen. I have myself seen only two or three little original specimens of this art/^ not enough to form a reliable opinion. They have some resemblance to Pleistokene and Eskimo draw- ings. Some illustrations of their paintings or engrav- ings on rocks, however, have been published, which enable one to form an opinion at second hand.'^^ The colored illustrations published in Mr. Stow's book are probably the best accessible reproductions of Bushman art, and of these, the plates repre- senting "Ostrich hunting," "Hippopotamus and gnus," "Elands hunted by lions," are the most remarkable examples. Bushman art works represent various wild ani- mals, such as elephants, buffaloes, antelopes, ant- bears, apes, ostriches, and some humans. In the reproductions the paintings look like flat wash drawings. They show observation, action, spirit, some pictorial composition, some good drawing, and some observation of local color. They give decidedly the character of the men and of the ani- mals, and as usual with primitive races, the animals '* British Mus. : some models of Bushmen have negroid features and yellowish skins. '^ J. Theodore Bent: The Ruined Cities of Mashonaland, 1892. F. C. Selous: Travels and Adventures in South-east Africa, 1893. Sir Charles Warren: On the Veldt in the Seventies, 1902. George W. Stow: The Native Races of Souih Africa, edited by George McCall Theal, 1905. BUSHMAN ART. 81 are better drawn than the men. The legs of the animals are apt to be only partly drawn, and this may be due to the legs being concealed by the herb- age when the animals were in sight of the artist. There is a strong feeling for form and action, and a little modelling. The drawings show observa- tion and memory; they are simple and show that the artists were impressed with the animals and hunting scenes they saw, and that they tried to record their impressions. Some of the illustrations of Bushman art show a distinct idea of making a picture. The " Ostriches " from a cave in the Her- schel district'^^ has some idea of a rough perspec- tive, while that as well as the picture of elands, ^^ have a distinct similarity to Japanese work. There is also an attempt at picture making in some scenes where the men are represented as trying to' drive off their neighbors' cattle. While the animals are entirely different from those represented by Pleistokene or Eskimo artists, the style of Bushman work has unquestionably much resemblance to that of Pleistokene work and some resemblance to that of Eskimo work. It certainly has no resemblance to African art. This is partic- ularly exemplified in Bushman htmians, in which the proportions are fairly accurate. The heads are noticeably small, a characteristic never found '* The Native Races of South Africa, page 82. " The Native Races of South Africa, page 172. 82 COMPARATIVE ART. in Negro work. The hips, buttocks, and calves are highly accentuated. The Bushmen depended upon disguises and cau- tious approach to get near their game, and upon poisoned arrows to kill it. In their pictures they represented often huntsmen and warriors using dis- guises of the skins and horns of animals, like ante- lopes or zebras, or the head and wings and feathers of birds, such as vultures or ostriches, when hunting. These were representations of fact and not symbols with them, but such hunting disguises may have been the origin of many of the bull, eagle, lion and other animal headed figures which were developed principally among the Egyptians.^^ As many as five distinct series of paintings, one over the other, were found at a rock shelter on the banks of the Imvani river in South Africa.^^ Old Bushmen asserted that the productions of an artist were always respected as long as any recollection of him was preserved in his tribe; but when his memory was forgotten, another painter appropri- ated the limited rock surface of the shelter for his own efforts. This would allow perhaps five hun- dred years to the underlying painting in the Imvani rock shelter. There are similar overlying layers of paintings in the Pleistokene caves of France; these are probably due to the same causes, and these *" The Native Races of South Africa. ^^ The Native Races of South Africa, page 26. BUSHMAN ART. 83 facts might be adduced as evidence that the Pleisto- kenes were the ancestors of the Bushmen. The Bushmen do not appear to have destroyed sculptured rocks, in the same way as they did paintings, by placing other sculptures over them. Some of these sculptures are certainly old and I from some cracks and wearing of the rocks on | which they are done, they may be estimated as ! dating from several thousand years ago.^^ There is much evidence that the Bushmen were in South Africa thousands of years back; that they probably came from the north; that they have some Mongolian characteristics; that they were gradually hemmed in and crushed, first by an in- vasion of black races from the north, and then by a white invasion from the south.^^ It seems not im- possible that the Pleistokenes were wiped out in a similar manner by some succeeding race in Europe. It seems possible that the Central African pygmies are a remnant of the Bushman race which did not advance to the south. It is said that these pyg- mies have a good idea of drawing, and that with a sharpened stick they can delineate in the sand and mud the beasts and some of the birds with which they are familiar.®* It may be, of course, that living in savagedom by ** The Native Races of South Africa. *' The Native Races of South Africa. ^* Sir Harry Johnston: The Uganda Protectorate, 1902. 84 COMPARATIVE ART. hunting, under somewhat similar conditions of exist- ence, similar art ideas may spring up in different races, and it may be, therefore, that Bushman art is purely autochthonous. Still, there is nothing in their arts which militate against the view that the Pleistokenes, Bushmen and Eskimo were the same people; on the contrary, the art evidences favor such a belief. Since it seems established that the Bushmen were early inhabitants of South Africa, it seems to me that the Bushmen may well be a remnant of the race which left the paintings in the caves of France, and that they may have migrated thru North Africa and the Nile Valley at some remote period, while another tribe of the Pleistokene race may have wandered north and still inhabit the shores of the Arctic Ocean. If this is so, the Bushmen and the Eskimo are the living representa- tives of the earliest race known to us. Kaldean Art. Some thousands of years ago, a people, in a state of advanced social organization, dwelt for a long time on the plains across which the Euphrates and the Tigris find their way to the Persian Gulf. In this country, which we call Kaldea, some art grew up, probably about or before 5000 B. C. A fragment supposed to date from this time^^ would lead one to *' Univ. of Penna. Mus. Arch. KALDEAN ART. SS guess that Kaldean art was at first possibly a kind of picture writing. There are some remains of slabs with bas-reliefs, dating supposedly in the neighborhood of 4000 B. C, which show most limited knowledge and observa- tion, and in which the drawing is stiff and archaic. A circular bas-relief antedating King Our-Nina, in which the humans have shaved heads and big noses, is also not impressive. The best of these early bas-reliefs perhaps are the fragments known as the Steele of Vultures of the time of King Eannadou, representing the celebration of some victory. The warriors wear helmets, apparently with nose-pieces or else they have enormous noses; their figures are archaic or at least stiff, and the artistic conception resembles the later Assyrian work. There are a nimiber of these early bas-reliefs and in some the face is drawn full or nearly full, and these are perhaps as early attempts to draw the full face as there are in art.^ There are some fine examples of engravings on metal from Kaldea. The best is the splendid silver vase supposed to be of the reign of King Entemena, about 3950 B. C.®^ It has four lion headed eagles, also deer, decorative lions and ibexes; the lion heads of the eagles are full face. The interesting thing about this early Kaldean ** Louvre. Found principally by Mens. De Sarzec. "^ Louvre. 86 COMPARATIVE ART. art, from the standpoint of comparative art, is that it does not resemble Chinese, Japanese or Greek art at all and Egyptian art scarcely at all. With a jump of over a thousand years we come to some most remarkable art. These are the black diorite or dolerite statues^^ from Tello in Kaldea, one of Our-Baou, the others of Goudea, both patesis or rulers of Sirpoula. They are assigned to about 2700 B. C. There are ctmeiform inscriptions on some of them. There is decided realism in these large statues which are all in repose. The figures are perhaps rather squat and not sufficiently slender in their proportions. They are evidently observed from nature and certain portions are carefully studied out. The hands have long slim fingers, the skin around the base of the toe nails is indicated and the nails are cut square across, as some surgeons contend they should be. How the originals could have kept their toe nails this way imless they had scissors, is hard to understand. Most of the statues have had the head broken off. A small sitting one, however, either has its original head or one has been fitted to it. There are several separate heads, however. The eyebrows meet and their hair rises to a ridge. In some the top of the head is covered with a sort of superstructure which is supposed by some archeologists to be a cap *' Nine in the Louvre. One in the British Mus. Found by Mons. De Sarzec. KALDEAN ART. 87 or turban. In fact one of them is known as the Grande tete h turban de Goudea. Mrs. Balch, however, discovered that these heads are not wear- ing a turban at all, but that it is probably the hair, tight, crisp and curly, which is dressed into what looks like a turban. That it is hair may be inferred almost surely by looking at the Assyrian bulls^^ along whose sides hair is sculptured in precisely the same conventionalized manner as the hair on the heads of Goudea. These statues are really fine and show marked observation, knowledge of proportion and sculptural ability. There is nothing archaic about them. They are far superior to any Assyrian work and to most Egyptian work, and my opinion is that they are on a par with fine Greek sculpture. There is a striking resemblance in the quiet seated pose to many Egyptian statues, and also to the great seated Buddhas of Cochin China, China and Japan. Yet the artistic handling of all three arts is sufficiently dis- tinct to point to a certain amount at least of au- tochthonous origin for each. Can it be, however, that these statues come from some earlier parent type, now either destroyed or imknown, in Central Asia or India ? From approximately the same time there are also numerous statuettes, some ot stone, some of copper.^ Some of the heads are shaved, and when "' Louvre. Dug up by Mons. P. E. Botta. ••• Louvre. 8S COMPARATIVE ART. the nose is intact it is always a big nose. The type of all these heads is entirely different from those of Mexican or Peruvian statuette heads, so different in fact as to show almost positively that the races must be different. A small vase or bowl in green steatite, with seven small figures around it, is most original art. Some small human copper figurines are not bad and one or two have a lot of swing and action. Several of them, who appear to be hanging on to posts, look much like German gnomes. Some of these copper figures are greenish and are all eaten away with verdigris. Some small, ill-done statuettes of bulls with human heads, a few good animals, notably a cast copper bull's head, and some quaint specimens of decorative art are interesting. A vase of about the time of Goudea which has two fantastic animals, one on each side of a pair of entwined snakes, is, as far as I know, rather unlike the art of any other nation. There are some engrav- ings on shells, some of which, notably one of an ibex, are good.®^ There are also some terra cotta statuettes from Kaldea. Many of these are stiff and poor. Some dating from about 2500 B. C. from Niiffar®^ are somewhat shapeless, but the small waist of the •* These are all in the Louvre. '^ Univ. of Penna., Mus. Arch. Dug up by Prof. Hilprecht and Dr. Peters. KALDEAN ART. 89 nude females is exaggerated to an unusual degree for such early art. Some small nude female figures also^^ are lying on their left side with their right arm on their right hip and these are possibly of a later date. They resemble some Etruscan figures,®* and I am inclined to think the latter are descended from Kaldean art. Later, Kaldean art deteriorates and shows out- side influences. On some so-called Jewish incanta- tion bowls of the ninth and eighth centuries B. C.,®® the figures are shapeless and grotesque. About this time, the Kaldeans still made com- memorative slabs. A marble tablet of King Nabu- Apal-Iddina, 850 B. C.?,^ represents a king ap- proached by three men. The figtires are stiff, ill drawn, and quite unlike the art of the Goudeas, re- sembling, on the contrary, exactly early Assyrian art. From the latest edifice at Nuffar come some terra cottas on which are faces and figures decidedly Greek in style. ®^ These belong to a Hellenistic and Roman, generally known as Parthian, period, of the last three or four centuries B. C, which shows a weld- ing of Greco-Roman and Oriental elements and a short lived new civilization and art. '^ Louvre. '* Museo Nazionale, Palermo. ^^ Univ. of Penna. Mus. Arch. Found at Nuffar by Prof. Hil- precht. '* British Mus. Found by Mr. Rassam at Abu Hadda. ^' Univ. of Penna. Mus. Arch. Found by Prof. Hilprecht and Dr. Peters. 90 COMPARATIVE ART. A noteworthy ethnological point in Kaldean art are the noses in the bas-reliefs. These are enormous. The types of head in these bas-reliefs resemble As- syrian art types and Persian art types; they do not much resemble Egyptian art types. As far as the faces in art count as ethnological evidence, it may be looked on as tolerably certain that the Kal- deans, Assyrians and old Persians were the same race, the one we speak of ethnologically as Semitic, and that it is the race which to-day is holding its own everywhere under its other name, the Jew. The Kaldean and Assyrian noses in the bas-reliefs also resemble strongly, altho not entirely, the noses of some Mexican bas-reliefs. Altho there is prob- ably no direct relationship between these races, yet the resemblance is noteworthy. On the whole, I cannot see any real resem- blance between Kaldean art and the art of the Pleistokenes, of the Greeks, of the Hindus or of the East Asiatics, and this leads to the con- clusion that probably it was autochthonous. It was certainly the parent of Assyrian art and old Persian art, at least partly of what art the Phenic- ians had, and therefore perhaps also the parent of the art of Zimbabwe, and for the same reason, therefore, it probably had an influence at Carthage and in Etruria. It looks as if there was a great art, of the Semitic or Jewish race, which sprang up autochthonously in Kaldea and afterwards de- ASSYRIAN ART. 91 generated and finally died out under less congenial environment.®^ Assyrian Art. The northern reaches of the Euphrates and the Tigris were at one time, about 1500 to 600 B. C, the home of the warlike Assyrian nation. Little or nothing remains of this, however, except what has come down to us of their art. Most of this is in the form of high relief slabs, and in smaller bits of sculp- ture in the roimd.^® Assyrian art must certainly be a descendant of Kaldean art, and a first cousin of Hittite art. It has a slight resemblance to Egyptian art and some of it has a slight resemblance to some Greek art. None of the Assyrian figures Shows as careful observation of form as the statues of Gou- dea. In fact, all the Assyrian high reliefs and bas- reliefs are much inferior as art to the Goudeas, altho they are more spirited and pictorial than Babylo- nian slabs. The earlier Assyrian art is stiffer and more archaic , than the later. It rises to its height towards the ! eighth and seventh centtiries, B. C, and then gradu- ally dies out. There is plenty of life and action in many of the scenes represented on slabs, in which a considerable facility of picture making appears. Many of these represent scenes of war " L^on Heiizey: Catalogue des Antiquites Chaldeennes, Mus^e National du Louvre, 1902. H. v. Hilprecht: Explorations in Bible Lands, Philadelphia, 1903. " Louvre. British Mus. Boston Mus. Fine Arts. 92 COMPARATIVE ART. and fewer represent scenes of peace. Hunting, especially lion hunting, incidents are common. In fact the inference from their art is that the Assyr- ians were a militant and sporting nation. Not all the slabs, however, are pictorial, for some of them, for instance some bronze panels of Shalmanezer II, about 860-825 B. C.,^°° representing events in the life of that king, are rude, more like rows of individ- ual figures, than like pictures. The human faces in these slabs are generally, but not always, in profile, doubtless because a profile is easier to draw than a full face. The eye, however, always appears "full face" which points to Egyp- tian art as a relation. Most of the Assyrian faces are of a strongly Semitic type. Some of the feet of the Assyrian high reliefs are excellent ; most are bad. They are generally, perhaps always, in profile, even when the figure is full face. Two enormous figures^^^ in high relief, holding big cats, possibly cheetahs, in their arms, show this peculiarity most forcibly. A good example of their figures is a fine, over life- sized portrait of King Asshumazirapal, about 905- 860 B. C.,^°^ showing his side face, with square beard and earrings; it is decidedly impressive, even if the hands are pudgy and shapeless. The animals most commonly represented in As- loo British Mus. Found by Mr. Rassam. ^"^ Louvre. ^"^ Boston Mus. Fine Arts. ASSYRIAN ART. 93 Syrian art are the lion and the horse. They have many of the characteristics of the figures, and tho there is plenty of life and movement, yet the ani- mals are apt to be rather stiff and wooden. This is, for instance, the case in two slabs of "a lion hunt" and "sacrifice at a return from a lion hunt" from Koyunjik, dating from the reign of Ashurbanapal, about 668-626 B. C. ;^°^ and a slab "warrior killing a lion " from Nimrud, ninth century. ^°^ In most of the slabs the horses have their long tails tied or boimd in the middle by an encircling band, and whenever gal- loping horses are represented they have the incorrect action of opening their legs like scissors, which was in vogue in Europe in the nineteenth century until the advent of instantaneous photography. This is one of those points which might almost be called a racial characteristic, as one does not find it in East Asiatic art. The finest example of pure art which I have seen from Assyria also comes from Koyxmjik in the seventh century. This is the bas-relief of a wounded lioness. -^^^ She is half raised from the ground on which her paralyzed hind quarters are dragging, with her mouth wide open, and with three arrows in her, one of which has gone clean thru and is protruding on both sides. There is fine draw- ls British Mus. "^ British Mus. "5 British Mus. Cast, Boston Mus. Fine Arts. 94 COMPARATIVE ART. ing, composition, expression, action, in fact it is master's work, worthy of any sculptor. Interesting examples of Assyrian art are the great winged bulls from the palace of Sargon at Khorsabad of the eighth century B. C}^ and the enormous human headed winged lions from Nim- j^^ 107 There are cuneiform inscriptions on these and they all have pronounced Semitic type heads. In the case of the bulls, the horns come in as part of the headdress, the ribs show tmder the skin, and in places they have curly conventionalized hair. In these figures there seems to be a connection with the Hindus, in their animal headed statues of Vishnu, Ganesh, etc., and with the Egyptians, when they placed the heads of animals on a human body, or, as in the case of the Sphinx, a human head on an animal's body. A few art remains have been found in Asia Minor, Syria and Assyria, which are attributed to the Hit- tites, the supposed ancestors of the Armenians, and which are believed to date somewheres between 1500 B. C. and 700 B. C. I have not seen any originals of the art of the Hittites, but only some casts of Hittite slabs, ^°* in which the htmians have enormous noses. These slabs are distinctly like As- syrian slabs, only rougher and more shapeless. "« Louvre. Found by Mons, P. E. Botta. ^"^ British Mus. Found by Sir Austen Henry Layard. "8 u. S. Nat. Mus., Washington. PHENICIAN ART. 95 They are far inferior to Kaldean art, and the art of the Hittites is really probably nothing but a rough branch of Assyrian art.^°^ Phenician Art. During the last two millenniums B. C, about 1500 B. C. to 1 A. D., some men whom we speak of as Phenicians lived on the eastern and southern shores of the Mediterranean. They were probably early inhabitants of Syria and Palestine, crossed with some Kaldeans and Assyrians, and by some emi- grants from overfilled Egypt who swarmed north- ward into Syria and westward along the North African coast. As far as I know they did not de- velop any special art of their own. From somewhere in the so-called Phenicia, prob- ably Syria, comes the sarcophagus believed to be that of Emunazar, King of Sidon, Phenicia,"^ and this is absolutely Egyptian. From Selinunte in Sicily also there are one or two sphinxes with wings,^" Egyptian or Assyrian in style, showing that there was some Egyptian or Phenician influence there. Carthage, however, seems to be the most im- portant relic of the Phenicians. While its later art is Greek and Roman, some of the specimens **" H. v. Hilprecht: Explorations in Bible Lands, Philadelphia, 1903, pages 753-793. ^*" Louvre. Found by Mons. P^r^tr^. m Museo Nazionale, Palermo. 96 COMPARATIVE ART. have an Egyptian quality. It is not easy, however, to tell who the artists were. The Phe Blanc who took me thru the Musee Lavigerie at Car- thage, told me he believed the earliest race in Car- thage were descendants of Shem or Turanians. This is in touch with what Professor H. V. Hil- precht told me he thought about Babylonia, namely, that it was first inhabited by a yellow race. The Pere Blanc thought the Carthaginians were Phe- nicians, descendants of Kaldeans, not Egyptians, and their worship of Baal seems to point to this. None of the art of Carthage resembles in the slightest East Asiatic art or African art, but some few implements dug up are similar to some re- cently found among the tribes near Lake Tang- anika. Persian Art. There was a good deal of art in Persia during the end of the last millennium B. C. While this Persian art may have developed directly from Kal- dean art, it more closely resembles Assyrian art. As some Persian remains are supposed to date back to 400 or 500 B. C, Persian art, therefore, seems rather like a cousin than a descendant of Assyrian art. The best accessible specimens of Persian art are now in Paris. "^ The model of the palace or temple of Darius at Sousa, about 404 B.C., shows a building "'^ Louvre. Dug up by Mons. and Mme. Maurice Dieulafoy. PERSIAN ART. 97 with great columns, which more nearly resembles an Egyptian than a Greek temple. On some of the colimms were enormous bulls' heads. The broken pieces of the top of one of these columns have been put together, and it is a most impressive piece of sculpture, with splendid plastic qualities. It was taken from the Salle du trone d'Artaxerses Mnemon, There was a sort of frieze, the Cou- ronnement des Pylones, of which there are plaster cast restorations. This had on it fierce lions in colored low relief. They seem to be made out of greenish enamelled bricks, a bit of the animal on each brick, and they are so well joined that the artistic effect of each animal is fine. The old Persians evidently had a wholesome respect for the lion, for their artistic counterfeits are anything but meek. Another reproduction is given of a piece of another frieze, the Frise des Archers, This is also in colored low relief, made apparently of separate enamelled bricks, in which a bit of each figure was cast or moulded with each brick, and then joined together with wonderful artistic re- sults. The predominant colors are greens, yellows, and blues. The figures represent archers, sculpted in profile and the appearance of the men is strangely Assyrian. Some tiles from Persia"^ have almost the same colors as those of the Bardo at Timis, blue, green, ^^3 Louvre. 98 COMPARATIVE ART. yellow, white and black. I do not know, however, their date. The Persian art of the second millennium A. D., is evidently White man's art, and is closely in touch with Hindu art of two or three centuries ago. Some small Persian pictures^^* of about 1600 A. D., are not unlike those of the Livre des Merveilles, the beau- tifully illuminated Middle Age manuscript in the Biblioth^que Nationale in Paris, which contains the travels of Marco Polo. South Asiatic Art. Hindustan. In Southern and Eastern Asia, much art has been produced, which is more or less the same art. In its western habitat, this art is mainly of a White race type, whilst in its western habitat, it is largely mixed with a Yellow race type. It seems impossible to say whether this art was brought from more northern latitudes or whether it originated on the spot: most probably it is largely autochthonous. Hin- dustan is the main center, and it extends into Afghanistan, Ceylon, Burma, Siam, Java, Bali, Tibet, and under Buddhistic forms, into China, Korea, and Japan; and it is barely possible that some of it travelled further into Mexico. From such specimens as I have seen, I should say that Hindu art was of a White race, not a Yellow race type. ^^* Boston Mus. Fine Arts. SOUTH ASIATIC ART. 99 A number of Hindu statuettes,"® incarnations of Vishnu, the preserver, principally of porcelain, show distinctly the white type of head. The proportions of the figures are fair. One of the incarnations, Narasimha Avatar, has a lion head; another, Ganesa, God of Wisdom, an elephant head. Others have the Buddha position, with the soles of the feet up. It is easy to see how this art led to the Bud- dhistic art of India, Ceylon, Cochin China, etc. It does not suggest Mexican art to me. The eye is the European eye. Earrings are worn, but the lobes of the ears are not specially big. The lion and elephant headed figures remind one of Assyrian and Persian human headed animals, and still more of Egyptian animal headed figures and of Bushmen him ting disguises, and it is probable that these animal headed figures sprang from the habit of hunters of covering themselves with the skins of animals and birds when stalking their game. Some photographs"^ and some lithographs"^ also ! show, to my mind, that Hindu art must be one of : the branches of White man's art. The observation is poor and immature; that is, for instance, the an- atomy is exaggerated much as is done in caricature ; the hips and bosoms of the women are enormous, while the waists are too small. Nevertheless, altho ""* U. S. Nat. Mus. **' James Ferguson: Tree and Serpent Worship, 1868, ^^' James Ferguson: Illustrations of the Rock Cut Temples of India, 1845. ^ 100 .COMPARATIVE ART. showing so much poor technic, yet all the resem- blances of the figures are to Whites, not to Yellows or Blacks. Hindu art has a certain resemblance to Greek and Roman art, little to Chinese or Japanese, less to Egyptian or Assyrian, and almost none to African or Australasian art. The heads do not sug- gest Mexican heads, and altho there is a wealth of ornamentation, as there is in Mexican art, still somehow Hindu ornamentation does not look to me like Mexican ornamentation. A reclining Buddha from India^^of porcelain, about sixty centimeters long, has the lengthened ear, but the face and eye are of European type. In another respect, some Hindu art resembles European, and that is in representing the galloping horse with its legs spread out like a pair of opened scissors. Some Hindu pictures certainly have this incorrect action. They are recent, however, and it may be that the Hindu artist got his idea from Euro- pean models. ^^® Some of this Hindu art blossomed as the result of the spread of the Buddhist religion, and as this sprang up in India, it points to India as the immediate fountain head of Buddhist art. The religious beliefs of Buddhism furnished the subjects, and these were elaborated, more or less successfully ac- "« U. S. Nat. Mus. *^' Univ. of Penna. Mus. Arch. Specimens brought from Peshawur by Prof. Maxwell Sommerville. SOUTH ASIATIC ART. 101 cording to the artistic abilities of the makers, in the different regions of Southern and Eastern Asia. Buddhist art, at first, could only have been a devel- opment of Hindu-Brahmanical art. As it naturally only took form after the death of Siddartha Gautama, the Buddha, and as the most authentic records place this event between about 800 to 600 B. C, Buddhist art cannot be older than that. It de- veloped principally in the form of temples, of statues and of paintings, much as did the art of Europe under the influence of Christianity, and just as there are Christian churches wherever Christianity has gone, so there are Buddhistic temples in almost all the countries to which Buddhism extended. Perhaps the most widely spread form of Buddhist art is the statues of the Buddha. As a rule, they are of human size, and are placed in temples, but some of them are colossal, as, for instance, at Bamian in Afghanistan, half way between Balkh and Cabul, where five great statues are reported, the biggest of which is about sixty meters high. Another is said to exist near a Jain settlement in southern India. There is a huge reclining statue of the Buddha at Bangkok, ^^° which is entirely covered with gold leaf, and the immense Daibutsz near Tokio shows the development of this statue in Japan. The seated Buddhas in their pose remind one '^" Comte de Beauvoir: Voyage autour du Monde, Paris, 1872. 102 COMPARATIVE ART. somewhat of the black dolerite statues of Goudea from Babylonia and some of the seated gods of Egypt. The expression of the faces is always placid, and a noteworthy feature is that the lobes of the ears in many cases are lengthened half way to the shoulder, a characteristic which probably originated in Southern Asia or in China. Several suggestions have been made as to why the lobes of the ears of the Buddhas are so elongated. I believe that the answer is simply that in early days in Eastern Asia, many men probably wore heavy earrings, which dis- tended and lengthened the lobe of the ears. I judge this from some kakemonos of Ririomin^^^ of about the eleventh century A. D., in which some of the figures of personages round the Buddha are wearing great earrings and have elongated lobes as well as him- self. These great elongated ears are also found in some of the statues from Rapa-Nui. Some tribes of India apparently have almost no art. From Assam^^^ there is scarcely anything like art work. Of the Koonds of Orissa^^^ likewise there is no art work. Ceylon. The art of Ceylon, as might be expected, is in all respects almost the same as the art of India. A statue of Vishnu from Ceylon^^^ is colored with *'* Boston Mus. Fine Arts. "2 British Mus. »" British Mus. . . "*U. S. Nat. Mus. SOUTH ASIATIC ART. 103 bright blues, yellows, and reds. It is at least two meters high. The head is of the white type, it has long ears with big earrings, and a head dress resem- bling a pagoda. There are four forearms and hands. A seated Buddha from Ceylon, ^^ some two meters high, is tinted with some kind of bright, waxy looking yellow. The feet are twisted into a seemingly impos- sible position with the soles upwards and the soles and even the under part of the toes have small paintings on them. The lower part of the ear is much lengthened. From Ceylon also come some hideous masks of which I have seen no examples coming from Hindu- stan. These masks are said to be Singhalese^^® and they strongly resemble some of the work made in Java. Burma. Burmese art seems to be a cross between Hindu art and Chinese art. It appears to be derived from Hindu art, with an admixture of Chinese art, that is it seems to be the art of a White race modified by the art of a Yellow race. This is apparent in some Buddhas from Burma^^^ which have some Hindu characteristics and also some Chinese char- acteristics. All the Burmese specimens I have seen "5 U. S. Nat. Mus. "* British Mus. The notice says the Singhalese came to Ceylon from Bengal about the sixth century B. C. "^ U. S. Nat. Mus. 104 COMPARATIVE ART. are Buddhistic, so they cannot be more than two thousand years old. Siam. Man has certainly dwelt in Cochin China from far back, judging by some implements taken from shell heaps near Lake Ton-le-Sap, in Cambodia.^^^ There were three strata : the upper contained bronze implements ; the middle, bronze and polished stone implements ; the lowest, polished stone implements. The lowest stratum is certainly many thousand years old. Siamese art seems to be derived mainly from Hindu art with an admixture of Chinese art. Some Siamese theatrical masks^^^ are painted emerald green and gilt, Indian red and gilt. A wooden statue of a gong beater from a temple in Siam^^*' has a face which strongly resembles these theatrical masks. These Siamese theatrical masks are distinctly local and individual, yet whilst sui generis, there is clearly Chinese as well as Hindu influence in them. They seem to be a combination of two forces. Java. Javanese art is one phase of South Asiatic art, and it is evidently derived from India and Cochin China. Some of it is individual enough to show that it must have grown up largely on the spot from "* U. S. Nat. Mus. Found by Prof. L. H. Jammes. "» U. S. Nat. Mus. i3» U. S. Nat. Mus. SOUTH ASIATIC ART. 105 racial characteristics, altho, as the specimens are of comparatively recent date, they are evidently only adaptations, and not in the least autochthonous. From Java there are many hideous masks^^^ painted in crude colors, which entirely resemble the masks of the Singhalese from Ceylon. There are also some queer grotesque highly colored and gilt figures, ^^^ on the average some thirty to fifty cen- timeters high. Two similar figures from the Island of Lombok, show that the makers of this art spread to some other places than Java. Buddhism also brought a wave of art to Java, and left its mark in some Buddhistic temples. Some half tones^^^ show the temples of Boro-Boedoer and Prambanan in the center of Java to be some- what pyramidal in form. Boro-Boedoer was built, it is believed, about the eighth or ninth century A. D. It consists of a number of terraces, rising one above the other to a height of thirty-five meters and it contains a number of seated Buddhas and no less than fifteen hundred and four bas-reliefs. Prambanan consists of a number of smaller temples together, and here also are many splendid bas-re- liefs of subjects in Hindu mythology. Hindu Bud- dhistic art, however, travelled beyond Java as is "* British Mus. ^^^ British Mus. Louvre, Mus. de Marine. ^^^ J. F. van Bemmelen and G. B. Hooyer: Guide through Nethef' lands India, 1903, pages 64-72. 106 COMPARATIVE ART. shown by an illiigtration^^* of a Buddhistic temple on the Island of Bali. It is rather curious that Javanese art has no ap- parent connection with Australasian art, especially as the art of the more western island Sumatra is clearly Australasian. Sumatra is, of course, still much more primitive than Java, and it may be that Java once belonged to the Australasian group, and that its earlier art has been replaced by South Asian art. Tibet. Tibetan art appears to come from both Hindu art and Chinese art. Some gilt brass or gilt bronze little seated figures from Kumbum, Tibet,^^^ are dis- tinctly of the White race type. Two of these fig- ures are of Tamdrin or Hayaguia. These have six arms and three eyes apiece, and the facial expres- sion is fierce. These would show that Hindu art crossed the Himalayas^^® into Tibet. A few of these little gilt figures suggest the Buddha with a Mongol face, showing a Chinese influence. It seems pos- sible that Hindu art and Chinese art met on the Tibetan plateau, and were modified somewhat by the local environing type of people. ^^* Guide through Netherlands India, page 188. 135 U. S. Nat. Mus. Collected by W. W. RockhiU. 13® The name Himalaya is a contraction of Hima-Alaya, meaning The Abode of Snow. The accent comes on the first a. The English mispronunciation is hopelessly incorrect. east asiatic art. 107 East Asiatic Art. In the central eastern half of the Asiatic con- tinent, in China and Japan, much art has been pro- duced. Some of it is wonderful, some is beautiful, some is commonplace, some is ugly, but almost all of it is interesting. As a rule it is different from Aryan, Semitic, African, or Amerind art, in fact, some of it seems almost as if it might have come from another planet. In their vital characteristics, the arts of China and Japan are decidedly similar. There are differences, of course, but these seem due as much to individuals, to epochs, or to local environments, as to separate racial peculiarities. Whether the people of China and Japan come from the same stock or from different stocks, it is certain that their art is closely akin. And the evidences of art would go to show that the Chinese and Jap- anese are a different people in the main from the Aryans and Semites, from the Afro- Australasians, • and from the Amerinds.^*^ I am perhaps all wrong in my belief, but to the best of my judgment, there are two arts, often blended, in East Asia, one of which is great and is probably autochthonous; while the other, Buddhist art, almost surely comes from Southeast Asia, and is often decidedly poor art. *^' This chapter is developed from a lecture on Japanese painting which I delivered before the Geographical Club of Philadelphia, in the Academy of Natural Sciences, at Philadelphia, on February 7, 1894. 108 COMPARATIVE ART. Japanese art almost surely came mainly from China . It is known that there were several waves in the art of Japan, and that it changed and progressed and retrograded at different times. There were several so-called schools of art in Japan, the Kano, the Tosa, the Ukioye, and others, all varying from one another, altho in the main following similar art canons. Japanese art extends back thru many centuries. In the fifteenth century A. D., for in- stance, we find Sesshiu, in some respects the greatest painter of Japan. In the twelfth century A. D., the Buddhist school was in blossom already, and there are said to be historical documents which in- dicate that Buddhist art came to Japan from China / somewhere about the fifth century A. D, There is some Japanese art, however, such as cer- tain small, grotesque figures, which, to my mind at least, has a strong resemblance to some Austral- asian art. It may be fancy, but it seems to me that there must have been blood relationship between some of the artists of Rapa-Nui, of Hawaii, of New 2^aland, and those of Zipangu, for certainly some of their productions have a family resemblance. The Koreans also sculpt some curious wooden figures. The only one I have seen^^^ is some two meters high, and has a small grotesque body, and a big hideous head, whose eyes have an oblique Mongol cast. When complete these images wear a hat, as "» U. S. Nat. Mus. EAST ASIATIC ART. 109 do the Rapa-Nm figures: they are sometimes used as guide posts and are set up along roads. An engraving entitled "A Japanese Tam O'Shanter"^^^ shows a Japanese army officer riding past six of these poles, whose tops are carved into hideous grinning heads. Underneath the engraving is printed, " These extraordinary carved figures are a striking feature in the landscape on the outskirts of villages in Korea. They are supposed to be able to frighten away evil spirits." The horseman's figure shows these poles to be some two or three meters high. The artistic resemblance of these Korean guide ' posts to Rapa-Nui statues, to Borneo funeral poles, and to Alaska totem poles is immistakable and would imply some similar art impulse or motive, even tho the object aimed at in erecting these poles is different in all four places. Of Chinese art we know less than of Japanese and how far back it goes is unknown. There were great Chinese artists during both the Ming and the Sung Dynasties, and one of their greatest painters, Kose-No-Kanaoka, flourished about the ninth cen- tury A. D. But as it is almost certain that Bud- dhist art came to Japan from China about the fifth century A. D., it stands to reason that art must have existed in China well before that and it doubtless antedates the Christian era, possibly by many cen- turies. Some persons claim that art came to China "9 The Booklovers' Magazine, July, 1904, Vol. LV., No. 1, page 122. 110 COMPARATIVE ART. from India and this in turn from Afghanistan, Persia, and Greece, perhaps as an accompaniment to the conquests of Alexander. ^^ This view I cannot accept, for in the first place Chinese art is probably as old or older than Greek art, and also for the reason that East Asiatic art seems to me radically different from Greek art. A good deal of Chinese art is Buddhistic and this undoubtedly comes from India thru Burma and Siam. There is certainly a near kin- ship between the great Buddhas of Ceylon, Siam, China and Japan. But I noticed in the case of two small statues^^^ of lacquered wood, about fifty centi- meters high each, one of Kwanti, Chinese god of war, and another of the Chinese god of peace, that altho there is a certain resemblance, yet that they look different from Btirmese or Siamese specimens. There is certainly an artistic resemblance in pose between the black dolerite statues of Goudea from Babylonia, some of the great statues of the valley of the Nile, and the great Buddhas of the far East. So much of a resemblance in fact, that it almost seems as though the Buddhas and the Goudeas may have come from the same foimtain-head. But there is no proof of anything of the kind, and it is not im- probable that this surmise is incorrect. I believe myself that most Chinese art was of autochthonous growth. Chinese writing was all ^*^ Theodore Duret: Critiques d'Avant Garde, Paris, 1885. "' U S. Nat. Mus. EAST ASIATIC ART. HI done with lamp-black ink, the so called India ink or encre de Chine, with a brush, and it is possible that a native pictorial writing was the foundation of Chinese art. At any rate, I should look myself for the beginnings of most Chinese art in China itself, but for any which may be extraneous, and that would be the Buddhistic religious art, I should look to India as the fountain-head. The East Asiatics evolved many methods of art expression: painting, sculpture, architecture, metal work, lacquers, etc. A comprehension of their painting, however, is of paramount importance for a proper understanding of their arts because these all depend on the faculty of design, which in China was, and in Japan still is, the great national esthetic characteristic. Among the Japanese this gift of design is expressed in their painting, their sculpture, their colored prints, their architecture, their metal work, their lacquers, their pottery, their tissues, their household belongings, in fact every article in daily use is touched all thru artistically by design. For instance, in Japan, the most useful articles about houses and temples are screens, with which separa- tions into inner rooms are made, and it is precisely on the screens that the finest paintings are found. Or again, the sword was the favorite weapon in Japan and therefore the metal working artists lavished on the hilts, guards, blades, and sheaths, all the resources of drawing, sculpture, casting and 112 COMPARATIVE ART. enamelling. In fact, all the arts of the East Asiatics are based on design, and to understand their arts, therefore, an elaborate study of their principles of design is necessary. The tools and materials for painting used by the East Asiatics were certainly invented by the Chinese, and the tools and materials themselves had a great influence on their art and necessarily helped to force it into something different from Aryan art. Pencils and pens, in fact stiff tools, were not invented by them, only soft brushes. Oil painting was not dis- covered by them, only water colors, in which an ab- solute imitation of nature is practically impossible. They painted on silk or on an absorbent paper, on either of which retouching and correcting are difficult. They were thereby driven into working h premier coup, which means that every touch, right or wrong, remains and helps to make or mar the picture. Their painting evolved into three most usual forms: screens, generally six panelled, some- times with one picture covering the whole screen, sometimes with a different subject on each panel; kakemonos, the things that are hung up, — these answering to the pictures that we hang on our walls ; and orihons or makemonos — the things that are spread out or the things that are rolled, — ^which are hand painted or printed picture books. The shape of the kakemono as a rule is a narrow upright water color and many fine screens simply EAST ASIATIC ART. 113 consist of six such water colors pasted on the six panels. There are many other shapes for kake- monos, however. The kakemonos are mounted on colored silk or brocades and in these mountings for paintings, the East Asiatics differ from all other races, so that from the point of view of the mount- ings alone, their paintings are absolutely autoch- thonous. From the purely utilitarian point of view also the result is admirable. The strength and flexibility of the material make it possible for the choicest works to be rolled up and stored away without fear of injury except by fire, and they are so light that they can be imrolled and hung up at a moment's notice. They are in marked contrast to our heavy, costly and fragile frames, whose only re- deeming quality is the gold. In fact, it seems as if the East Asiatics had long ago most nearly solved the problem of mounting pictures with their beauti- ful silk borders for their light and delicate kake- monos, which can be put away and only looked at for a brief spell of artistic enjoyment, instead of hang- ing on the wall until their owner becomes uncon- scious of their presence. The East Asiatics do not put their painting sur- face on an easel, and then stand or sit before it as we do, but they generally sit down on the floor with their paper or silk flat in their laps or on the floor. Generally they paint with the subject before them as it is to be looked at, but I have seen the Japanese 114 COMPARATIVE ART. artist Aoki painting his picture side wise or upside down. They never use a hard point, but always soft brushes, and these sometimes end in a fine point and sometimes are five or ten centimeters broad. The hand is held over the paper with a rather straight arm, and the brush is held vertically between the first and second fingers and touches the paper per- pendicularly. As much as possible the fingers and wrist are kept motionless and the strokes are put on from the shoulder or the elbow. From the different manner in which the Aryans and the East Asiatics apply paint to a flat surface, it is plain that there is a divergence in the artistic attitude of the two races. As a rule, the Aryan draws in an outline with a point and then puts in washes or smears of paint, eventually covering the entire paper or canvas. But the East Asiatic paints by spots and by lines of all sorts of sizes and shapes, and he rarely covers his paper. With him drawing and painting is one process: he does not draw and then paint, but he does both at once. Sometimes he uses only India ink, sometimes he uses colors, but the method and manner of handling are the same, and drawing and painting are simul- taneous. The right placing of the spots seems to be the first thought of the East Asiatic in creating a picto- rial work of art, that is, it is the composition, the pattern, he is thinking of. An American traveller, EAST ASIATIC ART. 115 going with a guide through some of the shops in T6kio, was taken to one filled with gorgeous objects with lavish decorations. "Are these made for your own connoisseurs and purchasers?" he asked. " Oh, no. They are made expressly for foreigners. It is their taste." " But I want to see what the Japanese admire." "Oh, you would see the few-pattern shops. That is something different." In the few- pattern shops the visitor had a feeling of his own incompetence. He coveted and enjoyed, but found himself lacking in some subtle sense possessed by the gentle and suave little men who showed him their treasures. The guide's expression " few-pattern ' ' well illustrates, I think, the point of departure of the East Asiatic artist. His first thought in creating a work of art is the pattern or composition. He be- lieves himself to be at his best when he is most simple. It is the "few-pattern" that pleases him most, and he will have it simple because to be simple and agreeable too it must be a good pattern. ' What the East Asiatic artists are trying for, in other words, in many cases is to suggest something in as few touches as possible, and trust to the mind of the onlooker to do the rest and an appropriate title for many of them would be "Suggestionists." The less there is of the material by which the sug- gestion is carried out, the better, as a rule, the Chinese and Japanese suggestionist seems to like it. He does not always want chiarosctiro and detail. 116 COMPARATIVE ART. He will not have too much. He is bored by the elaborations of weakness. He seeks a vital line. He will not have a half competent line helped out by two or three others. He seems able to look thru the paint at the artistic motive. He does not always care to copy nature, realizing that a work of art may be good and yet not a copy of nature, while a direct copy of nature may be bad. On the other hand, sometimes the East Asiatic finishes every detail to the limit. Mori Sosen, in his kakemonos of monkeys, well illustrates both of these characteristics. Some of them are in broad dabs without detail, while in others individual hairs are shown. In both methods his productions are all monkey, nothing but monkey, and with a little delicate water color on a sheet of pale silk he suggests these balls of soft fur enfolding flexible sinews, lazily resting, or giving vent to one of the swift expressions of monkey intelligence. The placing of the spots in the better work seems to be the result of the inborn taste and judgment of each individual painter. In a great deal of the cheaper work, however, it seems probable that the subjects or patterns are simply memorized copies of the work of better artists. In either case, however, the painters as a rule know how to place their picture on the silk in a way to make it effective and interest- ing, and the various lines and spots of color will almost always be found to have some direct relation EAST ASIATIC ART. 117 to the main composition. The stronger painters certainly put careful thought and real feeling into their work. A Japanese picture dealer once said to me, "Oh, we do not paint as you do. Our artists sometimes take a long time to think before they put down one stroke." Into the spaces, spots, lines and accents, enter, of course, endless modifications. Sometimes there is much material represented and the space is crowded. For instance, in a kakemono of some crows, hud- dled upon a branch against the moon, you are to feel night in a tree top and indistinct crowding forms. To attain this the design is large and dusky, filling the surface entirely. Sometimes the subject is dropped daintily upon the paper or silk, leaving wide spaces of untouched airy surface, as in a beautiful kake- mono of Hoitsu of some rocks on the seashore with two cranes flying overhead in the sunshine. Here the objects are small in a wide space, holding their own by clear positive assertion of form and action, the spaces of imtouched silk giving to the imagina- tive mind as good an impression of abimdant air and ocean as could an elaborate seascape of myriad waves and clouds. East Asiatic art is generally so different from Aryan art or Semitic art, that it is often thought to be all more or less alike, and its many varieties are not always recognized. It is often accused of being impersonal and conventional, which criticism 118 COMPARATIVE ART. is accurate only to the same extent that it is true of Aryan art. It is only want of knowledge that makes us think that all East Asiatic painting is from the same mold. For instance, Yoshimitzu, Yeitoku, Masanobu and Sosen are all good painters, but the style of each one is distinct from that of the others. Instead of saying style, however, it would be more accurate, perhaps, to say styles. For many of the East Asiatics, and the four just mentioned are good examples, had two styles, a rough strong style, and a delicate tender style, and they seemed able to produce in both styles at the same period, varying their style as the work seemed to require it or as the mood seems to have struck them. Probably the most important factor in East Asi- atic art is that all of it, except perhaps some studies, is done without models. That is to say it is done either from memory or from imagination. Almost all their art, in fact, is a mental process, instead of a copying of nature, that is it is imaginative. It is their thoroly trained memory that enables them to give free play to their imagination. No one has looked at nature with keener insight than the East Asiatics, and their knowledge of gesture and action, and their accuracy in suggesting life and nature in men and animals is marvelous. They seem able to detect and remember at a glance the most fleeting motions of human beings; the mo- tions of animals; the flight of birds; they can sug- EAST ASIATIC ART. 119 gest rain and snow storms, and the trees blown by the wind. In these pictures of instantaneous action the Chinese and Japanese have never been sur- passed. There is an extraordinary picture of motion drawn from imagination by Korin about the year 1750.-^^^ It represents a stormy sea, a couple of islands with a green pine tree or two, and a few clouds floating over the waves. From any imitative standpoint, everything in the picture, the drawing, the perspec- tive, the color, the light and shade, the waves, the pine trees, everything is wrong. But the wave lines exert an almost hypnotic influence in produc- ing a sense of motion. In their curious and monot- onous repetition, the action of the waves forces itself on the onlookers' brain, until the waves almost seem to move. The East Asiatics paint faces quite differently from the Aryans. They are contented with a few lines and spots giving the expression, and they al- most entirely omit shadows. This gives a great flatness to the faces. The face is drawn full as well as in profile dating from far back, and this is a notable point of difference between East Asiatic and West Asiatic or Egyptian artists. The knowledge by the East Asiatics of form and of the face is less clearly shown in their paintings than in their sculptures, in their netzkes, their theatrical masks, and their ^*^ Boston Mus. Fine Arts. \ 120 COMPARATIVE ART. enormous old Buddhas. In these the faces are sometimes handled with the breadth and accuracy of the best Aryan sculpture. The power of modelling the face shown by East Asiatic artists appears nowhere to greater advan- tage than in their statues of divinities, which, with their East Asiatic faces and their long, slim fingers, are totally different from most Aryan sculptures. Chinese gods, such as a bronze statue of Kouan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy, and a small gilt bronze sta- tue of longevity, ^*^ have many identical character- istics with Japanese gods, long ear lobes, long taper hands and nails, and calm expressions. The Chinese gods, however, are perhaps even more reposeful than the Japanese gods. There is not the least \ doubt, that in many of their religious sculptures the Chinese and Japanese rise to great heights as artists. One of the most impressive pieces of sculpture, in my opinion, which I ever saw, is a group of Jap- anese warriors,"* dressed in the armor and carrying the weapons of the fifteenth century A. D., receiv- ing the tidings of a disaster in battle. This group was modelled in Japan only a few years ago, and the expression of fear and horror in the faces, the lifelike action of the figures, are so remarkable that it seems to me very near to perfection as an art work. ^*^ Boston Mus. Fine Arts, 1903. From the palace of the eighth Prince, Pekin; both lent by Lieut. R. de L. Hasbrouck. ^** U. S. Nat. Mus. \ EAST ASIATIC ART. 121 The bare foot, and especially the foot in action, often appears in Japanese drawings. If these rep- resentations should seem exaggerated to anyone, it ought to be remembered that many of us do not even know what the normal foot looks like, since, thanks to our ill shaped boots, there is hardly a city dweller in Europe or America whose foot is not more or less deformed. But with the Jap- anese the toes, un trammeled and undamaged by our stiff, unanatomical sheaths of leather, have almost the prehensile quality of fingers, and are used not only for grasping the footgear, but also often by mechanics as a second pair of hands. Their drawings of the foot in action, therefore, are simply records of observations of nature. In the paintings of animals, the East Asiatics are supreme. It is safe to say that they are the greatest animal painters in the world. A few Euro- pean painters and sculptors, such as Paul Potter, Troyon, and Barye, have left some good animals, generally in repose, as their contribution to art. There are some few splendid animals in Greek sculpture, and there are some sporadic examples among other peoples, like the wounded lioness of Koyunjik, but there have been dozens of great animal painters among the Chinese and Japanese, with whom animal art is a racial characteristic. When one of their great artists paints an animal, it is not posing, it is not motionless, it is just in J 122 COMPARATIVE ART. action with a genuine animal movement. It has the character of that particular animal and to get the animal character is really the main essence of animal painting. In this field of animal art the East Asiatics are in touch with the Pleistokenes and with the best Aryan artists. I have seen two beautiful kakemonos of ani- mals, which seem worth mentioning. One by Tsunenobu, of about the year 1685, shows a golden eagle perched on a high branch. The treatment is broad and masterly, but a trifle hard, for every feather in sight is carefully worked out. The other kakemono is, in all probability, by a Chinese artist of the Ming Dynasty of about the year 1450. It is a half life size tiger which, semi-crouching, faces you. The eyes are touched with gold, and the detail is so minute, that you see the individual hairs of the mustache. Yet so broadly it is treated, so feline is the crawling motion, that it makes you almost afraid that the beast is going to spring. I am myself inclined to rank this tiger as the most perfect animal paint- ing I ever saw. In the FenoUosa collections*^ are many interesting paintings of animals. Among these may be men- tioned two SIX panelled screens by Shukei Sesson, about 1500-1570, representing some Chinese mon- . . ^*\ Boston. Mus. Fine Arts. . . EAST ASIATIC ART. 123 keys in India ink, with little detail but great S}^!- thetic power. A screen in India ink by Sesshiu, 1420-1507, representing two screaming cranes pur- sued down a waterfall in a forest by two hawks, is unsurpassable for form, action, motion and synthesis. Mr. Paul Chalfin, curator of the Jap- anese section of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, told me he believed this screen symbolized the dangers of humanity or something like that. In two kakemonos of cranes by Tosa Mitsunobu, 1434-1526, the birds are well drawn, but, as there is nothing else on the silk, the kakemonos are not exactly what we consider pictures. Two screens by Kano Utanosuke, 1513-1570, of landscapes with trees, are enlivened in one case by ducks, in the other by cats and small birds: but the ani- mals are only fair and the work is not synthetic. By Kano Tanyu there are some inferior, weak and mushy colored kakemonos of deer. By Hase- gewa Tohahei, 1570-1600, there are two screens which form one picture. In one of these a tiger is facing one way and snarling. In the other, a dragon faces the other way and is writhing about. The dragon's body suggests clouds and the hand- ling is broad and synthetic. Mr. Chalfin said he believed these kakemonos symbolize a conflict of spiritual things, represented by the dragon, against material things, represented by the tiger. Perspective, in the art of the East Asiatics, is 124 COMPARATIVE ART. found to a certain extent, principally in their more realistic and autochthonous work. In their land- scapes, animals, out-door scenes and figures without surroundings, or with landscape surroundings, they use perspective in much the same way as our painters, and with the same amount of accuracy. In the works of Ririomin, for instance,^*^ an old Japanese painter, there are some great feats of perspective. Hokusei's "Hundred Views of Fujiyama" and Hiroshige's prints of figures and buildings, may be cited as easily accessible examples of how well the Japanese can render perspective. In many other works also the artists conquered perspective, as in a screen by Gembei Katsushige, about 1650,^*^ of the Yoshiwara, which shows the houses and figures on one side of the street drawn in a perspective as if looking from a roof opposite. The clouds are gold, and there are many colors and much analysis in the figures, but the whole picture, while interesting, is not very synthetic. Moreover, the comprehension of artistic perspec- tive is a traditional inheritance of the East Asiatics. They really drew a scene as it looked to them, that is they drew and painted their impressions from very far back. For instance, there is a drawing in the British Museum^^^ by Wu-Tao-tsz of a land- "* Boston Mus. Fine Arts. ^*' Boston Mus. Fine Arts. **' Reproduced by Anderson. EAST ASIATIC ART. 125 scape with a waterfall. Wu-Tao-tsz was a Chinese artist of the eighth century, and if an unprejudiced critic will compare this landscape with "The Shores of Wharfe " by Ttuner/*^ I think he will surely notice the resemblance in feeling between the two pictures, nor can he fail to be struck with the fact that in China, the cradle of Japanese art, there was, at least one thousand years ago, an accurate natural- istic rendering of nature. The indoor mathematical perspective of rooms and buildings the Chinese and Japanese are rarely able to manage and this is a proof that their art intelligence works in a purely artistic manner, because indoor perspective is really a geometrical science. In regards to values, the art of the East Asiatics differs greatly from that of the Aryans. They insist much less on values. In the first place, both in China and Japan, the whole of the picture is rarely covered by the paint, a technical method which is indispensable to attain even approximately correct values. But all their art shows that these close observers of nature, thru the centuries of their art history, noticed just as carefully as we do the facts of light and shade which force themselves upon an onlooker, and if values are not carried as far with them as with us, it is because they are more interested in other points. It is **' Reproduced in Ruskin's Modern Painters. 126 COMPARATIVE ART. partly their seeking principally for arrangements of lines and spots of color, and partly the non-opaque nature of their medium, that prevents their con- centrating their interest on values as we do, and that causes them to rarely more than suggest them. They use values rather in an arbitrary way; for instance, to make the central object in their picture felt and give it the superior importance they wish it to have. If you are to look across a chasm they will not allow a foreground object to be of sufficient importance to detain your interest. In a word, the sentiment of gradation actuates them as it does ourselves, but it has a different manifestation. It is partly also because the East Asiatics evidently realize that all art has limitations and is in the nature of a compromise, that they are willing to accept the suggestion of values instead of requiring an attempt to produce actuality where in the nature of things it can never be actually produced. Le mieux est Vennemi du hien might be their motto. Their efforts do not show a good intention clumsily carried out, but one has rarely a sense of incompleteness, because they are not so much trying to mimic the thing itself as to suggest its main features and its spirit. That the Chinese and Japanese understand per- spective and values is evinced in nothing more than in their mountain paintings. No artists have evoked thru paper and paint more thoroly the idea EAST ASIATIC ART. 127 of misty heights and deep gorges with foaming waterfalls. Aerial perspective is as perfectly sug- gested, even if not carried out to a limit, as in any Aryan picture. For instance, an unusually soft and delicate kakemono by Toyohiko, about 1820 A. D., of a bridge and trees with three distant precipices, is done with strong accents in the bridge and trees, with a paler and paler wash of India ink for each of the three successive rock walls imtil the last wash is scarcely visible, while the immediate foregroimd is left in the delicate pale yellow of the silk. A landscape by Masanobu,^^^ of the sixteenth century, shows thoro knowledge of perspective, the dis- tant mountain forms looking but little sharper than the Dent du Geant or the Romsdalhorn or the Saas Maor, while the foreground trees and rocks are placed so that the eye looks down into the depths of a great gorge well below the spectator. Now there is no more difficult feat in landscape perspec- tive than this. And as Masanobu was, foiu: centuries ago, one of the foimders of one of the great schools of Japan, the Kano, it is only natural that the knowl- edge of perspective was an inheritance of all his followers. In the FenoUosa coUection,^^^ there are many good examples of these various points. For instance, by Sotan, 1398-1465, there are two capital screens 1^° British Mus. Reproduced by Anderson. "* Boston Mvis. Fine Arts. 128 COMPARATIVE ART. in India ink, in the Chinese style, of landscape, hills and ocean, in correct linear and atmospheric perspective; by Kano Motonobu, fifteenth century, there is a firm India ink sketch of Fuji with trees in the foreground, without much poetry or atmos- phere, but with accurate drawing, form, and per- spective; by Naomi, fifteenth century, there are three nice little landscape kakemonos, showing similar good work. In another respect also the East Asiatics are at variance with the Aryans and that is in the way they handle the background or as the French say, the fond. The Chinese and Japanese artist as a rule tries to present a design that will gratify, indepen- dently of the subject, and also to present this design so forcibly that the impression from it is single and incisive. In order to accomplish this he chooses to omit much that we are accustomed to look for, and in many cases he dispenses with background just as he does with chiaroscuro. When he wants to bring out certain objects near by, he emphasizes them by merely suggesting by a few touches or by neglecting altogether things beyond. When, on the contrary, he tries for objects further off, he reverses his process and in such kakemonos the distance must not be taken for background. Fujiyama rising from the clouds, a sail peeping out of mist, the delicately suggested other side of a moimtain chasm, these are the primary interests EAST ASIATIC ART. 129 of the picture which does not detain you with a vigorous foreground of shrub, bird or leaf drawing. In regard to pure color, it seems to me that the East Asiatics have a deep, inborn love and feeling j for color. Sometimes their color is in quiet, mel- I low tones, sometimes in gorgeous ones, but in the work of the masters it is generally in harmony. It is taste, not reason that directs, and the innate sense of color is the controlling element. Their color combinations are endless. Each colored screen or kakemono has its own individtial dominant note. Color printing also was never carried so > far nor to such perfection as with the Japanese. The East Asiatic artists seem to be so at one with the cosmic forces around them that their color schemes are often taken from minute objects in nature that go imnoticed largely except by naturalists. I do not here refer to their careful drawing and painting of bird and insect life as such, but to their use of color motives foimd in natural objects. Taking for instance, as a keynote, a shell fresh from the sea with a bit of seaweed hanging to it, or a stone festooned with moss and lichen, they will make a whole picture harmonize to this keynote. Now the human mind cannot invent color schemes as delicate, original and simple as those found in the minute forms of nature. The pattern of creamy pinks and grays upon a crab or upon a mushroom freshly pulled out of 130 COMPARATIVE ART. black mold; a moth's wing or a goose's feather contain color motives which the Chinese and Jap- anese alone of all people seem to have availed themselves of for the purposes of art. It is for this reason that their designs have often the dis- tinction and reserve in color which such objects have, and the result is a revelation, not a repro- duction of nature. Proportion in a color scheme is a potent factor in its success and proportion is one of the strongest characteristics of the East Asiatic art intelligence, and in the delicacy of an individual tone, as well as in the wise arrangement of many, they have never been surpassed. Color is a matter of the senses chiefly and before the entrance of the Aryans into Eastern Asia the color sense of the Japanese, at least, seems to have remained intact. With the inroads of the whites, however, and the intro- duction of oil paints, all this was changed, and the East Asiatic mind seemed unable to assimilate our artistic methods, knowledge or materials. All their sense of proportion and feeling for color seem to have been destroyed at one fell swoop when they began to work for the European market. The color names of the tints in the modem work may all be found in the dictionary, blue, green, yellow, red. What these words suggest unqualified is plainly set down and thought adequate to satisfy the needs and drain the purses of the foreign buyers EAST ASIATIC ART, 131 A violent tone that would once have been used as a line, an accent, only, now covers half a page in a picture book. This was not so in other days, for one could not name or describe the colors of the old kakemonos or indeed of the finer colored prints. The art of all peoples reflect to a great extent the civilization, environment, ethics and char- acteristics of each race. This is as true of the East Asiatics as of every people. It applies not only to the art they developed themselves, but to the art they borrowed from their southern neigh- bors. The extraneous portion of East Asiatic art, the less autochthonous one, the one which must have drifted into China from the south, is as already mentioned, the art resulting from the spread of the Buddhist religion. Much of this art took the form of sculpture, principally sculptures of the Buddha, and it seems to me that the type of the Buddhas of China and Japan, while closely re- sembling that of the Buddhas of Biirma and Siam, yet is more pronoimcedly Asiatic than the latter. Much of the Buddhist art of China and Japan took the form of painting, which does not seem to have been the case in Burma or Siam to anything like the same extent. A favorite subject is the death of the Buddha, aroimd whom are gathered sorrowing men and especially sorrowing animals. 132 COMPARATIVE ART. The subject in many of these religious pictures is often important from a rehgious point of view, while the execution is poor. The figures are usually carefully worked out in their details, but there is often a total lack of perspective, glaring colors in hopeless discord, and not a trace of artistic syn- thesis. Much of this religious art may be pro- notinced as most inferior from an artistic, pictorial standpoint. It looks rather as if these non-pic- torial pictures were an importation, and I suspect that much of the bad art of the East Asiatics is the result of imitating the work of their less gifted neighbors. Several early Japanese kakemonos,^^^ for instance, of about 800 A. D., are purely Hindu. The faces are Hindu, and the Buddha's feet have the up- turned soles one finds in Ceylon and Southern Asia. A kakemono by Chinkai, Iko-Daihashi, of the year 1143 probably, which is inscribed on the back, shows almost pure South Asiatic faces and positions for Buddhist saints. These early kakemonos are poor painting, but then they are almost faded away. Some of the old masters of China and Japan, V[ however, grafted the Buddhist beliefs on the East I Asiatic technic and these men left some splendid 1 works to survive them. They might, not inap- propriately, be called subjective painters or ideal- ists, or perhaps rather mysticists, for to the gen- ^" Boston Mus. Fine Arts. ^AST ASIATIC ART. 133 uine Buddhists everything in nature was filled with the divine spirit of the Buddha and every- thing visible had some spiritual meaning. Of these men, Sesshiu, a Japanese Buddhist priest of the fifteenth century, may be taken as the highest type. When you look at one of Sesshiu's great pictures, painted without detail in great soft rolls and wipes of the brush, you are looking not at a realistic representation of nature, but at Sesshiu's idea of the divine spirit as shown in things. It is a different spirit from that of Fra Angelico, to whom one can compare Sesshiu in a spiritual sense. But it is different in the sense in which Christianity and Buddhism are different. Angelico paints the spirit which is not of this world, Christ and his angels. To Sesshiu the world is the spirit. To Sesshiu nature, the birds, the trees, everything visible contains something spiritual, and it is that spiritual something he is thinking of. Personally, I much prefer, and wotild rank much higher, the art which the East Asiatics evolved themselves and in which they are so different from other races. These pictures seem to appeal almost always to the artistic sense. Their subtle drawing, their color harmonies please fastidious eyes and nerves often far beyond the power to know why. Their emotions, their love of nature are expressed in their art, in which they show most delicate desires and perceptions in regard to the beauty of every- 134 COMPARATIVE ART. day life. Their love of making the charm of the changing seasons felt within doors as well as with- out is one instance of their wish to be in har- mony with nature. Often we do not feel the esthetic feeling which is in their art; we admire where they would criticize and the point of value of the work to their eyes escapes us. And in all this the visual sensitiveness, the mental sensitiveness should be recognized which finds itself wearied by any art object always in sight, and which insists upon hav- ing constant refreshment and pleasure from fresh art objects, because to sensitive nerves any keen pleasure is short lived. The life, the traditions, the environment of the Yellow race are different from those of the White race, and therefore we find the artists choosing dif- ferent subjects from ourselves. To the Chinese and Japanese life means inexhaustible activity; the tire- less performance of great and small duties in a spirit of cheerful patience. The people may be poor and half fed, but the artist who watches them does not strive to wring our hearts with pity. He watches their patient activity as we watch an ant rushing diligently along carrying a morsel twice its size. He sees the troops of wood carriers on steep moim- tain sides, the soldiers on long marches, the crafts- men who think it no waste of a lifetime to spend it in learning to do and perform perfectly some minor mechanical operation. Every man is in his place EAST ASIATIC ART. 135 and doing either for honor or his liveHhood's sake what befits it. By nature a cheerful race, most of their art is cheerful in subject. Observers and lovers of nature as they are, much of their work is a record of some- thing actually seen. It is due to these characteristics that the majority of their paintings are either of animals, birds, flowers, landscapes, or of pleasant reminiscences of their life, such as house scenes, tea drinkings, water parties, flower festivals, and on such scenes they will lavish all possible charms of color. There is an exquisite colored print of Toyo- kuni's of one of these flower festivals with three slender girls waving sprays of early fruit blossoms, their delicately colored robes and willowy bodies moving in the April air with the grace and soft- ness so noticeable in Botticelli. But other subjects also are chosen. Many of the people of Japan, for instance, were warriors and therefore there are many representations of violent strife, of fights between samurai or between .men and beasts, and combats with demons and legendary monsters. The performance of harakiri is often represented, altogether there are plenty of pictures showing that there was a very ungentle side to East Asiatic life.^^^ ^^' William Anderson: The Pictorial Arts of Japan, 1886. Louis Gonse: L'Art Japonais, 1883. Ernest F. FenoUosa: Review of the Chapter on Painting in Gonse' s L'Art Japonais, Boston, 1885. This small and rare work, for a copy 136 comparative art. Ainu Art. The Ainu seem to be almost lacking in any art sense. At least, I have seen no art specimens from them, beyond some gowns^^^ from Yezo and from North Japan, which the Ainu have decorated with wavy lines of rather unusual patterns. It is, there- fore, at present, impossible for me to connect them artistically with any other race. A half tone from a photograph^^^ shows a number of skulls, some at least of animals, stuck on a row of posts in front of a hut. The resemblance in idea to Korean guide posts, to Alaska totem poles and to Borneo funeral poles is unmistakable. Some photographs of Ainus^^® do not suggest a Yellow but a White race. In fact, to my mind, there is a strong resemblance to Russians in the faces. ^^^ East Siberian Art. From Eastern Siberia comes some art from the Chukchee, Korak^^^ and Yakaghir tribes, which has of which I am indebted to Professor Edward S. Morse, of Salem, Mass., is the most important work yet published on Japanese painting. Ernest F. FenoUosa: "Contemporary Japanese Art:" The Cen- tury Illustrated Monthly Magazine, 1893, Vol. XLVI. John La Farge: "An Artist's letters from Japan;" The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, 1893, Vol. XLVI. James S. de Benneville : Sakurambo, 1906. ^^* Am. Mus. Nat. Hist. U. S. Nat. Mus. *^5 The Four-Track News, Vol. II., No. 5, November, 1904, page 291. ^^^ U. S. Nat. Mus. Mabel Loomis Todd: Corona and Coronet, 1899. ^^' An inscription in the U. S. Nat. Mus. says the Ainus are Mon- gols. A notice in the British Mus. says the Ainu of Yezo are almost of Caucasian appearance. ^** W. B. Vanderlip and H. B. Hulbert; In Search of a Siberian Klondike, 1903, p. 95. AINU ART. EAST SIBERIAN ART. 137 only faint resemblances to its southern neighbors, whilst it is very similar to the more northern Eskimo art, and it also resembles in some ways some of the art on the American side of the so-called Bering Strait: a strait which was first called the Strait of Anian and was marked on atlases at least as far back as 1570,^^^ and which the Kossack Deshneff sailed thru in 1648. From the Chukchees^^ come some bone and wood carvings which look much like Eskimo work. They also make rough drawings on wood. The Koraks^**^ make bone and wood carvings like those of the Chukchees, but which are a little less like Eskimo work. They also make rough and shapeless drawings on wood. The Yakaghir^^^ cut silhouettes of animals, elk, bear, etc., out of birchbark. They incise on birch- bark figures something like those on East North Amerind blankets, and also ornament with patterns in lines. Australasian Art. In all the islands almost of the Pacific Ocean we find an art which is entirely different from Greek, Kaldean, Egyptian or Hindu art; of which some specimens have certain traits of Japanese art, and in which there are so many generic traits common *^® Abraham Ortelius: Theatrum Orhis Terrarum, 1570. "" Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist. "^ Amer, Mus. Nat. Hist. *" Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist. 138 COMPARATIVE ART. also to African art that it seems as if Australasian art and African art must be closely related. Most of this art consists of wooden sculptured figures, some- times with unnaturally large heads, always with curiously shaped heads, frequently with undersized bodies, and generally with very short legs. The art of every large island or of every archi- pelago of the South Pacific, while remaining Aus- tralasian art, yet varies somewhat from the art of all the other islands. I am inclined to think that Australasian art may be divided into two or more subtypes. One subtype would include some of the art of Sumatra, New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Hervey Islands, Hawaii, New Zealand, Rapa-Nui. This might be called the Rapa-Nui type. An- other subtype would probably include the art of the Nicobars, Marquesas, Samoa, Tahiti, New Hebrides, New Caledonia, New Britain, Australia. This might be called the inferior Australasian type. The art of New Ireland is so individual that it is difficult to classify with either of the others : proba- bly it belongs to both. The inferior Australasian art type is less mature than the Rapa-Nui type and it is perhaps more in the shape of the heads, than in anything else, that there is a difference. As far as I can judge, these subtypes in art are due to the presence of two or more races in Australasia. Most Australasian art was fathered by a black, Negro, race, known as Melanesians. Some of it must be AUSTRALASIAN ART. 139 referred to some brown peoples, whom we call Polynesians and Malayans, and about whose origin we are very hazy : but there may be Whites from Southern Asia and Yellows from Eastern Asia among their ancestors. The art specimens from Australasia, however, apparently do not always correspond with the habitat of the Melanesian, Polynesian, and Malay races as given by ethnologists, and therefore it seems most rational to speak separately of the art of each island group, following as far as possible their geographical positions from west to east.^®^ Nicobars. From the Nicobars comes some rather original art. There are many large wooden figures,^®^ almost nude, from about sixty centimeters to two meters high. Some of the faces are painted red, and the ^" Coiint R. Tolna de Festetics : Chez les Cannibales, Paris, Plon- Nourrit, 1903. There are some good illustrations in this book. The New International Encyclopcedia gives the following division of races in the South Pacific: Polynesians: a brown race: Hawaii, EUice, Samoa, Tonga, Her- vey. Society, Low, Marquesas. Micronesians: a brown race: Ladrone, Pelew, Marshall, Caroline, Gilbert. Malayans: a brown race: Sunda, Sumatra, Java, Bali, Lombok, Sumbawa, Flores, Timor, Borneo, Celebes, Philippines, Moluccas. . Melanesians: a black race: Admiralty, Bismark, Solomon, Santa Cruz, New Hebrides, New Caledonia, Loyalty, Fiji. The British Museum puts its specimens in the following order: — Andaman, Nicobars, Sumatra, Java, Borneo, New Guinea, Mar- quesas, Samoa, Tonga, Hawaii, Tahiti, Fiji, New Hebrides, Solomon, New Caledonia, New Britain, New Ireland, Hervey, Torres Strait, Australia, New Zealand, Rapa-Nui. ^®* British Mus. An inscription says these are supposed to be in- tended to frighten away evil spirits. 140 COMPARATIVE ART. eyes are set in with something white. There is no technical art value to any of these figures, which are unlike the Rapa-Nui type or indeed unlike most examples of the inferior Australasian type. Andaman Islands. Some bits of broken pottery^®^ from the Andaman Islands, show certain wavy and zigzag patterns of lines. I have seen nothing else resembling art work from there.^®® I feel uncertain therefore, at the pres- ent time, whether these islands, as well as the Nico- bars, are connected artistically principally with the mainland of Asia, or with the Australasian islands, but I believe it is with the latter. Sumatra. Some of the art of Sumatra is of the Rapa-Nui type of Australasian art. There are some small wood carvings from there, ^^'' some of which are a little more advanced than others. Two little carved heads from the Batta tribe strongly resemble the Rapa-Nui heads. This is the' most westerly place apparently where the Australasian Rapa-Nui type is found, and I feel sure that the carvers of these heads are blood relations of the artists of Hawaii and Rapa-Nui. "** U. S. Nat. Mus. ^®® There are no art specimens in the British Museum, 1905. A de Quatrefages: The Pygmies, 1895. C. B. Kloss: In the Andamans and Nicobars, 1903. »" British Mus. AUSTRALASIAN ART. 141 Borneo. Some of the art from Borneo is decidedly of an I inferior Australasian type.^^^ In London there are some utterly shapeless wooden figures about thirty centimeters high from Barawan, on the Tin jar River, Sarawak. From the Kayans, there are some rather, nicely decorated pipes and other objects. The most extensive collection of specimens from Borneo I have seen is the one in Philadelphia^®^ brought back by Dr. Fumess and Dr. Hiller.^''^ There are some little wooden effigies of persons to whom harm is wished, and as the wood decays or is eaten by insects the body of the subject is supposed to waste away and die. These and some other small wooden figures are infantile, primitive art. I Some poles with several figures or heads carved one over the other, which are set up in front of a house after a successfiil head himt to show how many persons were killed, are poor work and inferior to Alaska totem poles, to which, however, they are, as an art form, almost similar. There are some masks worn by medicine men and by dancers during festivities, painted with w];iite and black, of a pro- nounced Australasian type. One specimen, how- ever, from the Kayans, the figurehead of a canoe ^®^ British Mus. An inscription says the natives are Pagans of Malay stock, with yellowish skins. "" Univ. of Penna. Mus. Arch. "" Dr. Furness and Dr. Hiller: The Home Life of Borneo Head Hunters, 1902. 142 COMPARATIVE ART. representing a crocodile's head holding in the open jaws a sitting monkey, is distinctly good. Many photographs from Borneo show the prevalence of the fearfully elongated earlobe, a hideous method of beau- tifying the person which must have extended from about Baluchistan to Rapa-Nui, and possibly to Korea and Mexico, so that Borneo was somewhere near the center of the elongated ear's "sphere of influence." New Guinea or Papua. From New Guinea, there are many wooden figures, from about twenty to eighty centimeters high.^^^ There is almost no artistic beauty in these figures, whose eyes are colored white. They are shapeless and grotesque, with a tendency to the Rapa-Nui shape. Some decorations on paddles, bark belts, and other objects are rather good. Some of the art of New Guinea may be considered as an inferior develop- ment of the Rapa-Nui type of Australasian art.^^^ Torres Strait Islands. The islanders of Torres Strait make some sculptures. Their human figurines are poor. Some ^''^ British Mus. An inscription says the natives are a dark skinned, woolly haired people with curved noses. ^'2 Dr. Alfred C. Haddon, in a lecture delivered November 2,1906, before the American Philosophical Society, stated that there were three or four different kinds of art in British New Guinea, and that these coincided with differences in races, in languages, in customs, etc. He thought some of the art was undoubtedly totemistic, and, on the authority of a missionary, that some of the drawings of figures might have some relation to native gods. Dr. Haddon is such an accurate observer, and such a remarkably fair and impartial scientist, that every statement he makes carries great ^weight, AUSTRALASIAN ART. 143 drawings of animals are fairly good.^^^ From Jervis Island, some masks imitating alligators and made out of tortoise shell are clever, barbarous art. Australia. The natives of Australia have barely, if indeed as yet entirely, emerged from a stone period. There are niimerous specimens of chipped stone and pol- ished stone axes and spear heads from there.^^* Some shells, wooden objects, shields have certain rough drawings, almost patterns, on them, but I have seen no real art from Australia, no sculptures, nor any work with real artistic qualities.^^^ New Britain. New Britain is a group of islands next to New Ireland, and yet the art is quite different. The art of New Britain certainly belongs to the inferior Australasian type^^^. There are from there some figures carved in chalk, from thirty to fifty centi- meters high. They are uncompromisingly nude, almost shapeless, and little better than symbols. Altho these attempts at art are almost grotesque, yet there is something naive about them, which redeems them from being called absolutely bad. ^" British Mus. From Professor Alfred C. Haddon. "* British Mus. *'* Mr. Samuel L. Clemens, Following the Eqtuitor, Chapter XXII., says that the natives of Australia make drawings which are accurate in form, attitude, carriage, and which have spirit and expression. "^ British Mus. An inscription says the natives are dark skinned Melanesians in a stone period. 144 COMPARATIVE ART. New Ireland. New Ireland art^^^ is decidedly original. A mag- nificent set of carved wood figures, about one meter high, are supposed to be ancestral figures. They are painted red, white and black. They are carved into extraordinary shapes; some have huge tusks, like babiroussas; others have birds attached to them. There are also some smaller figures, carv- ings of several birds, and a number of dancing masks. Altho there is little sense of proportion and no anatomical accuracy in these figures, yet the art of New Ireland must be considered as re- markable. At first it seems grotesque, but soon one sees much feeling for color and decoration. Not the least interesting fact about it is, that in many ways it is quite unlike Rapa-Nui, New Zea- land or Hawaii art, and this would tend to show that there were perhaps more than two branches of art in the Pacific Islands. It may be only a wild fancy, but somehow these New Ireland figures re- mind me of the suits of lacquered armor, with strange variegated ornamentation, which were for- merly worn by the Japanese Samurai. Solomon Islands. The Solomon Islanders^''® made many rather small figtu-es of wood and carved coral. The figures are *^^ British Mus. An inscription says New Ireland is inhabited by dark skinned Melanesians, using stone implements before the advent of Europeans. "* British Mus. A notice says the natives are frizzly haired, dark skinned people who used stone implements and made pottery. AUSTRALASIAN ART. 145 rather grotesque with the Rapa-Nui type of head. There are some good decorations on canoe paddles. New Hebrides. From the New Hebrides^^® come some rather gro- tesque wooden figures, which in some places, es- pecially on the face, are daubed over with red and blue streaks. New Caledonia. From New Caledonia^^ there are several small rather grotesque wooden figures. These belong to the inferior type of Australasian art. New Zealand. New Zealand was formerly in a stone period, and many polished stone axes, some of jade, were found there.^*^ There are a good many wooden figures; from small ones up to some about one and a half meters high. The head is usually the part best done; often there are shell eyes; sometimes the tongue hangs out. The back of the head is gen- erally almost absent, but there is a good high fore- head. In several cases some carved pilasters about one and a half meters high, have several heads one over the other, in the manner of Alaska totem poles. "" British Mus. ^^° British Mus. An inscription says the natives are dark skinned Melanesians. ^^^ Univ. of Penna. Mus. Arch. British Mus. An inscription says the natives, Maoris, are brown skinned Polynesians, with wavy black hair. 146 COMPARATIVE ART. The bodies of the different figures are small and shapeless, in fact, the big head and small body and arms have about the same relative sizes to each other as some of the figures from the Kongo and Matabeleland have. A characteristic figure has a big head with small eyes, a small mouth, and a round, knobby button of a nose, little arms and hands, two uprights below for legs, while the face and arms are covered with lines which appear to be tattoo marks. There is some real art feeling in New Zealand art, which is one of the most developed forms of Australasian art. The heads have some of the characteristics and somewhat resemble the heads from Rapa-Nui and Hawaii, while the undersized ill formed bodies show a distinct art similarity to some of the art from Central and South Africa. Fiji Islands. From the Fiji Islands^^^ I have seen some polished stone axes, but no specimens of art. Tonga (Friendly) Islands. From the Tonga Islands^^^ I have seen no art specimens. Samoa (Navigator's) Islands. From the Samoan Islands^^* I have seen a few small wooden rather grotesque figures. They seem ^^^ British Mus. A notice says the natives are dark skinned Me- lanesians, formerly in a stone period but skilful makers of pottery. ^^^ British Mus. The inscription says the natives are brown skinned Polynesians, who had stone implements but no pottery. ^^* British Mus. The notice says the natives are brown skinned Polynesians who had stone implements but no pottery. AUSTRALASIAN ART. 147 to belong to the inferior type of Australasian art. Hawaii. ' From the Hawaiian Islands comes some very origi- nal art.^^ This is the heads called war gods, which were carried into battle by the so called priests. They are made of wickerwork covered with netting and feathers. The eyes are usually of pearl shell with wooden pupils, and the teeth are taken from dogs. The heads are about fifty centimeters high; they have long necks and almost no back to the head. In two cases there are low foreheads; in two other cases there are high foreheads, but these heads are narrow sideways. There is little which can be called beautiful about these heads except the colors; in the feather work and in this feather work the' Hawaiians appear to be unique. There is a strong artistic resemblance between these heads and those from Rapa-Nui, too strong to be accidental. A wooden statue, about one and a half meters high, is of the same type as statues from New Zealand. Marquesas Islands. From the Marquesas Islands^^® I have seen some polished stone implements and a little decorative art, not enough to judge the type with certainty, but it probably belongs to an inferior Australasian type. "5 British Mus, ^*® British Mus. The inscription says the natives are brown skinned Polynesians in a stone period. 148 COMPARATIVE ART. Hervey Islands. The Hervey Islanders^^^ have some art. From Rarotonga Island there are several figures which are rather poor specimens of an immature Austral- asian art. Still there is a certain originality, more or less local, about some Hervey Island figures. From Rarutu Island, Austral group, comes a remarkable figure^^^ which has small figures which stand out from it carved on the nose, the mouth, the ears, the eyes and on many parts of the body. From Hervey Island there is a somewhat similar figure, with the head slightly of the Rapa-Nui type and with three small figures carved on the top of the chest. ^^^ These figures remind me in idea, but not in technic, of the hideous statue of Diana of the Ephesians,^^° whose whole front part of the trunk is covered with hanging bosoms. Tahiti. From the Tahitian or Society Islands, ^^^ there are some stone implements and some grotesque wooden figures. These belong to the inferior Australasian type. ^87 British Mus. The inscription says that most of these Pacific peoples carved wood without the use of metal tools. The Hervey Islanders were formeriy in a stone period. ^^^ British Mus. An inscription says this is a supposed deity of Polynesia, whose name is said to be "Tangaroa-Upao-Vahu." ^*® British Mus. An inscription says this is supposed to be a deity called "Te Rongo," and his three sons. **'* Naples Mus. *®^ British Mus. A notice says the natives are brown skinned Poly- nesians with black wavy hair. AUSTRALASIAN ART. 149 Rapa-Nui {Easter Island). In spite of its distance from other lands, much art was made on Rapa-Nui. There are a number of specimens of this art in museums. ^^^ Many of the specimens in London were presented to the British Museum by my friend, Mr. Victor Strauss Frank, ^-^ who spent some weeks at Rapa-Nui several years ago. The art of Rapa-Nui takes mainly the form of sculptures of humans, big ones of stone, and small ones of wood. In the Jardin des Plantes, Paris,^^ is a great head from Rapa-Nui. I had to hunt for it, as the guar- diens did not seem to know where it was. Finally I found it under a shed, surrounded by a lot of scrap iron junk, or as a more intelligent guardten expressed it, "dans un endroit oil, Von met les vieux rosstgnols." I protested about this matter in a letter to the Paris Herald of May 25, 1905, say- ing that this head should be placed in the Louvre. The head is about one meter eighty centimeters high. It has a large squarish nose; great deeply carved cavernous eyes ; a tiny slit of a mouth with a ^^^ U. S. Nat. Mus. Univ. of Penna. Mus. Arch. Jardin des Plantes, Paris. British Mus. A notice saj'^s that the people of Easter Island were Polynesians, and that there were found there stone buildings and some stone terraces on which were monoliths. "3 Victor Strauss Frank : "A Trip to Easter Island:" Journal of the Franklin Institute, 1906, Vol. CLXII., pp. 179-199. "* 1905. Brought to France in 1871. See Captain Jvdien Viaud: "L'ile de Paques": Reflets sur la Sombre Route, Paris, 1899. 150 COMPARATIVE ART» strongly determined expression, a square chin and long, not much worked out ears. There is scarcely any head back of the ears and a low forehead, so that it almost seems as tho the head was intended only to be looked at from the front. The nose, the eyes and the mouth are much modelled. This head is dignified and it seems incredible that it should have been carved, as it must have been, with stone implements. In London^®^ there are two stone heads. These heads are about sixty to seventy centimeters high, they have great hollow eyes and a big nose. The mouth is much larger than in the Paris head, decidedly negroid in type. There is scarcely any forehead or back to the heads. In Washington^^® there is a big stone head, and also a big male statue, as far down as the waist. This one wears a high stone cap, which has no brim nor eye shade, and is shaped somewhat like a Persian fur cap. This statue is thin from front to back, and this seems a usual characteristic of the art. The body is only a little longer than the head, the arms are rather diminutive, and the hands are relatively tiny, with enormously long fingers, clasped over the "' British Mus. Brought to England on H. M. S. "Topaze" in 1869. One is said to be the statue of "Hoa-Haka-Ntina-Ia, ' ' a Rapa- Nui chief probably. "« U. S. Nat. Mus. Wm. J. Thompson: "The Ethnology and Antiquity of Easter Island": Report United States National Museum, 1889. AUSTRALASIAN ART. I5l abdomen. The proportions are somewhat those of African art. The small wooden figures from Rapa-Nui are generally from thirty to sixty centimeters high. They are usually unnaturally thin. On some of them the ribs appear, also the lower part of the breast bone, imder which there is a hollow, which might be supposed to represent the inside of the stomach, only that the navel is apparent. This intense thinness is doubtless due to the natives acquiring this characteristic in times of famine. There is no back to the head to speak of, and a small skull with a low forehead. The eyes are inset with some kind of stone, and there are enormous ears with the lobes distended by a weight. On some of these small figures, there is a tall head, moderate body, and small legs, that is the pro- portions are really African. This Rapa-Nui art is among the best of the Pacific arts. It resembles somewhat New Zea- land art, and it has a strong family likeness to the feathered figures from Hawaii. The shape of the heads from Hawaii and Rapa-Nui, with lack of back and top, are so similar that the artistic generic impulse is unmistakable. It seems to me that the two big stone heads in Washington are more like Mexican art, than the latter is like Egyptian or Hindu art. Mrs. Balch, however, thought that the big stone heads in London, have a vague re- 152 COMPARATIVE ART semblance to Egyptian art. In any case, how- ever, Rapa-Nui art always has, unintentionally, a decided element of grotesque. Eskimo Art. On the American continent, art is found pretty much from the Arctic Ocean to the Strait of Mag- alhaes. There are several branches of art in Amer- ica, and it might perhaps be divided into five types, namely: Eskimo art; West North Amerind art; East North Amerind art; Central and West South Amerind art; and East South Amerind art. Most of this art is so individual, that it is surely prin- cipally autochthonous. At the same time. East North Amerind art has certain qualities which show certain resemblances to the art of Europe; while West North Amerind art has some decided resemblances to the arts of Southeast Asia and of Australasia, and Central Amerind art has some of these resemblances, but in a lesser degree. It seems probable therefore that Amerind art, altho mainly autochthonous, yet received artistic im- pulsions from other shores, possibly both to the east and the west. In Arctic America and Arctic Asia, to use the most general geographical terms possible, we find an art which is exceedingly individual. This is the art of the Innuits or Eskimo in Greenland, Labrador, Alaska, and Siberia. Altho the art of ESKIMO ART. 153 each locality varies somewhat from that of all the other tribes, still it is unquestionably all one art. This art does not resemble in the least Kaldean, Egyptian, Greek or Afro-Australasian art, but it resembles closely the art of the Chukchees, Kor- aks and Yakaghirs in Eastern Siberia, somewhat the art of one or two tribes in Alaska and some Zimi art, and it has certain resemblances to Pleistokene, to Bushman, and to East-Asiatic art. The Eskimo were only recently in a stone age, t for many chipped stone and bone as well as iron implements come from the Eskimos of Point Bar- row and Greenland. ^^^ Friends of mine who were members of various arctic expeditions, Professor Angelo Heilprin, Mr. Henry G. Bryant, Mr. Frank W. Stokes and others, say that the North Green- land Eskimo are a thoroly developed race of men and women with many fine traits of char-| acter. Undoubtedly they are of the same race as the Alaska Eskimo, even if there are some local differences. Mr. Frank H. Gushing once called' my attention to an ethnological point which I wish to record as coming from this distinguished arch- eologist. He thought that the Eskimo had the same rather elongated eye as the Mongol races and he thought this elongated eye might be the "' U. S. Nat. Mus. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist. British Mus. An inscription says the Eskimo are short, swarthy people of Mongoloid appearance. 154 COMPARATIVE ART. result of having to meet conditions where there was much snow, in fact he called them "snow eyes." Some big photographs of Eskimo^^^ show a pro- nounced yellow type with the snow eye. My first acquaintance with Eskimo art was in the month of September, 1893, when the New- foundland steam whaler "Falcon" steamed up the Delaware River with the members of the second Peary expedition on board. I went down with some other persons on a tug to meet her, and on the way up the river, I received as a gift from Dr. Vincent, surgeon of the expedition, four little carvings, which he had obtained from the Eskimo of Inglefield Gulf, Greenland, and which I pre- sented to the Musetmi of Archeology of the Uni- versity of Pennsylvania. At that time they were quite perfect, but unfortunately they have since been somewhat damaged. They are a man, a woman, a dog and a seal. They are carved out of walrus ivory, probably with a common sailor's knife: not the best of sculptural tools. The figures are rough and small, each of them being about two centimeters long. The sense of proportion is noteworthy. In the standing figures of the man and woman, the feet are tiny, in exact relation to the rest of the figure, yet despite the minute size of the feet, the center of gravity of the figures "« U. S. Nat. Mus. I' , ESKIMO ART. 155 is SO correct that, when I first got them, the man and woman stood up without any difficulty on a smooth surface. And I think anyone who has tried seriously to model a clay figure and who knows how hard it is for a beginner to poise a figure on its feet, must appreciate that some of these untaught Eskimo have a certain gift of ob- servation. I am uncertain whether many or only a few of the Eskimo of North Greenland can sculpt these figures. Dr. A. E. Ortman, who went in 1899 on the "Diana" to Smith Soimd and Inglefield Gulf, told me he thought the art faculty among them was limited to certain individuals, altho, as their carving is done principally in the winter months, when time hangs heavy on their hands, he could not say how many do it. He found, however, that these carvings take a long time, for one Eskimo, a cripple, started to carve a figure for him, and several weeks afterwards, when he left, the figure was not finished. From the Innuits of Alaska and Labrador also^^^ come some rough and rather shapeless carvings and drawings on walrus ivory, on bone and on horn. The drawings represent reindeer, boats, bears, men, wahus, seals, and whales. They look rather as if they were picture writings than as if they were in- "" Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist. U. S. Nat. Mus. British Mus. 156 COMPARATIVE ART. tended to be purely pictorial works of art. The carved humans are all bald, that is, no hair on the head is represented. There is one curious Janus- like double head. From northeastern Siberia, there are some Eskimo bone carvings^^° which are just like Greenland figures. The art of the Eskimo is purely an art of obser- vation. There is no symbolism; it is purely sculp- tural or pictorial motive. These northern tribes are impelled by their innate sense of form to attempt to reproduce the human beings and the animals which they see in their daily life, and the little figures which they carve show that some of them have a certain inborn aptitude for art. Eskimo art has a certain individuality, and does not look quite like any other art. The art of the Chukchee, Korak, and Yakaghir tribes of Eastern Siberia, is almost the same art. Eskimo art also resembles closely, but less so, the art of the Tlinkits, Haidas and Kwakiutls of the north west coast of America and some Zuni and Moki art from Arizona. There is undoubtedly a great similarity in the implements of the Eskimo and of the Pleistokene men of central Europe, and there is a resemblance also between their art, with the important difference that all Eskimo art, and the drawings especially, are distinctly inferior to the Pleistokene art of south ^"^ Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist. Collected by Mr. W. Bogoras. ESKIMO ART. 157 western Europe. And of the carvings it is note- worthy that the humans do not look in the least like Pleistokene humans. West North Amerind Art. Among the Amerinds, west of the Rocky Moun- tains, from Bering Sea to northern California, there is an art which is sufficiently distinctive to be classi- fied by itself. It might be called West North Amerind art. It includes both painting and sculp- ture, and its most distinctive feature is the totem pole. Probably all the tribes of the Northwest American coast, the Tlinkit, the Haida, the Tsimshian, the Kwakiutl, the Nootka of Vancouver Island, make wood carvings, bone carvings and masks.^"^ The Sakaptin, State of Washington,^^^ make paintings on skins and ornament baskets with patterns in lines. Some of the art of some of these tribes has some resemblance to the art of the Eskimo. From the Amerinds of the Northwest coast, there are many statuettes carved in wood or ivory.^°^ Some of the heads give the North Am- erind type clearly, while some suggest the South Pacific type. In many cases, such as in some specimens from the Haida and Tlinkit,^"* the figures . 201 Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist. U. S. Nat. Mus, ! '»2 Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist. '"^ British Mus. '"* British Mus. U. S. Nat. Mus. 158 COMPARATIVE ART. have small, undeveloped legs, such as are found in Afro -Australasian sculptures. These West North Amerind statues are distinct from Australasian or African statues and yet there is a generic resem- blance. There are some small black wood poles, and one sculpture of a woman and a baby, which are bet- ter than the average. ^^^ Some large single figures unquestionably resemble Mexican sculpture in the expression of the faces. From Queen Charlotte Island also there are some capital pipe bowls carved out of slate. ^*^^ There are usually several figures, humans, animals or birds, one behind the other in a row. These show some of the artistic qualities seen on totem poles, except that they are generally further moved from an observa- tion art stage into a more decorative art stage. These also have a distinctly Central Amerind art type. A form of decoration used sometimes in West North Amerind art, is a big single eye, looking solemnly at you, and this same big eye is also used sometimes in Central Amerind art. Some of the smaller sculptures resemble in their quality some of the pipe heads carved by East North Amerind artists. Some carvings on rocks also, representing animals and birds, have been foimd on 2»5 Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist. 2»« British Mus. WEST NORTH AMERIND ART. 159 the northwest coast.^^'' These are almost formless, show an infantile state of art instinct, and somewhat resemble East North Amerind art. There are many ceremonial masks carved in wood.^*^^ Many of these are painted wholly or par- tially. Some of these masks have unquestionably a resemblance to Japanese theatrical masks and also to some masks from Australasia. A mask from the Tlinkits^^^ representing a bird's head of immense size, makes one think of Bushman hunting disguises and of Egyptian animal headed monsters. The most important and distinctive specimens I of West North Amerind art are the totem poles, j Some of the best I have seen are at Fort Wr angel, j Alaska, and as a rule they are of plain wood, un-j painted and unvarnished. Some few of them, how- i ever, are painted with rather bright colors, such as emerald green and vermilion. The one on the' square at Seattle is the finest one of this kind I have seen. It is probable that these colors are a result of the Russian occupation of Alaska, and if so, it is an instance of one art affecting another art, and it would show that Byzantine art has borne an influence clean across Asia into North America. The forms of the animals, the frogs, the bears,/ the eagles, carved on the totem poles are distinctly ^"^ Harper's Weekly, New York, Saturday, May 2, 1903. ^o" U. S. Nat. Mus. British Mus. 2<*» U. S. Nat. Mus. 160 COMPARATIVE ART. good, and in most instances, the individual forms resemble Central Amerind art rather closely in their manner. But the totem pole itself as an art form, as far as I know, is unknown in America anywhere east of the Rocky Mountains or south of California. Two great totem poles from the hook of Alaska^^" have faces carved on them, which, when compared with some faces carved on poles from New Zea- land^^^ show a distinctly similar artistic impulse. The same is true of a great Alaska totem pole^^^ which has ten totems one over the other. Those of men's heads, with their tongues poked out, un- questionably resemble New Zealand heads. These Alaska totem poles and the New Zealand posts have a distinct similarity simply as posts, and it seems to me that both their form and their artistic manner are too similar for merely a coincidence. The people who carved these poles must at some time, even if it were thousands of years apart, have been related. Some of the heads from Alaska with the tongues poked out also slightly resemble the heads on Korean guide posts: the eyes, however, do not have the snow eye slant noticeable in the Korean heads. The position and general appearance of the totem poles also bear a similarity to the poles sometimes placed before the houses of the Kayans of Borneo, ^" Univ. of Penna. Mus. Arch. ^'^ Univ. of Penna. Mus. Arch. "2 u. S. Nat. Mus. WEST NORTH AMERIND ART. 161 and, what is still more remarkable, to some of the posts carved in Nigeria. In fact, the art form of posts or poles with sev- eral sculptures carved on them, one over the other, stretches from West North America, across Austra- lasia, into West Central Africa. It is not found among White races at all, but among races either of Black or Yellow^ stock. It shows intercourse and possibly blood relationship among tribes living, in many cases, far apart, and from its geographical distribution I infer, at present, that the art form of the sculptured post among any people is a tolerably safe proof of at least some Negro blood among its ancestry. When we consider all these various resemblances, it seems as if West North Amerind art was scarcely ptirely autochthonous. It seems as if several dif- ferent arts met on this coast. There is some East North Amerind, some Central Amerind, a little Eskimo, some Australasian and some Japanese and perhaps Korean art influence. And the ethnologi- cal significance of these resemblances seems to be that whether some of the West North Amerinds are indigenous to America or not, at least there certainly must have been some communication across the Pacific before the arrival of the Europeans. East North Amerind Art. East North Amerind art seems to be largely autochthonous. Most of its examples are either 162 COMPARATIVE ART. pictographs or else they are decorative work. Its quality or style, whilst rather infantile, is decid- edly distinctive, altho it resembles in some re- spects what would appear to be the autochthonous qualities of West North Amerind and Central Amer- ind art. This art extended east of the Rockies over pretty much the whole of Canada and of the United States, and perhaps it still holds its own in a few spots of the North American continent. This art takes the form of immature drawings or paintings, of small carvings, and of decorative designs. There are no large examples of either pictorial or sculptural work. The decorative work is applied on various uten- sils or garments, in the shape of bead work, etc. Some specimens of skin garments from the Black- feet, for instance,^^^ are ornamented with some simple and elementary decorations in lines. A pottery jug found at Towanda, Pennsylvania, and now in the possession of Mr. John Codding of that place, is ornamented with a number of lines unlike those of any other decorative art I know. Among carvings by the East North Amerinds, the most important by their nimiber and their variety are the carved heads of pipes for smoking tobacco. They come from all over the United States :^^* Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, "3 British Mus. ^^* Smithsonian Inst. ,' ' EAST NORTH AMERIND ART. 163 Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, Ohio, Illinois, Ken- tucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, California. In other words, over a great part of North America, the Amerinds carved pipes into human head or animal shapes, whose de- signs show a very similar technic and art impulse towards a certain form of primal sculpture. None of these pipes in the least resemble Eskimo carv- ings, but there are some slight resemblances to some West North Amerind art. The East North Amerinds were fond of adorning themselves by painting themselves with garish colors. Among various tribes I have seen, the Cheyennes and Arapahoes especially, I noticed that bright red seemed to be the favorite hue, and I heard at Saint Petersbtirg that the Russian moujiks look on red as the most beautiful of colors, and, in fact, the word red and the word beautiful in Russian are strikingly similar. I have little doubt that this preference for red among some primitive peoples is due to the fact that red, vermilion or rose madder, is the most violent of colors, the one which produces the warmest tints on the palette and the one which has the most intense chromatic effect on the eye. The drawings or paintings of the East North Amerinds are usually done on bison robes or deer skins. They generally represent events in the life of the owner. There are usually one or more incidents 164 COMPARATIVE ART. on each skin, and each one is represented in a separate drawin^.^^® There is almost no art idea, almost no drawing, and absolutely no light and shade, perspective, or indeed any pictorial qualities. The figures are mere signs and symbols. These drawings on bison skins look almost like those which white children with art proclivities indulge in. The head, leg and shoulder of a bison on a Comanche shield^^® look like a most primitive drawing by a white child: as art, it is grotesque. An owl and rainbow, on a similar Mandan shield, show the same characteristics. The humans al- most always have the faces in profile, but the general proportion of the figures is fair and resembles the White race art type : it looks like evidence of a White race inroad. Some big photographs ^^^ of East North Amerinds suggest to me the type and facial physiognomy of a White not a Yellow people, and the eye is not the Yellow snow eye. The same is true of the Amerinds as portrayed by the distinguished artist and traveller George Catlin,^^^ whose work, it seems to me, is not sufficiently remembered. He was a most agreeable, unassimiing gentleman, and *^^ U. S. Nat. Mus. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist. Univ. of Penna. Mus. Arch. "« U. S. Nat. Mus. »" U. S. Nat. Mus. '*" George Catlin: Illustrations of the Manners, Customs & Condi- tions of the North American Indians, London, Henry G. Bohm, 1866. EAST NORTH AMERIND ART. 165 his pictiires, writings and collections will remain the greatest monttment of the Amerinds who lived in North America when the buffalo, the elk, the cougar, the antelope, and the grizzly still ranged over it. The noteworthy fact from the ethnological stand- point is that East North Amerind art has none of the characteristics of either a Black race art or a Yellow race art, but some of a White race art. And the conclusion to be drawn from this would seem to be that probably the Red Amerind is an almost dis- tinct race. Central Amerind Art. Central and West South Amerind art blossoms out in Mexico, extends north into Arizona, and south thru Guatemala, Hondiu-as, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, into northern Chili. It might be called Central Amerind art for the sake of brevity. This art, with its pyramids, temples, sculptures and bas-reliefs, was in full blast at least as late as the year 1520, as Cortez and Pizarro found the natives of Mexico and Peru using their temples. When this art began, there is as yet no means of knowing. Some degraded remnants still survive as a living art, as for instance among the Hopi and Zuni of Arizona. Unquestionably it is mainly of native growth but there are some re- semblances between some of its monoliths, temples 166 COMPARATIVE ART. and sculptures to some of those of Southeastern Asia and Australasia. Both chipped stone and polished stone imple- ments come from all these Central American and West South American countries, from Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, etc.^^^ Central Amerind art is all more or less one art, with local differences. Tho it has certain slight resemblances to East North Amerind art and East South Amerind art and stronger ones to West North Amerind art, yet it is much more ad- vanced than either of these, and almost stands by itself. Mexican art runs to squares. This square type probably originated in the square stones used for building, and became conventionalized. The architectural and art remains are in the shape of pyramids, buildings, sculptured monoliths, statues, bas-reliefs, pottery, and hieroglyphs or pictographs. The pyramids had many steps on their sides, and seem generally to have had buildings, probably temples, on their tops. In this respect they are different from Egyptian pyramids, which are struc- tures complete in themselves, while the Central American pyramids were simply foundations for the temples. An illustration^^^ of the palace at "' U. S. Nat. Mus. British Mus. 220 By Mr. Catherwood in Mr. Stephens' book. CENTRAL AMERIND ART. 167 Palenque shows that it somewhat resembles the temples of Java and Cochin China. Some of the temples are probably comparatively recent, for they are said to be still in fairly good repair and in one case at least, wooden beams have been found at UxmaP^^ in a perfect state of preservation. Moreover accounts by eye witnesses^^^ speak of these temples and buildings as in use in the time of Cortez. It seems probable that Central Amerind art at one time extended into the Mississippi and Ohio valleys. The great and curious motmds and earth works found in many parts of the central United States, which are the works of the rather mysterious race whom we call the Moundbuilders, have so many characteristics in common with the foimdation mounds of Mexican temples and edifices that it seems probable that they were thrown up by the same people. ^^^ There is little art extant from the Moimdbuilders. From the animal mounds in Wisconsin come some shapeless figures.^^^ A cu- rious stone, known as the "Rattlesnake disc"^^ from Motmdville, Hale County, Alabama, on which is carved a hand resembling the Arab hand of 2" Stephens. ^^^ Bemal Diaz de Castillo: The true history of the Conquest of Mexico, translated by M. Kea tinge, 1800. ^^'E. G. Squier and E. H. Davis: Ancient Monuments of the Mis- sissippi Valley, 1848. ^^* Casts, Carnegie Mus., Pittsbtirg. *** Smithsonian Inst. 168 COMPARATIVE ART. "Fatma" with an eye in the palm and a rattle- snake surrounding the hand, is very Mexican in its art. The monoliths^^® vary from about three to nine meters in height, and they are therefore smaller, as a rule, than Egyptian obelisks : the stone may have had something to do with the size. They are ornamented with well sculptured bas-reliefs or engravings. There is generally one great full face in the center. Sometimes these are dignified and rather handsome ; as a rule they are ugly. The ears of these heads are always enormous, like those of the Buddhas and Rapa-Nui statues, but rather wide than long, and the hands are held upward below the face. As a rule the legs and feet are represented, and the figures are generally standing, wherein they differ from the Buddhas, who are usually seated. In most of the figures the feet are bare. Some of these monoliths a little resemble Egyptian figures. An Aztec monument from Mexico^^^ on which is a sort of death's head in the center with a number of surrounding pendant snakes, and a Maya monument from Quirigua, Guatemala,^^^ on which is a head surrounded by a lot of carvings of the square Mex- ican style, seem to me entirely different in art quality from neighboring Hindu specimens. While 22* Casts, Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist. Univ. of Penna. Mus. Arch. U. S. Nat. Mus. "7 U. S. Nat. Mus. "8 U. S. Nat. Mus. CENTRAL AMERIND ART. 169 actually comparing the two side by side, I could not see any real resemblance between Mexican and Hindu art. On the other hand, a large Mexican head,^^® about sixty centimeters high, resembles rather strongly Egyptian art. There are many stone figures from Central Amer- ica. ^^° Some old stone ones from the River Pamico^^^ are flat and archaic. In some the feather head dresses indicate an Amerind origin. Some heads from Copan, Honduras, are more elab- orate and fairly good artistically. A stone figure, carved on both sides, from San Augustine, Colom- bia, has some of the characteristics of both Mex- ican and Peruvian art.^^ There are many bas-reliefs in stone and in stucco. The faces, as a rule, are engraved in profile, and they have retreating foreheads and immense noses, and the eye, unhke the eye in Egyptian art, is correctly drawn in profile. The invariable type is distinctly Central Amerind, altho the big roimded noses sug- gest Semitic faces.^^^ Many of the faces in the bas- rehefs are decidedly, but perhaps imintentionally, grotesque, with the big nose and retreating fore- "» U. S. Nat. Mus. ''" Casts, Smithsonian Inst. »" British Mus. '" British Mus. Brought by Captain Vetch, 1842. "^ Near Quebec, Canada, I once saw a young girl, with some Amerind blood, whose physiognomy was absolutely that of Central Amerind bas-reliefs. 170 - COMPARATIVE ART. head always sculptured in profile. Some slabs from buildings at Menche Tinamit, Tabasco, Mexico,^^* have figures in profile. They have enormous, al- most Semitic, noses, and the eyes are in profile. They look something like Hindu faces, but quite unlike Egyptian faces. The cornice of a temple from Copan, Honduras, has also many figures all in profile. They are draped, wear a kind of turban and have big ear rings. The bodies and legs are small. They resemble somewhat Hindu work. A ntunber of masks from Mexico, ^^^ made of a sort of obsidian mosaic, are most remarkable. The colors are either black or green. They have white, set-in eyes, and white teeth. There are also a big, double headed snake of mosaic, and a handle of mosaic, representing a kneeling man, in which a chipped stone spear head or dagger- like implement is inserted. These masks sug- gest death's heads; they are ghastly. Altho there is no resemblance in form to the heads from Rapa-Nm and Hawaii, yet the set-in eyes suggest a resemblance. There is also a certain resemblance between these masks and those of West North Amerind art. Pottery sculptures are found everywhere from Mexico to Peru, in Mexico. Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Peru, and in '34 British Mus. 235 British Mus. ^ . CENTRAL AMERIND ART. 171 some of the Antilles, such as Antigua Island. ^^ Naive and sometimes grotesque, are perhaps the most nearly descriptive adjectives. These sculp- tures are usually poor and as a rule the heads might be looked on as caricatures, for many of the faces wear a broad grin. There is a difference in the sculptures of each locality from the sculptures in all the other localities. Nevertheless, big heads and small bodies and even smaller legs are generic. This, of course, is a distinct resemblance to African art and to Australasian art. In some red pottery from Mexico^^^ there are heads which are distinctly grotesque. Some broken bits have a distant resemblance to big Japanese netzkes. In the same red material there are some animal statuettes — a coiled snake, a coiled snake holding a frog, a turkey gobbler — and these are better than the heads. I have seen also many other specimens of this pottery from Mexico, ^^ and I consider it inferior to Peruvian pottery in its art. There is much pottery from Peru.^^® It is mostly red, and some of it is black. It is often decorated with drawings of men, animals and birds. Often it is moulded into the forms of heads, and I am inclined to consider the heads from there as the best of any from the west coast of America. Some of ^'® Smithsonian Inst. Boston Mus. Fine Arts. British Mus. '^' Boston Mus. Fine Arts. 238 U. S, Nat. Mus. British Mus. 23' Smithsonian Inst. Boston Mus. Fine Arts. Bi;itish Mus. 172 COMPARATIVE ART. the potteries have the square type head of Mexico and Zuni. Some of these heads are purely grotesque : others are decidedly good and show the Central Amerind type of head well carried out. These heads often have white eyes. Many of them look as if they had just been made, as for instance, two wooden heads^*^ with hats set sideways, which remind me forcibly of Napoleon I., except that they look like caricatures of him : probably these heads are of a late date and the hats are European. Central Amerind art still survives in a degraded form in Arizona and New Mexico among the Pueblo Amerinds. The best artistic proof of this is that Moki, Hopi and Zuni art runs to squares. These three tribes^*^ make ceremonial dolls and masks which seem to me to be about the crudest and most inartistic attempts at sculpture I have seen. These are colored vividly and garishly with white, emerald green, Indian red, bright yellow, etc. When one considers the inharmonious colors, implying a lack of color sense, and the square lines, descended from Mexican art, implying a lack of any sense of form, it is hard to see how art could sink lower. All pueblo art, however, is not absolutely bad. There are some small Zuni carvings of animals^*^ in various sorts of stone, which show some slight sense "» British Mus. ^*^ U. S. Nat. Mus. Univ. of Penna. Mus. Arch. British Mus. 2^2 U. S. Nat. Mus. CENTRAL AMERIND ART, 173 of form and observation. The most interesting thing about these is that they decidedly suggest some Eskimo carvings from Alaska. These same pueblo tribes also place decorative designs on some of their potteries. In many cases these are extreme- ly ugly. In other examples, however, altho from the standpoint of artistic drawing, the humans and ani- mals are bad, infantile and lacking in observation, yet as decorations they seem to me a decided success and to fill the round circle of the bowl admirably. An important discovery in the region of the Pueblos was that of some implements'*^ dug out from a mound in southeastern Colorado, which are exactly similar to the patu-patu or merai, the traditional weapon of the Maories. This is almost certain evi- dence of a relationship between Australasia and Central America. On the whole. Central Amerind art is rougher, coarser, less beautiful, more barbarous than Egyp- tian, South Asiatic or East Asiatic art. It is largely an art of square blocks. It is sufficiently distinctive and different from other arts to make it fairly cer- tain that it is principally autochthonous, that is that it developed mainly on the spot. It is the most advanced type of Amerind art, probably because, owing to geographic and climatic environment, the peoples of Mexico and Peru reached a more ad- '*^ Smithsonian Inst. Found by Mr. J. B. Aldrich. 174 COMPARATIVE ART. ■ ' vanced stage of culture than those of Eastern North or South America. Central Amerind art, however, certainly has some resemblance to other arts. The heads in bas-reliefs or potteries from Central or West South America always suggest the Amer- ind type, but some of the monoliths resemble some- what the statues from Rapa-Nui, that is there are some resemblances between Central Amerind and Australasian art. The statues and sculptured monoliths do not in the least suggest the Buddhas, but some of the temples and ornamentation do re- semble somewhat Southeast Asian temples. There are also certain other superficial resemblances be- tween some of the large single figures and some Egyptian ones. Mexican art however resembles most strongly the less advanced West North Amer- ind art, and as this was certainly in touch with Aus- tralasian art, and with some Yellow race art from Eastern Asia, it seems to me that a migration of some Asian Yellows, of fewer Australasian Blacks, and a few South Asian Whites across the Pacific must account for some of the motives of Mexican art. It looks as if some driblets of the oriental races had drifted over from Asia and Australasia, bringing of course their art ideas, and that these had^ developed on the spot almost autochthonously.^^* ^** Antiquities of Mexico, 1830-48. [Edited by Viscount Kings- borough.] John L. Stephens: Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yticatan, 1844. east south amerind art. 175 East South Amerind Art. East South Amerind art seems to be practically autochthonous. This extended over pretty nearly all South America east of the Andes, and it still exists in most of the forest region of the Amazon and of the Orinoco. Its quality is very poor. It resembles most nearly the art of West South America, but it seems to have less pictorial quality, and, what there is of it, to be more a conventional decorative art. From the Caribs, Marsaruni River, Guiana, there are two small almost shapeless clay figures.^^^ Other- wise from Guiana, Brazil and South America east of the Andes there is only some decorative art. Some bamboo flutes from the Caribs are ornamented with decorative patterns, quite unlike Old World forms. Some pottery from Peru and some from the Ucayale River likewise show designs different from any I have seen from elsewhere : their patterns are mostly in right angles. There are many stone implements from Brazil, and most of these are polished stone. From Brazil also there are some handsome ornaments made of feathers and many made with European beads. From the Chaco, J. D. Baldwin: Ancient America, 1871. Jesse Walter Fewkes: "Archaeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895:" Seventeenth Annual Report Bureau American Ethnology. Dr. Carl Lumholtz: Bulletin American Geographical Society, Vol. XXXV., pp. 91-92. Unknown Mexico, 1902. ^*^ British Mus: An inscription says that the Indian tribes of tropical Brazil are still in a stone age. 176 COMPARATIVE ART. Paraguay, there are polished stone axe heads, and a couple of small gourds rudely decorated with the most elementary lines. From Tierra del Fuego, there are some stone implements, but no art.^^ ^*^ Alexander von Humboldt: Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent, London, 1819, Vol. IV., pp. 521, 522, 578. Comte de Gabriac: Promenade a travers VAnUrique du Sud, Paris, Michel Levy Freres, 1868. A. Hamilton Rice: The Geographical Journal, London, 1903, Vol. XXI., p. 415. PART IV. CONCLUSION. Summary of the Distribution of Arts. Autochthonous Arts. Movements of Arts. Causes of Art. Several Races op Man. In this final chapter, I will try to sum up briefly the OPINIONS to which my observations on the fine arts of all the races which I have been able to observe have led me. No one need in any way accept my conclusions as facts: they are only the OPINIONS which I hold at present, but which I shall be perfectly willing to, and doubtless shall, change, as I learn new facts hereafter. This study in the first place shows that almost all men everywhere, that all human races, have, or have had, some notions of art. The only land where there is no art is Antartika, which is not wonderful, since neither in East Antartika, nor in West Antartika, have any traces of man been found.247 It seems to me that there are several distinct types of art. The earliest art known is that of the Pleistokenes, which is stirely prehistoric. It dates back to at ^" Edwin Swift Balch: Antarctica, Philadelphia, Press of Allen, Lane & Scott, 1902. It seems to me that it would be rational to spell henceforth the name of the South Polar Continent " Antartika ", instead of "Antarctica" in which the first "c" is silent and the second " c " really a " k ". 178 COMPARATIVE ART. least 10,000 years B. C, and probably much earlier. The data do not appear to be sufficient as yet to connect the Pleistokenes positively with any race now in existence, altho it is most probable that they were a Yellow race, and the ancestors of the Eskimo. We know that the Pleistokene habitat was in the middle latitudes of western Europe, and at present, therefore, we must look on that part of the world as the cradle of art and of social organization. The Polished Stone peoples of Europe had no art, apparently, and there is no more art in Europe until the Bronze period towards perhaps 3000 or 2000 B. C. in Northern Greece, Crete, etc. The oldest Greek art might have some connection with Pleistokene art, but there is no proof and scarcely a possibility of this. This oldest Greek art, which might perhaps be called Pre-Hellenic, about 2500 B. C. to 800 B. C, probably grew up on the spot, and from it developed the later and great Greek art, about 800 B. C. to 100 A. D. Partly from this came the art of old Rome, about 300 B. C. to 400 A. D., which spread aroimd the Mediterranean and left such glorious architectural monuments in North Africa, Provence, and many other lands. Byzantine art rose from Roman art in Constantinople towards 450 A. D. ; and Romanesque architecture, about 800 A. D. to 1200 A. D., and Gothic architecture, about 1150 A. D. to 1450 A. D., evolved in Italy . CONCLUSION. 179 and west central Europe from the architecture of Rome. All their numerous changes in structure and embellishments were the natural results of fresh needs and environments. Towards the end of the first millenniimi A. D., also, we find the Eiu-opean missal painters trying to represent their beliefs and in the middle of the second millenniimi getting their eyes sufficiently opened to see that painting is not the best mediimi to express mental ab- stractions, but that it deals with the natural world. This gradually evolved thru the period known as the Renaissance, about 1400 A. D. to 1700 A. D., into the art of Europe and America of to-day. One of the oldest of arts is Egyptian art. Author- ities differ much about the date of events in Egypt, but the art may be fairly safely assigned within the five millenniums preceding the Christian era. Egyp- tian art flourished almost entirely in the reaches of the lower Nile valley, but it had some influence on the art of North Africa, Greece, Sicily, and Etruria. In Egypt and Arabia, about 750 A. D., an art arose as the result of Muhammedan religious tenets, which, with its foundations resting on preceding architectiu^al remains, extended thru North Africa and crossed to Spain, leaving its great relics of the Alhambra and the Mosque of Cordova; and which to the eastward spread to Central Asia and to Hin- dustan. 180 COMPARATIVE ART. To the south of the Sahara, we find two distinct arts: African art and Bushman art. African art is certainly absolutely independent of Yellow, Semitic, and European art. It is found in almost every part of Africa, south of the Sd,hara, for instance in Lagos, Dahomey, Ashantee, the Kongo, Bechuana and Matabeleland, the Mweru and Bangweolo dis- tricts and Uganda. The specimens of this art, mostly wooden sculptures, are all recent in date. They are characterized by their big heads, small bodies, short legs, and by the exaggerations of the salient points of their anatomy. Bushman art, which so far is known positively only to the south of the Zambezi, has no resemblance at all to African art, to which it is immeasurably superior. It has some of the qualities of East Asiatic art and Pleistokene art and it is possible that it is in some way related to them. Many of the pictures of figures in htmting disguises are akin to the Egyptian animal headed monsters. In Asia there are at least three great distinct arts: Semitic art; South Asiatic art; and East Asiatic art. Semitic art as far as can be said at present, developed in Kaldea, about 5000 to 500 B. C, descended to the Assyrians, about 1500-500 B. C, to the Hittites in Asia Minor, about 1500-700 B. C, and to the old Persians. Such art as the Jews of Palestine had, came also mainly from Baby- lonian influence and also likewise any art the CONCLUSION. 181 Phenicians had. While the Phenicians were traders and explorers rather than artists, yet they probably took some Semitic art ideas to Car- thage, Sicily, and Etruria, and possibly, but not probably, also to Southeast Africa at Zimbabwe. South Asiatic art sprang up at some indefinite time several millenniums B. C. in Hindustan. This Hindu art may antedate Kaldean and Egyptian art. It is probably autochthonous, but it seems possible that Hindu and Kaldean art may come from a common center in the region of Afghan- istan and Turkestan. Our knowledge of the be- ginnings of Hindu art, however, is decidedly nebulous. East Asiatic art rose in China, probably autoch- thonously, also at some indefinite time, which may perhaps be placed towards about 2000 B. C. From Chinese art principally sprang Japanese art, some- where round 500 A. D. As a result of the spread of the Buddhist religion in Southern and Eastern Asia sometime after 600 B. C, there were some new factors brought into the arts of the peoples inhabiting the lands extend- ing from Afghanistan to the Pacific coast. There are certainly Buddhist temples in Hindustan, Java, Cochin-China, China, and Japan, and in China and Japan kakemonos representing incidents in Buddhistic history are extremely common. My impression, however, is that what one may call 182 COMPARATIVE ART. Buddhistic art was merely the grafting of certain subjects on arts which were already developed. In the islands of the Southern Pacific we find much art. There are two or more subtypes. All of these are closely akin to African art; and the imnaturally large heads, the pose of the figures and their general grip by their artists, are so similar to the specimens from Africa, that it seems probable that their makers must have been related by blood. There is certainly an inferior and a superior variety of this art, and specimens of the inferior subtype come from many islands, among which may be mentioned the Hervey Islands, New Heb- rides, Tahiti, Samoa. The more mature subtype, also principally wooden sculptures, often with curi- ously shaped heads, crops up in Sumatra, New Zealand, Solomon Islands, Hawaii, Rapa-Nui. My impression is that this Australasian art is the work of two and perhaps more races. Four-fifths of it at least comes from a black race, and the remainder was doubtless fathered by the brown mixed race whom we call the Malay, which prob- ably includes some white affiliations from Southern Asia and some yellow ones from Eastern Asia, for this Australasian art is not only found in Sumatra, but there are traces of it in Japan. In Arctic Asia and Arctic America, we find an art almost distinct from others. This is the art of the Chukchees, Koraks, and Yakaghirs in Siberia, CONCLUSION. 183 and of the Eskimos in Siberia, Alaska, Greenland and Labrador. Altho the art of each tribe varies from that of the others, still there is a family hke- ness sufficiently strong to consider it as one art. This art does not resemble Aryan, Semitic or Afro- Australasian art, but it does have decided resem- blances to Pleistokene art and to Bushman art and some to East Asiatic art, and it is possible that the Eskimo are the descendants of the Pleistokenes, altho this can not be looked on as a certainty. On the American continent art is found almost everywhere. It appears to be mainly of autoch- thonous growth, and it seems to fall into three or perhaps four great divisions. In the northwest, the art of the Tlinkits, the Haidas, and Kwakiutls, whilst very individual and partly autochthonous, is certainly related to Australasian art and to South and East Asiatic arts. In East North America, we find an art which is extremely individual, not much developed, and which, strange to say, resembles in its quality more nearly the attempts at drawing and painting made by White children than it does any other art. In Central America and West South America, art rose to its greatest heights on the American Continent. This art extends from Arizona, thru Mexico, Guatemala, Hondurus, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru down to northern Chili. This art, with its pyramids, temples, sculp- 184 COMPARATIVE ART. tures and bas-reliefs, comes down as a great art to at least the year 1520 A. D., as Cortez and Pizarro found the natives of Mexico and Peru using their temples. It exists still, in a debased form, among the Mokis and the Zunis. When this art began, there is as yet no means of knowing. Unquestion- ably it is mainly autochthonous in growth, but there are many resemblances to West North Amerind art, and some to Australasian art, East Asiatic art, and South Asiatic art, and this shows almost surely some influence from across the Pacific. East South America is almost barren of art, so much so in fact that it is hard to tell whether its art is most nearly in touch with East North Amerind or Central Amerind art. In various parts of the world, also, there are sev- eral small tribes, among them, the Ainu, the Anda- man islanders, and the Koonds of Orissa, who either have almost no art or whose exceedingly primitive art it is difficult to connect with any other. It seems to me that, when one considers all these various arts, their growth and their development and in some cases their downfall, there is fairly suf- ficient evidence to warrant the assertion that art is autochthonous among several races and in several places. It must have been autochthonous among the Pleistokenes. It seems also probable that art was almost autochthonous among the Greeks, the Kaldeans, the Egyptians, the Hindus, the Chinese, CONCLUSION. 185 the Africans, the Bushmen, the Australasians, the Innuits, the East North Amerinds and the Central Amerinds. Art may not have been entirely autoch- thonous in all these cases and it may have been autochthonous among more races than are here mentioned, but I strongly opine that art started from the human art instinct practically independ- ently in at least ten or twelve places in the world. It seems also certain that some of these arts spread from their starting points and travelled to other races than their inventors: in some cases, half way roimd the globe. As a help to ethnology, there- fore, it seems to me that it is important to trace back as far as possible the history of each art and the geographical routes which it has followed. Altho art appears to be practically autoch- thonous in several places, still it must be noted that the arts of neighboring places gradate rather gently into each other. For instance, Hindu art changes into Siamese art and Siamese art gradates into Chinese art. The art of Australasia extends to the west over Africa, and to the north touches Japan and Northwest America. One of the most remark- able of all the resemblances which can be traced is that of the art of the East North Amerinds to that of Aryan children. And it seems almost as if in past times, perhaps before historical times, certainly before the advent of modem historical records, races must have scattered and intermingled. They 186 COMPARATIVE ART. certainly did so over most of the three continents earliest known to history; they surely had connec- tion across the Pacific ; and it seems possible, that long ago, there may have been commtinication across the Atlantic. In other words, art possibly girdled the earth before the dawn of history. A fact which cannot be gainsaid is that at the same time, in different parts of the world, there were and are different states of social organization and of art. And it is a safe inference also, that when art flourishes in any spot, that place is in a condition of material prosperity and in a more or less ad- vanced state of social organization. Venice, at the time of Veronese; Holland, at the time of Rem- brandt; Greece, at the time of Phideas and Prax- iteles, are good instances of the working of this principle. From such obvious examples, we may infer that when we find great art in a country, as in Kaldea, or in China under the Ming Dynasty, there must have been also an advanced state of social organization at the same time. And when we find such good art as that of the Bushmen or that of the Pleistokenes, it is also safe to infer that the makers could not have been the kind of men whom we speak of contemptuously and conceitedly as savages. When art was autochthonous to any race, as it for instance certainly was to the Pleistokenes, the evidence afforded by the specimens dug up of the CONCLUSION. 187 Pleistokenes themselves, shows that it appeared first as sculpttire in the round, then as bas-reliefs, next as drawing and only lastly as painting. That is to say, an untaught artist who has been subjected to no extraneous influences, first tries to imitate some object as best he can. i Art therefore begins in observation and imitation.) Seeing things as on a plane instead of in the roimd \ only comes as a later development of art, and many I specimens of drawings and paintings from primitive / or not highly civilized peoples tend to show that, as a rule, the drawing of animals is at first far superior to the drawing of humans, and the draw- ing of landscape is almost unknown. Possibly this is due to the fact that most primitive peoples are, or were, hunters, and that their observations are chiefly centered on their food supply, namely y the wild faima among whom they live. ^ The fact that observation and imitation of animals ] and men in the round are the causes to which the / earliest art must be assigned, shows, it seems to | me, that primitive art must come solely from an s art impulse. It does not arise from any supersti-/ tious or psychical sentiment, but simply because the artist is interested in something he sees, and he has a desire to mimic it. It is almost universal among white people to label and libel figures made by savage or rather by non- European races as idols. I cannot help thinking that there is 188 COMPARATIVE ART. something queer, something cross-eyed about this ( point of view. In four cases out of five, the sculp- ] tures or drawings made by Whites, or Yellows, or / Reds, or Blacks have probably no mystical sig- nificance, but are merely the desire for art expres- sion which seems inherent in many humans. Another fact which shows that art is autoch- thonous in several parts of the world, is that the art of every district of the world has an individuality of its own, which makes it distinct from every other art, even tho it closely resembles the art from many other localities. Just as it is possible to tell the work of every great master painter by his in- dividual quality, so is it almost always possible to tell where any art comes from, because the per- sonality of each race shows out in the art of every land. On the whole it seems to me that the evidences afforded by the fine arts lead to the conclusion that man did not spring from one stock in one lo- cality, but that he evolved several hundred thou- sand years ago in several different places of the world. It seems most likely that these places were in the present Eur-Asiatic continent, but some of them, thru geological changes, may now be sunk under the Ocean. TABLE OF CONTENTS AND INDEX TABLE OF CONTENTS. Part I. Introduction — Idea of Book. Comparison of Arts. Comparative Sciences. Critical Faculty. Races of Men. Geological Time. Apology Pages S-12. Part II. Technical Points in Art. — Criticism. Technic. Art and Nature. Synthesis and Analysis. Decoration. Decorative Art. Spots of Color. Light. Color. Drawing and Line. Perspective. Values. Aerial Perspective. Subject and Motive. Effect. Plastic Idea. Action and Motion. Memory and Imagination. Quality, Style, Personality. Conventionality. Training. Photography Pages 13-34. Part IIL The Geographical Distribution of Art — Pleistokene Art. European PoUshed Stone Period Art. European Bronze Period Art. Greek Art. Etruscan Art. Roman Art. Byzantine Art. Flemish and Itahan Art. Egyptian Art. (Arab Art. African Art. Zimbabwe Art. Bushman Art. JKaldean Art. Assyrian Art. Phenician Art. Persian Art. South Asiatic Art. East Asiatic Art. v Ainu Art. East Siberian Art. Australasian Art. Eskimo Art. West North Amerind Art. East North Amerind Art. Central Amerind Art. East South Amerind Art Pages 35-176. Part IV. Conclusion. — Summary of the Distribution of Arts. Autochtho- nous Arts. Movements of Arts. Causes of Art. Several Races of Man Pages 177-188. (191) INDEX. PAGE Abyssinia 61, 76 Action and motion 28, 29 Aerial perspective 27,127 Afghanistan 98, 101, 110, 181 Africa 35, 73, 146, 180, 182, 185 African art 68, 70, 73-78, 96, 100, 107, 138, 145, 158, 171, 180, 182 African sculptures 74, 75, 76, 77, 78 Africans 9,45, 185 Afro-Australasian art 59, 153, 182 Ainu 136, 184 Ainu art 136 Alaska 62, 109, 152, 155, 159, 182 Alaska art 136, 141, 160 Alexander 110 Algeria 58, 73 Alhambra. the 73, 179 Altamira 43 Amazon 175 America 35, 152, 156, 159, 160, 161, 171, 179, 182, 183 Amerind art 107, 152, 176 Amerinds 9, 39, 107, 157, 161, 163, 164, 165, 172, 174 Analysis 16, 17 Andaman Islands 140 Andaman Islanders 184 Andes 175 Anian, Strait of 136 Animal headed figures 82, 94, 99, 180 Animal painting 40, 41, 42, 43, 80, 81, 116, 121, 122, 123 Animals in art 40, 41, 42, 43, 80, 88, 93, 94, 97, 137, 159, 160 Antartika 177 Antigua 171 Antilles 171 Aoki 114 Aosta 57 Apes 9 Aqueducts 57 Arab art 70-73 Arabia 70, 179 (193) 194 INDEX. Arabs 71, 72, 79 Arapahoes 163 Arctic Ocean 84, 152 Arenas 57 Arizona 156, 165, 172, 183 Aries 57 Armenians 94 Art and Nature 15,16 Artaxerses Mn<5mon 97 Aryan art 107, 117, 120, 182 Aryans 107, 114, 122, 128, 130, 185 Ashantee 56, 74, 180 Ashurbanapal 93 Asia 35, 51, 87, 98, 102, 107, 130, 139, 140, 159, 174, 180, 182 Asia Minor 51, 94, 180 Assam 102 Asshumazirapal, King 92 Assyria 91, 93, 94 Assyrian art 54, 68, 87, 90, 91-95, 96, 100 Assyrian artists 20 Assyrian bulls 87, 94 Assyrians 92, 95, 180 Atlantic Ocean 77, 186 Australasia 35, 139, 140, 159, 161, 173,174,185 Australasian art 100, 106, 108, 137-152, 157, 158 161,171,174,182,183,184,185 Australasians 9, 185 Australia 138, 143 Autochthonous arts 37, 50, 56, 65, 73, 84, 90, 98 105, 107, 131, 137, 152, 161 174,184, 185,186, 188 Aztec 168 Baal 96 Babylonia 96, 102 Babylonian art 91 Babylonians 65 Background 128 Baganda 76 Balch, Mr. Thomas Willing l$Q Balch, Mrs 87, 151 Bali 98, 106 Balkan country 58 Baluchistan. 141 Bamian 101 Bangkok 101 Bangweolo, Lake 74, 180 INDEX. 195 PAGE Barawan 141 Bardo, the 71, 97 Barrett, G 25 Barye 121 Batta 140 Bechuanaland 74, 180 Belgium 37 Benin City 76 Benin, Great 74 Bering Sea 157 Bering Strait 136 Bevers, Piz 66 BibliotMque Nationale 98 Binney, Mr. Charles C 66 Bison 40, 41 Blackfeet 162 Black race 100, 161, 174, 188 Black race art 165 Bocklin 29 Bokhara 73 Borneo 109, 141, 142, 160 Borneo art 136 Boro-Boedoer 105 Boston 65 Boston Museum Fine arts 123 Botticelli 135 Boucher de Perthes ; 46 Brazil 175 Breuil, Abb6 43 Britain 57, 58 British Museum 124, 139 Bronze period 48, 49, 53, 66, 178 Brown race 9 Bruges 63, 64 Bryant, Mr. H. G 153 Buddha, the 100, 102, 106, 132 Buddhas, statues. 87, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 105, 110, 120, 131, 168, 174 Buddhism 100, 101, 105, 133, 181 Buddhist art 101, 105, 107, 110, 131, 132, 133, 182 Buddhist temples 101, 181 Burma 98, 103, 131 Burmese art 103, 104 Bushman art 79-84, 153, 180, 183 Bushmen 65, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 99, 159, 185, 186 Bushmen drawings 45, 80, 82, 83 Byzantine art 60-62, 64, 71, 159, 178 196 INDEX. PAOS California 157, 160 Cambodia 104 Campagna 57 Canada 162 Capella Palatina 61 Capitan, Dr 43 Caribs 175 Carthage 52, 57, 58, 90, 95, 181 Carthaginian priestess, statue of 52 Cassatt, Miss 21 Catlin, George 164 Cave Hunting 11 Cave Men 46 Caves of Central Europe 37, 38, 43, 82, 84 Central Africa 68 Central America 169, 173, 183 Central Amerind art 152, 160, 161, 162, 165-174, 184 Central Amerinds 185 Central Asia 179 Central Europe 10 Ceylon 98, 99, 102, 103, 105, 110 Chaco 175 Chalfin, Mr. Paul 123 Champion, Mons. B 38, 39, 42, 66 Charon 55 Chelleen period 46 Cheyennes, the 163 Chili 165, 183 China 87,98, 107, 108, 110, 125, 131, 132, 181, 186 Chinese 19, 20, 107, 121, 126, 134, 184 Chinese art 11,18, 100, 103,107-135,181, 185 Chinese artists 30, 45, 128 Chinese sculptures 120 Chinese writing Ill Chinkei 132 Chipped stone implements 35, 36, 46, 53, 143, 166 Chipped Stone people, 46, 48 Chipped Stone period 53, 66 Chiusi 55 Christ 133 Christian churches 101 Christian era 179 Christiania 49 Christianity • 101, 133 Christians, the 71 Chuckchees 136, 137, 153, 156, 182 Church of the Savior, Moscow 61 INDEX. 197 PAGB Clay eaters 39 Clemens, Mr. S. L 143 Cochin China 87, 99, 104, 105, 167, 181 Codding, Mr. John 162 Color 23, 129, 130, 163 Colorado 173 Colored windows 61 Colosseum 57 Colombia 165, 169, 183 Comanche, the 164 Comparative anatomy 6, 9 Comparative archeology 6 Comparative art 7 Comparative philology 6 Conclusion 177-188 Concord, temple of 53 Constantinople 60, 61, 178 Conventionality 31, 32 Copan 169 Cordova, Mosque of 73, 179 Cometo 56 Corot 31 Cortez 165, 167, 184 Costa Rica 165, 170, 183 Couronnement des pylones 97 Crete 178 Criticism 13, 14 Critics 7, 14, 29 Cushing, Mr. Frank H 153 Cyclopean art 49 Cyrenaica 52 Dahomey 74, 180 Daibutsz 101 Danube 58 Darius, temple of 96 Dawkins, Prof. W. Boyd 1 1, 46 Decoration 17 Decorative art 17, 18 Delacroix 32 Delaware River 1 54 Dent du G^ant 127 Deshneff 137 Diana of the Ephesians 148 Dol-al-Marchant, sepulchral chamber 48 DoUs 51 Dolmen of Gavrinis 48 198 INDEX. PAOB Dordogne 38, 43 Dor6 29 Drawing and line 23, 24, 25 Dutch 72 Eannadou, King 85 Ear, elongated 100, 102 East Antartika 177 East Asiatic art 45, 59, 70, 90, 93, 96, 107-135,152 153, 173, 180, 181, 183, 184 East Asiatics Ill, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 118 119, 121, 125, 126, 128, 129, 131 East North Amerind art 152, 161-165, 166, 184 East North Amerinds 158, 162, 163, 164, 185 East Siberian art 136, 137 East South Amerind art 166, 175-176 Easter Island 149 Eastern Asia 174, 181, 182 Ecuador 165, 170, 183 Effect 27, 28 Egypt 52, 56, 65, 70 Egyptian art 54, 55, 65-70, 87, 94, 95, 100, 137 151, 153, 169,173, 179, 181 Egyptian art influence 53, 55 Egyptian dynasties 67, 70 Egyptian Scribe, the 67 Egyptian sculptures 67, 68, 69, 102, 110, 168 Egyptians, the 45, 79, 119, 184 Ehrenreich, Dr. P 18 ' ' Elands hunted by lions " 80 El Djem 57 Emunazar, King 95 Engadine 66 England 37, 47 Entemena, King 85 Eocene 35 Eoliths 35, 36 Eskimo, the 46, 84, 153, 154, 155, 156, 178, 182 Eskimo art 10, 45, 81, 137, 152-157, 161 Eskimo artists 81 Eskimo sculptures 10, 154, 155, 157, 163, 173, 174 Etruria 55, 90, 179, 181 Etruscan art 54-56, 89 Euphrates 84, 91 Eur-Asia 188 Europe 35, 56, 178, 179 European art 58, 60, 101, 180 INDEX. 199 PAGE European Bronze period art 48-49 European painters 59,179 European painting 52, 63, 64, 65 European Polished Stone period art 46-48 Europeans 9, 19, 20, 161, 186 Evolution 7, 9, 10 Eye, European 99 Eye, full face 92 Eye in art 158, 169 Eye, Snow 153, 154, 160 Face in art , 85,119 "Falcon," the 154 Fatma, hand of 167 Fayum, the 52 Fenollosa, Mr. E. F 135 Fenollosa collection 122, 127 Ferry, de 46 "Few-pattern" 115 Fiji Islands 146 Flanders 32 Flemish and Italian art 63-65 Flemish painters 44, 63 Florida 73 Fond de Gaume, cave 43 Fonetik spelling 11 Foot in art 92, 121 Fortuny 32 Fox, Dr. Charles William 39 Fra Angelico 29, 133 Frames 113 France 7, 25, 37, 43, 47 Frank, Mr. Victor Strauss 149 French, the 128 Friendly Islands' 146 Frise des Archers 97 Fromentin 14 Fumess, Dr 141 Fujiyama 124, 128 Ganesh or Ganesa 94, 99 Gembei Katsushige 124 Geographical distribution of art 35-176 Geology 9, 10 German gnomes 88 Germans 72 Germany i 37, 57 200 INDEX. PAOB Giorgione 20 Giotto 7 Girgenti S3 Glaci^res 11, 17, 18, 72 Gothic architecture 178 Gothic cathedrals 62 Gothic Romanesque 61 Goudea 86, 87, 88 Goudeas 51, 55, 86, 87, 89, 91, 102, 1 10 Goumia SO Greece 49, SO, 110, 178, 179, 186 Greek archipelago 50 Greek art 45, 49-54, 56, 64, 70, 87, 90, 95, 100, 110, 137, 153, 178 Greek artists 20, 52 Greek Church 61 Greek painting 52, 54 Greek pottery 51 Greek sculpture 51, 121 Greeks, the 184 Greenland 152, 153, 182 Grotta del Barone 56 Gruuthuus 63 Guatemala 165, 168, 170, 183 Guiana 175 Haddon, Prof. Alfred C 18, 142 Haida, the 156, 157, 183 Haiti 78 Hamerton, Phihp Gilbert 14, 16, 25, 30 Hasegawa Tohahei 123 Hawaii 108, 138, 140, 144, 146, 147, 151, 170, 182 Hayaguia 106 Heilprin, Prof. Angelo 153 Hellenic art 49 Herald, Paris 149 Hero, temple of 53 Hervey Islands 138, 148, 182 Hienheim 58 Hiller, Dr 141 Hilprecht, Prof. H. V 96 Hima, the 76 Himalaya, the 106 Hindu art 90, 94, 98, 99, 100, 132, 137, 151, 168, 169, 181, 185 Hindu Brahminical art 101 Hindu mythology 105 Hindu statues 99 Hindustan 73, 98, 179, 181 INDEX. 201 PAGE Hindus, the 9, 184 "Hippopotamus and gnus" 80 Hiroshige 124 Hittite art 91, 94, 95 Hittites, the 94, 180 Hoitsu 117 Hokusai 124 Holland 186 Honduras 165, 169, 170, 183 Honnigen ^ 58 Hooge, de 31 Hopi, the 165, 172 Horses 40, 41, 43 Hosi, tomb of 67 Hotel du Gouvemement, Bruges 63 Hunt, William Morris 29 Idols 51, 186 Imagination 29, 30, 118 Impressionism 21 Imvani River 82 India 87, 99, 100, 101, 105, 110, 111 India ink Ill Inglefield Gulf 154, 155 Inness, George 29 Innuits 152, 155, 185 Introduction 5-12 Isldm, El 70 Italy 32, 52, 54, 60, 178 Jains 101 Japan 87, 98, 107, 110, 125, 127, 131, 132, 135, 136, 181, 182, 185 Japanese 19,20,32,33, 107, 111, 121, 124, 126, 130, 134 Japanese art 10, 11, 18, 107-135, 137, 159, 161, 181 Japanese artists 30, 45, 128 Japanese sculptures 120, 171 Jardin des Plantes 149 Java 98, 102, 104, 105, 106, 167 Javanese art 100, 104, 105, 106 Jervis Island 143 Jewish art 89 Jews 90, 180 Kabr Hiram, Church of Saint Christopher 60, 61 Kakemonos 112, 113 Kaldea .65, 84, 85, 86, 88, 90, 180, 186 202 INDEX. PAGE Kaldean art 51,70,84-91,96,137, 153, 181 Kaldeans 89, 184 Kano, the 108, 127 Kano Motonobu 123, 128 Kano Tanyu 123 Kano Utanosuke 123 Kayans, the 141, 160 Kent 36 Kesslerloch 41 Khiva 73 Khorsabad 94 Kodak Company 34 Kongo, the 74, 75, 76, 146, 180 Kongo forest, the 68 Koonds, the 102, 184 Koraks, the... 136, 137, 153, 156, 182 Korea 98, 109, 142 Korean art 108, 109, 136, 160, 161 Koreans, the 108 Korin 32, 119 Kose-no-Kanaoka 109 Kouan Yin 120 Koyunjik 93, 121 Kumbum 106 Kwakiutl, the 156, 157, 183 Kwanti 110 Labrador 1 52, 155, 182 Lagos 74, 180 La Laugerie Basse 42 La Madelaine 41 Lavigerie, Mus6e 96 Lena River 37 Leonardo 29 Les Eyzies 41 Light 20, 21, 22, 23 Light and Shade 26 Life of Turner 16 Limes imperii Romani 58 Line 24, 2 5 Livre des Merveilles 98 Lombok 105 London 65, 68, 73, 150, 151 Louvre 149 Lubbock, Sir John 46 Luminarisme 22 Luminariste 21, 22, 23 INDEX. 203 PAGE Machairodus 35 Magalhaes, Strait of 1 52 Magdal^n^en period 46 Makemonos 112 Malays, the 9, 139, 182 Mammoth 35, 37, 38, 40, 41, 42, 43 Mandans 164 Manet, Edouard 21 Maories 173 Marco Polo 98 Marquesas Islands 138, 147 Marsaruni River 175 Masanobu 118, 127 Mas-d' Azil 38 Mashonaland 76 Masks 54, 103, 104, 105, 141, 159, 170 Matabeleland 74, 146, 180 Maya 168 Mediterranean, the 52, 62, 95, 178 Medusa 54 Melanesians 138, 139 Memling 20, 63, 64 Memory and imagination 29, 30, 1 18 Menche Tinamit, Mexico 170 Mercer, Mr. H. C 71 Metric system 11 Mexican art .69, 70, 100, 151, 158, 166, 167, 168, 169, 174 Mexican artists 20 Mexican statues 88 Mexicans 20 Mexico 7,69,73, 142, 165, 168, 170, 171, 172, 173, 183, 184 Michael Angelo 29 Middle Ages 55 Ming Dynasty 109, 122, 186 Missal paintings 63, 64 Mississippi 167 Mithras worship 38 Moki, the 156, 172, 184 Monet, Claude 21 Mongolian characteristics 83 Mongolians 9,153 Monkeys hands 39 Monoliths 47, 78, 166, 168 Monreale, Duomo at 61 Moors 72 Morocco 73 Morse, Prof. E. S . , 136 204 INDEX. PAGE Mori Sosen 45, 116, 118 Mortillet, G. de 46 Moscow 27, 61, 62 Moslems 72 Motion 28,29 Motive 27 Moundbuilders, the 167 Moundville, Alabama 167 Mountain paintings 127 Mountings 113 Moust^rien period 46 Muhammed 70, 73 Muhammedans 70, 1 79 Musee de Saint Germain 10, 38, 66 Museum of Archeology, University of Pennsylvania 154 Mweru, Lake 74, 76, 180 Mykene 49 Mykenian art 49, 50 Myrina 51 Nabu-Apal-Iddina, King 89 Naomi 128 Napoleon 1 172 Narasimha avatar 99 Navigators' Islands 146 Neferseshemes 68 Negro race 70, 161 Nenhetefka 68 Neolithic 47 Neolithic people 46 Neoliths 46 Netheriands, the 60 New Britain 138, 143 New Caledonia 138, 145 New Guinea 138, 142 New Hebrides 138, 145, 182 New Ireland 144 New Mexico 172 New York 73 New Zealand 108, 138, 145, 146, 182 New Zealand art 144, 145, 146, 151, 160 Newcomb's Astronomy 15 Nicaragua 165, 170, 183 Nicobars 138, 139, 140 Niger 75 Nigeria 75, 161 Nightwatch, the 21 INDEX. 205 PAGE Nijni-Novgorod 62, 73 Nile, the 84, 179 Nimes 57 Nimrud 93, 94 Nootka, the 157 North Africa 52, 56, 57, 58, 73, 84, 178, 179 North America 159, 161, 162, 174, 183, 185 Noses in art 85, 90, 169, 170 Notre Dame de Paris 18 Nuffar 88, 89 Ocean 188 Ohio, the 167 Okio 32, 45 Orange Free State 76 Orihon 112 Orinoco, the 175 Orissa 102, 184 Ortman, Dr. A. E 154 Osiris 68 "Ostrich hunting" 80, 81 Our Baou '. 86 Our Nina, King 85 Outline 24, 114 Pacific 137, 138, 144, 161, 174, 182, 184, 186 Paestum, temples of 52 Palenque 167 Paleolithic 47 PaleoUths 36 Paleontology 9, 10 Palermo 55, 61 Palestine 95, 180 Pamico River 169 Papua 142 Paraguay 175 Paris 38, 65, 68, 73, 96, 98, 149 Parthian period 89 Patu-patu 173 Peary expedition 1 54 Pennsylvania 72 Pere Blanc 96 Persia 73, 96, 97, 108 Persian art 90, 96-98 Persian Gulf 84 Persians, the 180 Personality 30, 31, 118 Perspective 25, 124, 127 206 INDEX. PAGE Peru 165, 170, 171, 173, 175, 183, 184 Perugino , 32 Peruvian art 169 Peruvian statues 88 Petrie, Dr 70 Pfahlgraben 58 Phenicia 95 Phenician art S3, 54, 55, 90, 95-96 Phenicians, the 79, 95, 96, 181 Phidias 186 Philadelphia 141 Photography 33, 34 Photo secession 34 Pierre Sclat^e 36 Pierre polie 46 Piette, Mons 38 Pipes 162, 163 Pithecanthropus erectus 9 Pizarro 165, 184 Plastic idea 28, 44 Plein-airist 21,23 Plein-air painting 18 Pleistokene art 10, 35-46, 49, 59, 81, 90, 156, 178, 180, 183 Pleistokene artists 37, 41, 42, 45, 81 Pleistokene drawings 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 50 Pleistokene heads 40 Pleistokene implements 36, 37, 43 Pleistokene period 35 Pleistokene statuettes 39, 44 Pleistokenes, the 36, 37, 45, 47, 50, 65, 83, 84, 122 156,177, 178, 182, 184, 186, 187 Point Barrow 153 Polished stone implements 47, 143, 145, 166, 175, 176 Polished stone peoples 48, 1 78 Polished Stone period 48, 53, 66 Polynesians 9, 139 Pompeian pictures 58, 59 Pont du Gard 57 Portuguese, the 77, 78 Potter, Paul 121 Pottery sculptures 170, 171, 172 Prambanan 105 Praxiteles 186 Pre-Hellenic art 49, 50, 178 Provence 178 Pueblos 172, 173 Pygmies 83 Pyramids 166 INDEX. 207 PAGE Quality 30,31 Quaternary period 35 Queen Charlotte Island. 158 Quirigua, Guatemala 168 Races of men 8, 9, 45, 188 Rapa-Nui 102, 108, 138, 140, 142, 146, 149, 152, 182 Rapa-Nui art .140, 142, 144, 147, 149-152, 168, 170, 174 Raphael 59 Rarotonga Island. 148 Rarutu Island 148 Rattlesnake disc 167 Red race 165, 188 Reindeer 40, 41, 42 Relative chronology 37 Rembrandt 21, 63, 186 Renaissance 59, 1 79 Repine 27 Resemblances and differences in art 8, 45, 46, 49, 50, 51 59, 65, 70, 81, 84, 86, 87, 89, 90, 94, 96, 98, 100, 107, 108 f'^ 109, 122, 125, 128, 133, 134, 137, 138, 144, 146, 151, 152 153, 156, 158, 159, 163, 165, 166, 168, 169, 170, 173, 174 Rhine, the 58 Rhinoceros 36, 41, 42, 43 Ririomin 102, 124 River drift men 46 Robin Hood cave 41 Rocky Mountains 157, 160, 162 Rodin 29 Roman art 56-59, 64, 71, 95, 100, 178 Roman artists 20 Roman empire 57, 60 Romanesque architecture. 178 Romans, the. 56, 71 Rome 7, 57, 178 Romsdalhom 127 Russia 61, 73 Russians, the 62, 136, 159, 163 Saalburg, the 38 Saas Maor 127 Sahara, the 73, 180 Sakaptin 157 Saint Basil, Moscow 62 Saint Germain 43 Saint Luke 62 Saint Petersburg 62, 163 208 INDEX. PAGE Saint Sophia 61 Saint Ursula 64 Saluntum 54 Samarkand 73 Samoa 138, 146, 182 Samurai 135, 144 San Augustine, Colombia 169 Sandefjord 49 San Marco 61 Sarawak 141 Sargon 94 Scandinavia 48 Scissor action in animals SO, 54, 93, 100 Screens 112 Seattle 62, 159 Selinunte 53, 95 Semitic art 94, 107, 117, 180, 181, 182 Semitic stock 70, 169 Semites 90 Sesshiu 32, 108, 123, 133 Set, the god 68 Seton-Karr, Mr. H. W 66 Shalmanezer II 92 Shem 96 Shores of Wharfe, the 125 Shukei Sesson 122 Siam 104, 110, 131 Siamese art 104, 185 Siberia 62, 136, 152, 153, 155, 156, 182, 183 Sicily 53, 95, 179, 181 Sidon 95 Singhalese 102, 105 Sirpoula 86 Sitka 62 Smith Sound 155 Smithsonian Institution 66 Smooth stone 46, 47 Smyrna 51 Sobo Yakaba 75 Society Islands 148 Solomon Islands 138, 144, 182 Solutrfe 46 Solutreen period 46 Somaliland 66 Sotan 127 Sousa 96 South Africa 82, 181 INDEX. 209 PAGE South America 174, 175, 183, 184 South Asiatic art 70,98-106, 131, 132, 152, 173, 180, 181, 183, 184 Southern Asia 181, 182 Spain 37,43, 72, 73, 179 Spaniards 73 Spectrum 21, 22, 23 Sphinx, the 94 SpUt stone 36 Spots of color 18, 19, 20, 1 14, 1 16 States of the United States 162, 163 Steele of vultures 85 Steindorf, Prof 70 Steinen, Karl von der 18 Stokes, Mr. F. W 153 Stone implements 144, 146 Stone monuments 47 Stone period 153 Stow, Mr 80 Style 30, 31, 118 Subject 27, 44 Subject and motive 27 Suggestionists 115 Sumatra 106, 138, 140, 182 Sung Dynasty 109 Switzerland 37 Syndics, the 18 Synthesis and Analysis 16,17 Syracuse 53 Syria 60, 94, 95 Tahiti 138, 148, 182 Tamdrin 106 Tanagra 51, 54 Tanganika, Lake 96 Technic 14, 15 Technical points in art 13-14 Tello 86 Temples 167 Termini 53 Tertiary 35 Tertiary man 46 Thenay ; 36 Ti, tomb of 67 Tibet 98, 106 Tibetan art 106 Tierra del Fuego 175 Tigris >**=5=JST?i?**^ 84, 91 210 INDEX. PAGE Tiles 71, 72,97 Tintoretto 29 Titian 20 Tlinkits, the 156, 157, 159, 183 Tokio 101 Tomb of Leopards 56 Tonga Islands 146 Ton-le-Sap, Lake 104 Torres Strait Islands 142, 143 Tosa, the 108 Tosa Mitsunobu 123 Totem poles 62, 109, 136, 141, 145, 157, 159, 160, 161 Towanda, Penn 162 Toyohiko 127 Toyokuni 135 Training 32,33 Tretiakoff gallery 27 Troyon 121 Tsimshian 157 Tsunenobu 122 Tunis 52, 58, 73, 97 Tunis, Bey of 71 Turanians 96 Turkestan 73,181 Turner, J. M. W 7, 21, 25, 125 Tyr, Syria 60 Ucayale River 175 Uganda 74, 76, 180 Ukio Matahei 32 Ukioye 108 United States 162, 167 Upham, Mr 66 Uxmal 167 Values 25, 26, 125, 126 Val Toumanche 57 Vancouver Islands. 157 Van Eyck 63, 64 Vaphio, gold cup of 50 Venice 186 Venus of Milo 18, 28 Verona 57 Veronese 186 Vibert 15 Viking ship 49 Vincent, Dr 11, 154 INDEX. 211 PAGE Vishnu 94, 99, 102 VoUon 27 Wagner, Richard 17 Washington 65, 150, 151 Washington, State of 157 Weather, signs of 23 West Africa 75 West Antartika 177 West North Amerind art 152, 157-161, 162, 163, 166, 170, 174, 184 White race 11, 100, 134, 139, 161, 164, 174, 188 White race art 70, 98, 99, 103, 165 Wisconsin 167 Wrangel 159 Wu-Tao-tsz 124, 125 Yakaghir 136, 137, 153, 156, 182 Yeitoku 118 Yellow race 45, 100, 134, 139, 161, 164, 174, 178, 188 Yellow race art 98, 103, 165, 174, 180 Yezo 136 Yoruba 75 Yoshimitzu 118 Yoshiwara 124 Zaghouan 57 Zambezi 79, 180 Zimbabwe 78, 79, 181 Zimbabwe art 78-79, 90 Zipangu 108 Zulus 76 Zuni art 153, 156, 172 Zunis 7, 165, 184 RETURN CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT TO— ^ 202 Main Library LOAN PERIOD 1 HOME USE 2 3 4 5 6 ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS Renewals and Recharges may be made 4 days prior to the due date. 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