PRICELESS ART

Evening Post, Issue 149, 20 December 1935, Page 12

PRICELESS ART

TREASURES OF CHINA

EXHIBITION IN LONDON

BYGONE -CIVILISATION'

(From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, November 30. After many months of preparation, the International Exhibition of Chinese Art is now open to the public. This is the first occasion on which the British Government has played an active part in the organisation of a winter exhibition at Burlington House, for' the nucleus of the exhibition is the. large and precious selection 'of Imperial treasures from the Forbidden City lent by the Chinese Government, which was broughtrto England in H.M.S. Suffolk. The exhibition is under the auspices of the British and Chinese Governments, and the King and Queen and 'the President of the Chinese Republic have given their patronage. The 4000 objects on view represent Chinese artistry over thirty-five centuries. Mounting'the staircase to the galleries one is immediately faced by a colossal standing figure' of Maitreya Buddha. It is in the middle of the main hall and stands about 22ft in height. Dated 585 A:d., it represents the period of sculpture when the Indian and Central Asian influence had passed somewhat. The forms became more humanised, and. the saints are more benevolent and less awe-inspir-ing than their Indian prototypes. All the Buddhist figures are seated or standing in very quiet postures, the bodies covered with "a robe falling in rhythmic^'parallel folds, and. at the bottom treated in elaborate pleated designs. . BEAUTY OF CENTURIES AGO. Those not familiar with Chinese art will be greatly impressed with; its simple beauty. There, are dragons «nd winged lions in the designs, but these and other monstrous figures tave been too greatly emphasised in' the common Chinese designs with which :.the ordi-. nary person is familiar. ■ The exhibition reflects on every side a kindliness, a love of pure beauty; and the rep'ren ductionof the best in Nature. Demonology is almost; entirely absent. It is difficult to realise that the'simple and beautiful patterns on the pottery and porcelain ; were • produced by .artists who lived a hundred years before William the!, Conqueror 'came to England. Paintingsiof;the,.periods from'96o A.D. to the' present time are reverently con-, servative,';graceful, dainty,' and "charming. :. ■•■■ '■.•. :; .."..'■ v :. .■■-. The two greatest" masters of the Southern 'Sung ;period are Hsia Kuei and Ma Yuan; Hsia Kuei (c. 1180-1230 A.D.) is the painter of "A Myriad Miles of the. Yangtze." This picture, which is shown in the exhibition, is one of the national treasures of China. The majority ,of the. finest landscapes of the period give an impression 'of solitariness, yet in many small figures may be found poets admiring a; waterfall, sages, under the moon, or fishermen in their boats. Ma :Yuan shows wonderful pine trees, drooping willows, or a sage in a boat on a lake. Sung painting is the antithesis of the pretty, the fanciful, .or the "quaint," so long associated in European minds with Chinese, art. ./. PREHISTORIC ART. The chronological order;of the exhibition begins with the ritual-bronzes of the Shan-Yin and Chou Dynasties. These?;:two.;^dynasties, in which myth ends and history begins, cover a period of some fifteen hundred years,; ending shortly before the building of the Great Wall -and the burning of the Classics in the third century B.C. The first gallery is partly devoted to these bronzes which have been rescued from age-long burial in the soil of China. What is most striking about thenvis that they are not primitive in design or execution. Both: in technique and design they-are so skilful that they indicate a long antecedent period of artistic development. There, are huge cauldrons two and three feet in height, shaped like- the whale pots of older days, but every inch of their surface artistically decorated. It is suggested that the ritual bronzes, used for making offerings to ancestors and deities, were developed from pottery forms in daily use. We are thus able to learn what utensils (were used by these people who flourished a thousand years before the Christian era. There are jars and goblets for wine, spots for cereals, and the flesh of animals', and cauldrons mounted on four legs under which the fire was placed. All of them are wonderful examples of metalmoulding in spite of their. great age; having .been made by the same circperdue' process used by Cellini and other great bronze-masters of Europe, the surface required no smoothing, 'and the outlines no sharpening after removal from. .the mould. Even in those early days the enterprising inventor was at.work, for the lid of one of the cauldrons is'fitted with three rings firmly set so that the lid may serve as a dish when turned upside down. 'In the first gallery there are ' also examples of the workmanship of the Chou. Dynasty; (1122-249 8.C.) and of the period of the "Spring and Autumn Annals" (722-481 8.C.), and the period of the Warring States (481-221 8.C.). The Chin Dynasty (221-206 8.C.) and the Han Dynasty (206 8.C.-220 A;D.) are also represented. ■■•••■-.■ HISTORICAL ASSOCIATIONS. Many of the beautiful but unobtrusive figures have a history attached to them. For instance, a green jade buffalo cow.which was carved in the Han Dynasty (20&220; A.D.)' was brought tc Peking in 1422 by Yung-10, who founded'the Forbidden City and made Peking his capital. It was already a 1 this time regarded as an object oj great.antiquity, and was annually used mv the great festivals; together with c black jade horse (also shown in tht exhibition) it stoodin the Royal Palact ■for many- 'centuries. .When the Em peror K'ang-hsi (1662-1722 A.D.) cam< to the throne he -asked why: the Lung ma, a dragon- headed horse which brought the books ;of "knowledge fron over the ways of the Yellow River was hot represented. This figure wai then executed and1 is to be seen in tin exhibition. ' .'..-. '"■ Two other vases of the .Sung Dynast: (960-1279 A.D.) are said to have be longed to the favourite-concubine o the Southern Sung Emperor Kao Tsuni v,(1127-iliß3; A:p.);h The beautiful Lad; Liv was' known in: literature as1 th< "Gay Lady Artist."' She excelled ii caligraphy • and the delineation. ;o human {.figures in:landscapes. ; Whei the Emperor ■ abdicated 'she went int. retirement with him; and on his deatl committed suicide, so great was he devotion. A dish of white Ting ware which is shown,: also belonged to Lad: Liu. ENAMEL AND LACQUER WORK. Enamel work is much ' "associate* with the: Chinese, : but they do no claim to have invented it. They call i "foreign ware," as it seems to hay been introduced by Arab traders, an it appears that Arabian1 enamel war was established in Peking in 138^ Enamels exhibited belong largely t the Ming Dynasty (1368-1643). Lacquc work as one of the oldest arts in Chin is well represented in the exhibition. As one tours the galleries admirin the priceless works of art in bronzi pottery, and porcelain, the sculpturi

the carpets,. and the marvellous _ silk gowns made for Emperors'of old, one comes upon a painted picture t every here and there. These give a special delight to the spectator, for they are. so human, so simple, and so easily understood. •"■■•: Painting and;writing in China are two branches of the same art; the Chinese use the brush for both. Painters often prefer to paint in ink alone; even when colour is used the foundation of the pitcure is still the ink outline./ ■- ':•' -. :'.;, As the. Chinese language-has no alphabet, the characters which signified each word began by being a picture of ideas. The • writer t whose. writing is also an, arf is as much concerned as the painter with the beauty and expressiveness of each! brush stroke; the writing' must his own" nature and requires intense concentration, combined with swift, decisive execuitibri; -Few fully-authenticated Tang paintings^ exist 1 other than the Buddhistic paintings found by Sir Aurel Stein in the treasure cave of the Thousand Buddhas at Tiiri-huarig in Chmese Turkestan. Could all the lost works, of the Tang period (A.D. 618----906> be restored to us, we might say •that this was one of, the greatest periods of art the 'world has" known. The fragments of a T'ajig picture to Music," are in the'exhibition. They were recovered by: Sir Aurel Stein at Astana, arid are precious relics of early Tang art, showing us something of the pictorial style of the early eighth century. The Sung period (A.D. 960-1260) is represented by many; great masters of the time. The period is divided into two sections by a.disastrous invasion of China by the Tartars .in A.D. .1127, when the Emperor Hni Tsurig, an artist and : great patron .of the .arts, was carried off, eventually dying ;in captivity. His famous. Academy of Painting was destroyed. The period before this event is known as Northern Sung, the period after it as Southern Sung. The latter period is one in which North China passed under Tartar domination. , The Emperor Hui Tsung is represented by several examples in the exhibition, including a lovely horizontal scroll of ducks, cranes, and other birds amongst reeds and grasses. One of the greatest landscape painters of Northern Sung, Kuo Hsi, is also represented. What strikes the ordinary observer in these paintings, „is their universatility. They are'true,to,Nature and Nature has not changed. Some of them were painted a thousand years ago, but they might have been painted by an artist yesterday. The great landscapes are often steeped in a poetic mood. The love of space and-solitude is conspicuous. ,But here and there may be seen touches of humorous playfulness anc gaiety, and behind it all a genial humanity. _^