JAPANESE ART (Contd.) SCULPTURE METAL
WORK PAINTING
Probably of all the Japanese arts
there is none more interesting or instructive than
that of sculpture in wood and ivory. The sculpture
of Japan undoubtedly had its origin in the service
of the Buddhist religion. That religion, as I
have attempted to show, has always utilised art in
the decoration of its temples and shrines as well as
in the perpetuation of the image of Buddha himself.
At the beginning of the seventeenth century an edict
was promulgated directing that every house should
contain a representation of Buddha, and, as the result
of this, the sculpture trade received a considerable
impetus. Tobacco was introduced into the country
in the same century, and the smoking thereof soon
came greatly into vogue among the Japanese people.
Tobacco necessitated a pouch or bag to contain the
same, and this in turn induced or produced the manufacture
of something wherewith to attach the bag to the girdle.
Hence the evolution of the netsuke, now as famous
in Europe as in Japan. The carving of netsukes
developed into a very high art; indeed, there is perhaps
no branch of Japanese art which has aroused more enthusiasm
among foreign collectors and connoisseurs. Quite
recently I attended a sale of netsukes in London at
which the bidding was both fast and furious, while
the prices realised were enormous. The netsuke,
strictly speaking, was the toggle attached by a cord
to the tobacco pouch, inro, or pipe of the Japanese
man, with the object of preventing the article slipping
through the girdle or sash, but the word has been
more loosely employed by foreigners until, in popular
parlance, it has come to embrace all small carvings.
Netsukes were nearly always representations of the
human figure, and various reasons have been advanced
to account for this fact. I need not consider
those reasons in these pages, as they, as well as
the arguments by which they are attempted to be supported,
are almost entirely speculative. The distinguishing
characteristic of the true netsuke is two holes admitting
of a string being run through them. These holes
were often concealed behind the limbs of the figure.
The material of which netsukes were made varied, and
consisted of ivory, wood horns, fish-bones, and stones
of various kinds. Those made of wood are undoubtedly
the most ancient, ivory being of comparatively recent
importation into Japan. Nevertheless, the netsukes
made of ivory now command the highest price.
The names of many of the great netsuke-makers are
still famous, and much of their work is certainly
artistic and beautiful to a degree. I am afraid
that in the collecting of netsukes many European lovers
of Japanese art have burnt their fingers. The
genuine old artistic productions are now extremely
rare, but a brisk trade has sprung up in reproductions
which are skilfully coloured to give them the appearance
of age. The netsuke, I must reiterate, was an
almost indispensable adjunct to the costume of every
Japanese man, and it was, accordingly, made for use
and not for ornament alone. Of late years wood
and ivory sculpture in Japan has largely degenerated
and deteriorated owing to the output of articles not
of utility, but made for the foreign market “curios,”
in fact.
No one who has visited Japan can have
failed of being impressed by those gigantic statues
of Buddha which have been erected in different parts
of the country. The largest and best known is
the Dai Butsu, at Kamakura, a few miles from Yokohama.
The height of this great statue is nearly 50 feet,
in circumference it is 97 feet. The length of
the face is 8 feet 5 inches, the width of mouth 3
feet 2 inches, and it has been asserted though
I do not guarantee the accuracy of the calculation that
there are 830 curls upon the head, each curl 9 inches
long. The statue is composed of layers of bronze
brazed together. It is hollow, and persons can
ascend by a ladder into the interior. The Dai
Butsu at Nara is taller than the one at Kamakura.
It is dissimilar to most of the others in the country
in having a black face of a somewhat African type.
This image is stated to have been erected in the year
750 A.D., and the head has, I believe, been replaced
several times. In the Kamakura Dai Butsu both
hands rest upon the knees, while in the one at Nara
the right arm is extended upward with the palm of
the hand placed to the front. The statue at Nara
is made of bronze which is stated to be composed of
gold 500, mercury 1,950, tin 16,827, and copper 986,080
lbs., the total weight of the statue being about 480
tons. Nearly all the Dai Butsus in the country
are of ancient workmanship. There is a modern
one constructed of wood erected in the year 1800 at
Kyoto, 60 feet high. As a work of art it has,
however, no pretensions, which rest entirely upon its
size.
Criticisms in regard to the artistic
merits of these immense images have been numerous
and by no means unanimous. To my mind they are
superb specimens of the work of the old metallurgists
of Japan, and they are, moreover, deeply interesting
as indicative of the ideas of their designers in regard
to the expression of placid repose of Nirvana.
Mr. Basil Chamberlain has appositely remarked in reference
to the great statue at Kamakura: “No other
gives such an impression of majesty or so truly symbolises
the central idea of Buddhism, the intellectual calm
which comes of perfected knowledge and the subjugation
of all passion.” And Lafcadio Hearn, that
learned authority on everything Japanese, who has
brought into all his writings a poetical feeling which
breathes the very spirit of old Japan, has observed
in regard to the same statue: “The gentleness,
the dreamy passionlessness of those features the
immense repose of the whole figure are
full of beauty and charm. And, contrary to all
expectations, the nearer you approach the giant Buddha
the greater the charm becomes. You look up into
the solemnly beautiful face into the half-closed
eyes, that seem to watch you through their eyelids
of bronze as gently as those of a child; and you feel
that the image typifies all that is tender and solemn
in the soul of the East. Yet you feel also that
only Japanese thought could have created it. Its
beauty, its dignity, its perfect repose, reflect the
higher life of the race that imagined it, and, though
inspired doubtless by some Indian model, as the treatment
of his hair and various symbolic marks reveal, the
art is Japanese.
“So mighty and beautiful is
the work that you will for some time fail to notice
the magnificent lotus plants of bronze, fully 15 feet
high, planted before the figure on another side of
the great tripod in which incense rods are burning.”
Kaemfer, writing in the seventeenth
century, remarked of the Japanese: “As
to all sorts of handicraft, they are wanting neither
proper materials nor industry and application, and
so far is it that they should have any occasion to
send for masters abroad, that they rather exceed all
other nations in ingenuity and neatness of workmanship,
particularly in brass, gold, silver, and copper.”
In metal work the Japanese have certainly cultivated
art to a high degree. Much of that metal work
was, of course, employed in connection with articles
which modern conditions of life in Japan have rendered
absolutely or almost entirely obsolete. The bronze
workers of Japan were and indeed are still famous.
Their work as displayed in braziers, incense-holders,
flower-vases, lanterns, and various other articles
evinces great skill, while the effects often produced
by the artists in the inlaying and overlaying of metals
with a view of producing a variegated picture has
long been the wonder and admiration of the Western
world. It is almost safe to assert that the finest
specimens of work of this kind can never be reproduced.
In casting, too, there was no lack of skill in old
Japan. The big bell at Kyoto, which is 14 feet
high by over 9 feet in diameter, is a sufficient object-lesson
as to the proficiency attained in casting in bygone
days. Much of the bronze work of Japan, especially
in birds and insects, is to me incomparable. The
modern bronze work of the country, though certainly
beautiful, does not in any respect or any degree approach
that of the masters of two or three hundred years
ago. In the manipulation of metals and amalgams
these men have reached a higher standard of perfection
than had previously or has since been attained.
The bronze work of Japan is not, in my opinion, as
generally appreciated as it deserves to be. There
is, I think, nothing of the same kind in the world
to be compared with it when it was at its best.
Like much of the other art of Japan modern conditions
are, as I have said, not conducive either to its progress
or development. Still, there is no lack of skill
in this particular branch of art in Japan at the present
time, and I have seen some very admirable, not to
say magnificent, specimens of modern bronze work.
Armour is now nearly as effete in
Japan as in this country, and yet in the decoration
of armour the Japanese artist in metal was in the past
not only skilful but beautiful. Fine specimens
of armour are now extremely rare. That particular
kind of work has, of course, gone never to return.
Next in importance to armour came the sword. Some
of us can remember when the two-sworded men of Japan
were still actualities, not, as they have now become,
historical entities, the terror of the foreign community
there. The sword was an important and, indeed,
an essential weapon in the conditions of society that
obtained in old Japan, not only for self-defence but
for offensive purposes, either in respect of family
feuds or individual quarrels, which were almost invariably
settled by the arbitrament of the sword. That
weapon was also used for those suicides known as hara-kiri,
the outcome of wounded honour or self-respect, which
were such prominent features in the Japanese life
of the past. Some Western writers have attempted
to poke a mild kind of fun at this proneness of the
Japanese for the “happy despatch” on what
seemed to the writers very flimsy or trivial grounds.
To me, on the contrary, the practice of hara-kiri,
indefensible as it may be in some respects, indicates
the existence of a high code of honour, the slightest
infringement of which rendered life intolerable.
The sword then had innumerable functions, and, like
almost every article of utility in Japan, it became
the subject of elaborate ornamentation. The blade
itself was brought to a high state of perfection,
and as regards the tempering of the steel has been
the admiration of cutlers in every part of the globe.
Indeed the sword-makers of Japan are famous from the
tenth century downwards. Many of the sword-blades
had mottoes inscribed on them, and most had designs
ornate and often elaborate. The accessories of
the blade and the ornamentation thereof lent full
scope for that artistic adornment which has for ages
past, as I have more than once remarked, been characteristic
of almost every article used in Japan. The wearing
of the sword was confined to persons of a certain
rank, and different classes wore different kinds of
swords. About the sixteenth century the custom
of wearing two swords, one large, the other about the
size of a dirk, came into fashion. The two-handed
sword was essentially a war sword. The colour
of the scabbard was almost invariably black with a
tinge of red or green, and it was in most instances
beautifully lacquered. The possessor of a sword
gave full vent to his tastes in regard to the size
and decoration of his weapon. According to Griffis:
“Daïmios often spent extravagant sums upon
a single sword and small fortunes upon a collection.
A Samurai, however poor, would have a blade of sure
temper and rich mountings, deeming it honourable to
suffer for food that he might have a worthy emblem
of his rank.” On January 1, 1877, the wearing
of swords was abolished by an Imperial decree, and
foreigners visiting or resident in Japan in that and
the following years were able to pick up magnificent
swords for a few dollars each.
I have not space to describe in detail
the many accessories which went to form the complete
sword for the strong man armed in old Japan, or the
elaborate and artistic ornamentation of every detail.
In many of the small pieces of metal work which adorned
the swords gold, silver, platina, copper, iron, steel,
zinc, besides numerous alloys were used. The
abolition of sword-wearing gave a death-blow to the
industry in connection with the making of swords except
in so far as it has been continued for the purpose
of turning them out for the European market.
But during the many centuries the art of metal work,
as exemplified in sword manufacture and the ornamentation
of the sword and the various accessories of it, existed
in Japan it reached a magnificent height of perfection.
Dealing only with one period of it a French writer
has remarked: “What a galaxy of masters
illuminated the close of the eighteenth century!
What a multitude of names and works would have to
be cited in any attempt to write a monograph upon sword
furniture! The humblest artisan, in this universal
outburst of art, is superior in his mastery of metal
to any one we could name in Europe. How many
artists worthy of a place in the rank are only known
to us by a single piece, but which is quite sufficient
to evidence their power! From 1790 to 1840 art
was at fever heat, the creative faculty produced marvels.”
Besides the making and ornamentation
of swords the metal workers in Japan attained great
skill in the design and finish of many other articles
which were in constant use by the people pipes,
cases to hold the Indian ink which formed the writing
material, the clasps and buttons of tobacco pouches,
besides vases, &c. In reference to the making
of alloys these metal workers showed considerable ingenuity,
the alloys used, amalgams of gold, silver, copper,
and other metals in deft proportions, resulting in
magnificent effects as regards ornamentation and permanency.
Japan has undoubtedly been greatly aided in the height
to which the art of the country of various kinds has
attained by the plentifulness of minerals therein.
Gold, silver, copper, iron, lead, tin, and many other
minerals exist. Strange to say, gold at one time
was considered no more valuable than silver a
fact which may account for the lavish manner in which
it was used for decorative purposes in art of all
descriptions.
I fear that an inevitable result of
Western influences and the great, indeed drastic,
changes which have been effected thereby in the ideas,
manners, and customs of the Japanese people has been
the decay, if not the destruction, of the art connected
with metal work. Sword manufacture and everything
relating thereto is, of course, gone; other metal
industries are following suit. The result, as
I have said, was inevitable, but it is none the less
deplorable. Although it requires an expert to
deal with and describe in all its infinite detail the
metal work of Japan, it does not need an expert’s
knowledge to profoundly admire it and be lost in admiration
at the skill displayed and the pains taken in respect
of every part of it. The workers in this, as
indeed in all the other art industries of Japan in
the past, were quite evidently not men in a hurry
or much exercised concerning their output, and scamping
their work in order to establish a record. Their
hearts must have been in everything they undertook,
and their sole aim, whatever they did, to put into
their work all their skill and knowledge and love
of the beautiful. They, in fact, worked not for
pelf but for sheer love of art, and so long as the
work of these artists of various kinds endures the
world will assuredly never cease to admire it.
Painting has, in Japan, long been
greatly cultivated, and in some respects highly developed.
There are various recognised schools of painting,
but I shall not weary my readers with any attempt,
necessarily imperfect as it would be, to describe them
in detail. China and the Buddhist religion have
profoundly influenced painting as the other arts of
Japan. Indeed, the early painters of Japan devoted
themselves almost entirely to religious subjects.
Most of their work was executed on the walls, ceilings,
and sliding screens of the Buddhist temples, but some
of it still exists in kakémonos, or wall pictures,
and makimonos, or scroll pictures. In the
ninth century painting, as well as the arts of architecture
and carving, flourished exceedingly. Kyoto appears
to have been the great artistic centre. The construction
of temples throughout the country proceeded apace,
and it is related that no less than 13,000 images
were carved and painted during the reign of one emperor.
Kyoto was, in fact, the centre of religious art.
We are told that the entire city was in a constant
artistic ferment, that whole streets were converted
into studios and workshops, and that the population
of idols and images was as numerous as the human habitation.
Nearly all the temples then constructed and adorned
have vanished, but that at Shiba still remains to convey
to us some idea of the artistic glories of this period
of intense religious belief, which gave expression
to its fervour and its faith in architecture, carving,
and painting. About the thirteenth century flower
and still-life painting came into vogue. Almost
simultaneously religious fervour, as expressed in
art, began to grow cold. The artist became the
hanger-on of the Daïmio, who was too often employed
in burning temples and destroying their artistic treasures.
The painter then painted as his fancy led him, and
if he treated of religious subjects did not invariably
do so in a reverential spirit. From time to time
new schools of painting arose, culminating, in the
eighteenth century, in the Shijo school, which made
a feature of painting animals, birds, fishes, flowers,
&c., from nature, instead of adhering to the conventional
style which had previously prevailed. The colouring
of some of the work of this school is superb and is
greatly in request among art collectors.
Of late years painting in Japan seems,
to some extent, to have come under Western influences.
There is, indeed, a progressive party in painting
which not only does not resist these Western influences
but actually advocates the utilisation of Western
materials and methods in painting and the discarding
of all that had made Japanese painting essentially
what it is. I confess to a hope that this progressive
school will not make quite so much progress as its
disciples desire. To introduce European pigments,
canvas, brushes, &c., and discard the materials formerly
in use, to get rid of the Japanese method of treating
subjects, whether landscapes, country scenes, the life
of the people, representations of animals, and so
on, and replace that method by imitations of European
schools of painting, must simply involve the destruction
of all that is essentially and characteristically Japanese
and the replacing of it by something that is not Japanese
or indeed Oriental. The essence of art is originality.
I admit that art may come under foreign influences
and be improved, just as it may be degraded, by them.
If the influences of foreign art are to be advantageous
that art must, I suggest, be in some measure akin
to the style of the art which is affected by it.
For example, the influence in the past of China or
Korea upon an analogous style of art in Japan.
But for Japanese painters to remodel their peculiar
style upon that of Europe must prove as fatal to Japanese
painting as an art as any similar endeavour of European
painters to remodel their style upon that of Japan
would be fatal to the distinctive art of Europe.
I make this statement with full knowledge of the fact
that some art critics in this country declare that
Mr. Whistler and other artists have been largely affected
or influenced in their style by a study of Japanese
art in painting and its methods.
I have referred to kakémonos,
those wall pictures which are such a pleasing feature
of the simple decoration of Japanese houses. Many
of these are superb specimens of art, and the same
remark may be made in reference to the makimonos,
or scroll pictures. It may be that not every
Western eye can appreciate these Japanese paintings
fully at a first glance, but they certainly grow upon
one, and I hope the time is far distant when kakémonos
will be replaced in Japanese homes by those mural
decorations, if I may so term them, to be seen in so
many English houses, which are a positive eyesore
to any person with even the faintest conception of
art. The work of the old painters of Japan, as
it appears on kakémonos and makimonos, is
now rare. Much of it, as is the case with the
other art treasures of the country, has gone abroad.
I am, however, of opinion that painting has not deteriorated
to anything like the same extent as some of the other
Japanese arts. The subjects depicted by the artists
have during the centuries from time to time changed,
but the technique has altered but little. It
does not, I know, appeal to everybody, but it is the
kind of art, I reiterate, that grows upon one.
No person who has interested himself in painting in
modern Japan, especially on kakémonos, can, I
think, have failed to be impressed by the exquisite
and beautiful work which the Japanese artists in colour
to-day produce.
Silk and satin embroidery as an industry
and an art at one time attained considerable importance
in Japan, but of recent years has greatly declined.
The craze among the upper classes for European dress
has, of course, seriously affected the demand for elaborately
embroidered silk and satin garments, and is bound to
affect it to an even greater extent in the future
as the custom of wearing European garb spreads among
the people. No one with any artistic sensibilities
can help regretting the fact that Japan is gradually
but surely discarding the distinctive costume of her
people. That costume was in every respect appropriate
to their physique and facial characteristics.
The same certainly cannot be said of European attire.
However, it is now, I suppose, hopeless to arrest
the movement in this direction, and in a comparatively
few years, no doubt, the ancient and historic dress
of the Japanese people will be as obsolete as the
silks, satins, ruffles, &c., of our forefathers.
And what remark shall I make of Japanese
curios, the trade in which has assumed such very large
dimensions? Have they no claim, some of my readers
may ask, to be included in a chapter on art? There
is no doubt that many purchasers of them would be
shocked were they to be told that there was nothing
artistic in many, if not most, of these articles,
that they were made simply and solely for the European
market, and that the manufacture of curios for this
purpose was now just as much a trade as is the making
of screws in Birmingham. I am quite prepared
to admit that some of the articles included in the
generic term “curios,” which can now be
purchased in every large town in Great Britain, are
pretty and effective, but as regards many of them
there is certainly nothing artistic or indeed particularly
or peculiarly Japanese. This making of curios
for the foreign market has, as I have said, assumed
considerable dimensions in Japan of recent years,
and in connection therewith the Japanese has certainly
assimilated many Western ideas in reference to pushing
his wares. As an example in point of this I will
quote here an anecdote told me by a friend who had
a considerable knowledge of Japan in the ’seventies.
During one of his journeyings inland, when staying
at a Japanese tea-house, he was initiated into the
use of Japanese tooth-powder, which is in pretty general
use among the lower classes. On leaving Japan
he purchased and brought to England a considerable
quantity of this tooth-powder, and on settling down
in London he discovered a Japanese shop where it was
on sale. For some seventeen or eighteen years
he purchased the tooth-powder at the shop, sold in
the little boxes in which it was vended in Japan,
not only using it himself but introducing it to a
large number of his acquaintances. One day last
year, on going into the shop referred to to make a
further purchase, he was informed that they were run
out of tooth-powder and did not quite know if they
would have any more. My friend returned a month
or two later to the same shop on the same errand bent,
and asked if they had received a fresh supply.
He was told that a further supply had come to hand
of very much the same description, but at double the
price. He purchased a box, the outside of which
bore the following inscription in English: “Japanese
Sanitary Dentifrice; Superior Quality. Apply
the powder to the teeth by means of a brush, using
moderate friction over the whole surface.”
On opening the box my friend found the powder was
perfumed perfumed for the European market!
Now tooth-powder is, of course, not a curio, nor is
the expression “moderate friction over the whole
surface,” I may remark, characteristically Japanese.
The little anecdote is, I think, typical of the change
that has come over and is still actively in progress
in Japan a change which, however inevitable,
and beneficial though in many respects I believe it
to be, is most assuredly not beneficial to the interests
of art of any kind.
The fact of the matter is that the
hurry-scurry of modern civilisation is not conducive
to artistic work of any description. The man in
a hurry is unlikely to accomplish anything of permanent
value. Working against time is utterly subversive
of the realisation of artistic ideals. The past,
whether in the West or the East, when railways, telegraphs,
telephones, newspapers, and all the adjuncts of modern
progress were unknown, was the period when men did
good and enduring work. They could then concentrate
their minds upon their art free from those hundred-and-one
discomposing and disconcerting influences which are
the concomitants of modern civilisation. The true
artist thinks only of his art; for him it is not merely
a predominant, but his sole interest. He brings
to it all his mind, his ideas and ideals, his energy,
enthusiasm, pertinacity; in it is concentrated all
his ambition. Extraneous matters can only distract
his mind from his art, and accordingly are to be abjured.
I fear this exclusiveness, this aloofness, is rare
nowadays in the West; it is perhaps less rare in the
East, but it is becoming rarer there as Western influences,
Western ideas, and Western modes of life and method
of regarding life make progress. The poet, the
painter, the sculptor, the novelist, the dramatist,
if their work is to be other than ephemeral, need an
atmosphere of repose and quietude wherein the mind
can work and fashion those ideas which are to be given
material expression free from all distracting and
disturbing influences. Where can the aspiring
artist, under modern conditions of life, find such
a haven of rest? And even if he find it I fear
he too often has no desire to cast anchor there.
The distractions of life are frequently alluring, and
the embryonic artists of to-day assure us that they
must, in modern jargon, keep “in touch”
with modern thought with a view of, in modern slang,
being “up-to-date.” Ideas such as
these and they seem to me to be not only
largely prevalent but almost universal are
in my opinion fatal, not only to the development but
to the very existence of art. We see in this
country the effect upon every department thereof.
Poetry, painting, sculpture, literature, the drama,
are by almost general consent in a state of utter
decadence. The great poet or painter, the great
artist in words, on canvas, in marble, or in wood where
is he? Are there any signs or portents of his
advent? None. Modern conditions of life
have killed the artist, and replaced him by artistic
mediocrities or mechanicians who labour not for love
but for lucre, and are more concerned about the amount
of their output than the quality thereof. And
as of England and Europe so I fear is it, and will
it be to a greater extent, in the near future in Japan.
The artist in lacquer, porcelain, metal, painting,
embroidery, cannot exist under the conditions of modern
progress. He may still produce good and beautiful
work, but it will be no longer artistic in the higher
sense of that word, just because those ideas and ideals
which make the artist and connote art cannot exist
in their fulness and purity amidst the hurry and bustle
and turmoil and desire for wealth which are the essential
characteristics of the civilisation of Europe and
America to-day a civilisation which Japan
has imported, and to a large degree assimilated, and
which she must accept with its defects as well as
its advantages. We may, and must, regret the effect
of this civilisation upon the art of old Japan, but
there is no good shutting one’s eyes to obvious
facts or affecting to believe that in due course we
shall witness a renaissance in Japan, a new birth of
all that is great and grand and magnificent in her
past history.
There has for some years been a movement
to prevent, as far as possible, the passing out of
Japan of its art treasures. The Government has
diligently catalogued all that remain in the temples
and public buildings to obviate their being sold, and
museums have been built for the purpose of collecting
and exhibiting all that is best and representative
of Japanese art There has also been a movement among
the noblemen and the upper classes in the direction
of forming private collections. It was time that
steps such as these should be taken. It is a
thousand pities they were not taken earlier. The
drain of Japan’s art treasures went on unchecked
year after year, and it is probable that the private
and public collections of Europe and America contain
more Japanese art treasures than are now to be found
in Japan itself. I am aware that in these collections
are also to be found no little of the spurious, and
many articles with no claim to be considered artistic
in any sense of the word, but at the same time there
is no doubt that, as I have said, for years, there
was a constant export of artistic wealth from Japan.
The Revolution of 1868, with its consequent cataclysms,
caused the treasures of many of the great families
to come on the market, with the result that they were
bought up at prices often greatly below their intrinsic
value and shipped from the country. They are
of course gone for ever, and the only thing that now
remains to Japan is to prevent as far as possible
any of the treasures which she possesses meeting with
a similar fate. I know perfectly well that art,
like music, knows nothing of nationality, and that
there is no reason why the resident of London or New
York should not enjoy the beauties of Japanese art,
and feast his eyes on the work of some great Japanese
artist of three or four hundred years back just as
much as the citizen of Tokio. This is in one
sense true, but at the same time one cannot help sympathising
with the patriotic desire of a people to retain in
their midst specimens of the artistic conceptions
and the artistic work of those famous men who are
now ashes, but whose work remains as a symbol and an
incentive to their countrymen to maintain a high standard,
and to practise art simply and solely for the love
of it.