tinguishing feature of Chinese exteriors is gaiety. Even the slightly-built one-story shops of the great towns are bright with vermillion and green; and the signs, painted with the very ornamental Chinese ideographs, help in this effect.

Chinese painting reached a great development as early as the 8th century A.D.; and there is every probability that it had then been a great school for several centuries. Landscape was one of its especially favored branches. While in Europe no one dreamed of landscape art for its own sake, the Chinese impressionist designers were producing admirable studies, both in color and in monochrome. Some few of these are in European museums, their authors and dates having been fixed by careful comparison, but the much more modern Japanese landscapes, in painting, monochrome and woodcut, are the best material from which to gain a general idea of that ancient landscape art. A highly religious art was developed in the 12th century A.D. At that time Buddhist religious feeling was strongly expressed in the art of some painters, while others affected rather a kind of decorative realism, that is to say, a close observation of natural objects used to inspire and to influence a highly decorative system of design. These paintings have been little known to Europe, because they are preserved in temples and almost inaccessible palaces; and again it is Japan which has opened to us, through her own art, a knowledge of the older arts of China. A few ancient paintings known to Europeans are of surprising interest; and they open up to us a whole system of design in form and color on the flat surface, which the West is now studying, much to its own advantage. The paintings best known to us are of some purely decorative character, those on porcelain having attracted the attention of Europe ever since the 16th century. These paintings are closely connected with the system of inlay which in the form of cloisonné enamel (see ENAMEL) is another of the great art industries of China. The porcelains affect a more close and careful study of the natural forms in flowers, trees, costume of figures and the like, whereas the enamels are more severe and are confined more closely to the making of admirable patterns; but the two systems differ only as one and the same artist might change his style according to the material and demands upon him. A similar method of decoration by the free use of natural forms, conventionalized but still retaining much of their character, is seen in the splendid embroideries which have been little known to the West until within a few years. The textile fabrics of China - silks, brocades and velvets have been known to collectors for many years, but very few national museums have provided themselves with any number of them: they present an inexhaustible treasure of beautiful design in strong and positive colors. It may be stated here that brilliant color is a specialty of the Chinese artist. Where, as in a fine cloisonné enamel, a Japanese artist works in dark and sombre colors, the Chinese will use a sky-blue ground, upon which an elaborate pattern is carried out in deep ultra-marine blue, violet, reddish-gray, dark green, apple green, vermillion, bright yellow and white, with dividing lines of gilded metal, and many passages of gradation from

one color to another. No people have equaled the Chinese in the decorative use of bright, pure colors.

Sculpture in the sense of a grand and permanent art of form is less the business of the Asiatic artist than painting, or than decoration properly so-called. Sculpture in the form of carving in ivory and wood and bronze figures of small size has always attracted great attention in China and has reached an extraordinary state of excellence in spirit, movement and skilful composition. Thus, a bronze figure will express perfectly the character and the sentiment of the occasion, while yet losing nothing of its sculpturesque value; and a group of "The Seven Wise Men" seated around the trunk of a bamboo will be rendered in cheap glazed pottery or in minutely carved ivory with equal skill and at a price proportionate to the labor expenses and the prime cost of the material.

The ivory group may have cost, when new, a hundred times as much as the piece molded in clay, fired and then glazed and painted, but it is not on that account a finer design, the characters are not more perfectly expressed nor the attitudes of the figures more forcible or more harmonious with each other. This is a great evidence of an old traditional skill of sculpture excelling in the larger as well as in the smaller scale of work. Relief sculptures, especially those in wood, in soft stone and in the surface of lacquer, which has generally a wooden background prepared to receive the impressed and sculptured coat of the viscous material, are as effective for their decorative purpose as are the sculptures in the round. Finally there must be mentioned the lapidary's art, in which the Chinese have always excelled, for the most marvelous carvings in agate, jade and rock crystal, that is to say, in the hardest materials known, are unmatched in the world, and they are as artistically perfect as the caryings in the softer stones; their essential characteristics perfectly understood and always observed. The conventional way of rendering in hard material the most delicate leafage and sprays of twig and blossom is perfectly maintained; and the brilliant polish which is one of the beauties of these carvings is carried through beneath those delicate undercut sprays.

Bibliography.- There exists an extensive literature on Chinese art, much of it contemporaneous with the great art epochs, by Chinese writers and inaccessible to Western readers. The following works are of recent date and deal with some phase of Chinese art: Binyon, "The Flight of the Dragon' (London 1911); id, 'Painting in the Far East' (ib. 1913); Boerschman, 'Die Baukunst der Chinesen (Berlin 1911); Bushell, Chinese Art' (2 vols., London 1904-06); Chûta Itô in 'The Kokka, Nos. 197, 198; Chavannes, 'La sculpture sur pierre en Chine au temps des deux dynasties Han' (Paris 1893); Cram, "Chinese Architecture" in Dictionary of Architecture and Building' (New York 1902); Fenollosa, Epochs of Chinese and Japanese Art' (ib. 1912); Fisher, "Chinese Art" in 'Repertitorium für Kunstwissenschaft (Vol. XXXV, Berlin 1912); Giles, 'An Introduction to the History of Chinese Art) (Shanghai 1905); Glaser, 'Die Kunst Ostasiens (Leipzig 1913); Hirth, Fremde Einflüsse in der chinesischen Kunst' (Munich 1896); id., 'Scraps from a Collector's Note