Sculpture in the sense of a grand and per manent art of form is less the business of the Asiatic artist than painting, or than decoration so-called. Sculpture in the form of carving in ivory and wood and bronze figures of small size has always attracted great atten tion in China and has reached an extraordinary state of excellence in spirit, movement and skil ful composition. Thus, a bronze figure will express perfectly the character and the senti ment 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 withequal 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 carv ings in the softer stones; their essential charac teristics perfectly understood and always ob served. The conventional way of rendering in
hard material the most delicate leafage and sprays of twig and blossom is perfectly main tained; 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 contem poraneous 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) ; Boersch man, 'Die Baukunst der Chinesen' (Berlin 1911) • Bushell, 'Chinese Art' (2 vols., Lon don 1604-06) ; China Ito in 'The Kokka,' Nos. 197, 198; Chavannes, 'La sculpture sur pierre en Chine an temps des deux dynasties Han' (Paris 1893) ; Cram, *Chinese Architecture' in 'Dictionary of Architecture and Building' (New York 1902) ; Fenollosa, 'Epochs of Chinese andJapanese Arty (ib. 1912) ; Fisher, *Chinese Art" in
fur Kunstwis
(Vol. XX XV, Berlin 1912) Giles, 'An Introduction to the History of Chinese Art' (Shanghai 1905) •, Glaser 'Die Kunst Ostasiens) (Leipzig 1913) ; Hirth, 'Fremde Einfliisse in der _chuiesischen Kunst' (Munich 1896); id.,
from nCoflector's Note book : Notes on Some Chinese Painters> (New York 1900 ; Miinsterberg,