L'estampe chinoise ancienne en couleur by Jan TschicholdReview by: John E. McCallJournal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 61, No. 3 (Sep., 1941), pp. 196-197Published by: American Oriental SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/594510 .

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196 Reviews of Books

It is a pity that the book is not better, because the subject is capable of better treatment than it has received. According to her own statement, Dr. Pinkham believes that the condition of Hindu women today is the result of specific scriptural influence. But she has failed either to define the condition she deplores or to prove that her thesis as to its cause can be substantiated. Reference to her residence in India had led one to hope that she had gathered at first hand material pertinent to the subject of her book, and could document present day practice with ancient injunction. Quite apart from her own purpose of encourage- ment to Hindu women, such a documentation would be of interest to students of Indic civiliza- tion. The subject of the survival of ancient forms

is always one of prime fascination. That there are innumerable survivals of ancient customs alive today in Hindu family life cannot be doubted, and it is clear that a great part of these will never, because of the restrictions of polite convention, be available for first hand study by Western male scholars. Recognition of them is peculiarly in the province of feminine research, particularly of women who have some knowledge of India's ancient literature and religion. If studies of the sort indicated in the preface of this book are to be made, it must be mainly women who will do them. We look for a more pertinent contribution from Dr. Pinkham in the future.

JEAN WILSON KENNEDY NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT

L'estampe chinoise ancienne en couleur. By JAN

TSCHICHOLD. Basel: LES RDITIONS HOLBEIN,

1940. Pp. 14; 16 color facsimile plates.

It is a pleasure to come upon a new book on Chinese color prints. Far less attention has been paid to these charming plates of birds and flowers, of still life with fruits and fantastic rocks, and of bamboos and grasses swaying in the aLr than to the Japanese prints of the Ukiyoe school teeming with the human life of antique Edo. But Chinese prints, long disdained by Chinese connoisseurs, have chiefly survived in book-form; collected be- cause they happened to be a part of the book, and not as an object of interest in themselves.

This book consists of eight pages of text, two of notes and another two for the bibliography, fol- lowed by sixteen color plates. The long shape of the book required by the plates means however that each page has two columns of text each about the size of an ordinary page, so that the text is about twice as long as one might expect. There is no index.

Mr. Tschichold starts with a brief survey of the origins of Chinese prints, mentioning paper, seals, rubbings, and prints; and in describing the process of relief-print-making in general, repeats the error that books were first printed in 594 A. D. T. F. Carter has demonstrated in his Invention of Print- ing in China,' that the accepted source for this

statement is only a sixteenth century gloss on a quotation from a book written in 597 A. D., in which the reference is to damaged statues. Mr. Tschichold then notes somewhat doubtfully the date of the earliest printing from movable type as being in 607 A.D., but this is hardly credible to me. It is possible that the book was set up some cen- turies later from a manuscript dated 607 without a note on the actual date of printing, as was some- times the case in Chinese book publication. The great gap between this date and Pi Sheng's inven- tion of movable type in 1041, which he notes, would incline me to give a Scotch verdict of " Not proven " for the earlier date. Pi Sheng's type unfortunately did not stand the test of long use or of competition from the process of woodcut print- ing. The author finishes his introductory para- graphs by mentioning a few of the noteworthy illustrated books appearing previous to the Shih- chu-chai Hua-p,'u, or The Collection of Prints of the Ten Bamboo Studio.

This book, to which the author devotes the main part of his discussion, appears to have been a com- pilation of color plates taken from at least three earlier books published by llu Cheng-yen of Nan- king with additional original designs. The work was published in 1635 in eight albums, each leaf being 29.4 cm. by 33.2 cm.,2 and a second edition from which the color facsimiles in the book under

I T. F. Carter, The Invention of Printing in China and its Spread Westward, rev. ed., New York, 1931, pp. 202-4, note 13.

2 (L. Ashton, B. Gray, R. L. Hobson, 0. Raphael, eds.), The Chinese Exhibition, a Commemorative Catalogue, London, 1936, p. 136, no. 3066.

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Reviews of Books 197

review were taken, in 1643; its plates measure approximately 28.5 cm. by 24.4 cm. Later editions are usually slightly smaller in size. But size is hardly a reliable criterion, for single leaves and sometimes even volumes were trimmed, as for instance a Tao-kuang edition of this work in the Metropolitan Museum of Art which is so treated.8 More reliable criteria for distinguishing between editions are to be found, as Mr. Tschichold says, in the declining quality of the printing of the suc- cessive editions, and, as I would like to suggest, in the paper-the quality of its surface and its color, as well as the width between the horizontal laid lines in the paper, for these seem to show a greater variation than the vertical laid lines in such examples as I have examined. But more important is the change in color schemes which seems to occur in the eighteenth century. If the plate of a bird preening its back on a boulder in the grass is examined,4 it will be seen that the Kang-hsi edition, and presumably the earlier ones, shows the bird in blue, white, gray, and brick- orange, whereas in the later Ch'ien-lung edition the bird is blue, white, yellow, and gray, a color scheme followed in subsequent editions. However a careful analysis cannot be made until the first edition has been reproduced in color facsimile.

Besides discussing the technique for these prints Mr. Tschichold translates the prefaces to the col- lections, which turn out to be amusing " blurbs " for the editor-publisher apparently by two of his friends. Finally the author concludes with a rapid survey of color prints issued after the Shih-chu- chai Hua-p'u, and with a brief analysis of the difference between Japanese and Chinese prints. This difference, he writes, lies in the Japanese use of line and contour to the color areas, whereas the Chinese omitted the key block, and printed the brush-strokes as if they were areas of freely stroked-

3 Metropolitan Museum of Art, Print Room Catalog, Chinese Books No. 6. The trimming of this copy is obvious, for the leaves, which should be pasted together at the outer edges, are separate, making it awkward to examine the book.

4 Metropolitan Museum of Art, Print Room Catalog, Chinese Prints Nos. 51 (K'ang-hsi edition) and 119 (Ch'ien-lung edition).

on color without any definite boundary lines. This painterly style, he concludes, gives the Chinese print a true artistic quality lacking in the calli- graphic, linear Japanese style, a conclusion with which I disagree. It is hardly fair to compare the two. Chinese prints were principally designed for the painter and his friends whereas the Jap- anese print artist designing for a less sophisticated public, always had in mind the limitations of the wood block and the artificiality of his environment, hence his style is as true an artistic expression as the painterly style of his Chinese confrere.

The notes which follow the text are adequate. The bibliography is fairly complete, but its ar- rangement in chronological order, while showing the growth in scholarly interest in this field, is hardly as helpful as an alphabetical listing by authors would be. There is moreover an incon- sistency in listing the titles: sometimes the author's name comes first, sometimes the title. There are a few items which should have been included: R. Douglas, " Chinese illustrated books," Bibliogra- phica II (1896), 452-79; W. L. Harris, "Early Western Influence in the Art of the Far East," Good Furniture VI (April 1916), 220-6, chiefly interesting for its illustrations and remarks on seventeenth century Jesuit-inspired Chinese wood- cuts;' L. Binyon and J. J. O'Brien Sexton, Japanese Colour Prints, London and New York, 1923, pp. liii-lvi; and Anon., An Exhibition of Chinese Wood Block Prints, New York, 1932, a nine page pamphlet for a College Art Association travelling exhibition chosen from the collection of the Pennsylvania Museum of Art. A word on the reproductions: These are of excellent quality and will no doubt stand a comparison with the origi- nals. On the whole, the book provides a well summarized introduction to Chinese color prints, and a promised companion volume of color plates in facsimile from the equally well known Mustard Seed Garden will be awaited with interest.

JOHN E. MCCALL

These prints are in the American Museum of Natural History, Dept. of Anthropology, New York.

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