Because we all know stories of first-rate works of art having been offered at ridiculously low prices to English galleries and museums and refused by them on the ground that there was no money even for the purchase of what was very good and very cheap, we are surprised and even excited when we hear that a big price (some say as much as £5000) has been paid for a Chinese pottery figure. And those of us who have the fortune to belong to the privileged, and therefore well-behaved, sex hurry off to see what Mr. Hobson describes in the May number of the Burlington Magazine as "a new Chinese masterpiece in the British Museum."

Mr. Hobson is a sound archÆologist; consequently it is impossible to read his careful and admirably frank article without surmising that he himself feels some qualms of suspicion about the date, if not the beauty, of his treasure. For us the first question to be asked is: "Is this a fine work of art?" For Mr. Hobson I suppose the first care was to decide whether or no the thing was T'ang. His is the sound, the scientific, the archÆological method; and I feel sure he followed it because it is the archÆological method, and because, had he followed the unscientific, Æsthetic method, and considered first the style and artistic worth of this figure, he would have found that in answering our question he had answered his own or made the asking of it superfluous. Had Mr. Hobson been as sensitive as he is sound, we may be sure that he would have seen this so-called T'ang Lohan in America or farther before ever he advised the British Museum to bid a shilling for it.

The "new Chinese masterpiece in the British Museum" is a common, pretentious thing, and that, if I must play the archÆologist, is a fair reason for suspecting that it is not the product of a great age—and T'ang art still seems great even after we have seen something of its greater predecessors, Wei, Liang, Sui. This figure, though larger than life-size, is nowise monumental; on the contrary, it is patently a bibelot agrandi, reminding one oddly in this respect of Benvenuto Cellini's Perseus. It is something that has been conceived on a small scale and carried out on a large. This fact alone, had it been noted, as it must have been by any one who looked at the figure Æsthetically, would have suggested that this was a product, not of the T'ang dynasty—an age of monumental sculpture—but of the Ming dynasty—the great age of choice chinoiseries and archaistic experiments.

This theory—that the figure is Ming—technical evidence supports at least as strongly as it supports the T'ang attribution. Technique apart, artistic consideration makes it clear that if the work is not T'ang it must be as late as Ming. That this should be so may at first seem strange to those who remember that the T'ang dynasty flourished between A.D. 618 and 906, and the Ming between 1368 and 1643. Yet, in fact, it is far easier to confuse T'ang with Ming than to confuse a work of the intermediate Sung period (960-1279) with either. The mystery is not profound. Throughout the T'ang and Sung periods Chinese art was thoroughly alive; both T'ang and Sung are vital and original styles. T'ang art expresses the inspiration of one age, Sung of another; Sung follows and differs from T'ang as quattrocento follows and differs from Giottesque: they are different and characteristic modes of a continuous stream of inspiration. But the Sung dynasty and the Chinese inspiration collapsed within a hundred years or less of each other, and for suggestion and direction the Ming artists looked, not so much into their own hearts as to the past, and especially to the golden days of T'ang. History is deaf to the doctrine of progressive evolution, and, if we would understand the history of art, we must learn to think in styles rather than in years; also we must become accustomed to remote derivations. It is possible to confound Renaissance work of the sixteenth century with Roman of the second; it is impossible to confuse either with their neighbours, Gothic and Byzantine. Similarly, it would be intolerable to mistake Ming for Sung, but excusable to mistake it for T'ang, and that, I believe, is just what Mr. Hobson has done.

But, to be frank, I care very little when or where this figure was made; what I care about is its Æsthetic insignificance. Look at the modelling of the hands: they are as insensitive and convictionless as lumps of bread. Look at the tight, cheap realism of the head; the accents violent without being impressive, the choice of relief common. The chest is the best part of the thing, and that strikes me as being traditional rather than felt. The view of the figure in profile is less unsatisfactory than the view from in front: but look at those hands!

If this thing impresses any one, it must impress him by its dramatic and not by its plastic qualities; and that is not the way in which a fine T'ang figure impresses us. Here the design is petty and the forms, in themselves, flaccid and poor; but the tight, realistic face is made to gaze most melodramatically into eternity. It is melodrama, I fancy, that has taken the town by storm. Compare this overgrown knick-knack with some really fine T'ang piece or, better still, with one of those Wei figures which the Museum had lately the chance of acquiring at a very moderate price, and you will feel the difference between form that impresses by sheer Æsthetic rightness and form that reminds you of the late Sir Henry Irving. With all its elaborate quietness, this deep-contemplative Lohan is just a piece of rhetoric: put it beside something first-rate and you will know what to think of it as surely as you know what to think of

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Why is it always in purchases of this sort the nation sinks the best part of its miserable art fund? Well, in this case I think it is possible to follow the workings of official taste. Officials know as well as the rest of us that T'ang art is well thought of, and that without some important example of it no Oriental collection is deemed complete. But T'ang art, as a rule, is neither literary nor pretty nor at all the sort of thing the collecting class cares for. What this class really likes is the art of the eighteenth century and the art of the high Renaissance. Miraculously comes to light an important figure labelled T'ang yet rich in the dear, familiar qualities of Renaissance sculpture. As usual, the officials have got it both ways. Surely Providence had a hand in this, unless it was the dealers.