Download File

AN EXPENSIVE " MASTERPIECE " 189
I suppose the first care was to decide whether
or no the thing was T'ang. His is the sound,
the scientific, the archaeological method ; and
I feel sure he followed it because it is the
archaeological method, and because, had he
followed the unscientific, aesthetic 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 is
archaeologist, 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