It is sometimes said that children are artists in embryo, that in their play and throughout their activity they manifest the germs of the art-impulse. It seems worth while to examine the saying.
There is no doubt that in much of the first spontaneous activity there is a trace of æsthetic feeling and the impulse to produce something pretty. Yet the feeling is in most children weak and vacillating, and is wont to be mixed with other and less noble ones.
One of the lower and mixed forms of artistic activity, in the case of the child and of the race alike, is personal adornment. The impulse to study appearances appears to reach far down in animal life. Two impulses seem to be at work here: to frighten or overawe others, as seen in the raising of feathers and hair so as to increase size, and to attract, which possibly underlies the habit of trimming feathers and fur among birds and quadrupeds. The same two impulses are said to lie at the root of the elaborate art of personal adornment developed by savages.
In the case of children brought up in the ways of civilisation where personal cleanliness and adornment are peremptorily enforced in the face of many a tearful protest, it seems at first vain to look for the play of instinctive tendencies. Yet I think if we observe closely we shall detect traces of a spontaneous impulse towards self-adornment. Children, like uncultured adults, are wont to prize a bit of finery in the shape of a string of beads or of daisies for the neck, a feather for the hat, and so forth. Imitation of the ways of their elders doubtless plays a part here, but it is aided by an instinct for adornment. Little girls perhaps represent the attractive function of adornment: they like to be thought pretty. Little boys when decking themselves out with tall hat and monstrously big clothes seem to be trying to put on an alarming aspect.
Since children are left so little free to deck themselves, it is of course hard to study the development of æsthetic taste in this domain of their activity. Yet their quaint attempts to improve their appearance throw an interesting side-light on their æsthetic preferences. While in general they have in their hearts almost as much love of glitter, of gaudy colour, as uncivilised adults, they betray striking differences of feeling; some developing, for example, a bent towards modest neatness and refinement, and this, it may be, in direct opposition to the whole trend of home influence.
Another domain of childish activity which is akin to art is the manifestation of grace. A good deal of the charm of movement, of gesture, of intonation, in a young child may be unconscious, and as much a result of happy physical conditions as the pretty gambols of a kitten. Yet one may commonly detect in graceful children the rudiment of an æsthetic feeling for what is nice, and also of the instinct to please. There is, indeed, in these first actions, such as the kissing of the hand to other children in the street, something of the simple grace and dignity of the more amiable of those uncivilised races which we dishonour by calling them savages. This feeling for pleasing effect in bodily carriage and movement, in the use of speech and gesture, is no doubt far from being a pure art-activity. Traces of self-consciousness, of vanity, are often discernible in it; yet at least it attests the existence of a certain appreciation of what is beautiful, and of something akin to the creative impulse of the artist.
A true art-impulse is characterised by a pure loveof doing something which, either in itself as an action or in the material result which it produces, is beautiful. Into this there enters, at the moment at least, no consciousness of self. Now there is one field of children's activity which, as was suggested in an earlier chapter, is marked by just this absorption of thought in action for its own sake, and that is play.
To say that play is art-like has almost become a commonplace. Like art it is inspired and sustained by a pure love of producing. Like art, too, on its representative side, play aims at producing an imitation or semblance of something. The semblance may be plastic, residing in the material product of the action, as in making things such as castles out of cardboard or sand; or it may be dramatic and reside in the action itself, as in much of the childish play already described.
The imitative impulse prompting to the production of the semblance of something appears very early in child-life. A good deal of the imitation which occurs in the second half year is the taking on, under the lead of another's example, of actions which are more or less useful. This applies, for example, to such actions as waving the hand in sign of farewell, and of course to vocal imitation of others' verbal sounds. At an early date we find, further, a perfectly useless kind of imitation which is more akin to that of art. A quite young child will, for example,pretendto do something, as to take an empty cup and carry out the semblance of drinking. The imitation of the sounds and movements of animals, which comes early too, may be said to be imitative in the more artistic sense, inasmuch as it has no aim beyond that of mimetic representation.
Later on, towards the third year, this simple type of imitative action grows more complex, so that a prolonged make-believe action may be carried out. A child, for example, occupies himself with pretending to be an organ-grinder's monkey, going duly and in order through the action of jumping down from his seat, and taking off his cap by way of begging for the stranger's contribution. Here, it is evident, we get something closely analogous to histrionic performance. This play-like performance, again, gradually divides itself into a more serious kind of action, analogous to serious drama, and into a lighter representation of some funny scene, which has in it something akin to comedy.
Meanwhile, another form of imitation is developing, the fashioning of lasting semblances. Early illustrations of this impulse are the making of a river out of the gravy in the plate, the pinching of pellets of bread till they take on something of resemblance to known forms. One child, three years old, would occupy himself at table by turning his plate into a clock, in which the knife and fork were made to act as hands, and cherry stones put round the plate to represent the hours. Such table-pastimes are known to all observers of children, and have been prettily touched on by R. L. Stevenson in his essay on "Child's Play".
These formative touches are, at first, rough enough, the transformation being effected, as we have seen, much more by the alchemy of the child's imagination than by the cunning of his hands. Yet, crude as it is, and showing at first almost as much of chance as of design, it is a manifestation of the same plastic impulse which possesses the sculptor and the painter.
The more elaborate constructive play which follows—the building with cards and wooden bricks, the moulding with sand and clay, and the first spontaneous drawings—is the direct descendant of this rude formative activity. The kindergarten is, indeed, a kind of smaller art-world where the dramatic and plastic impulses of the child are led into orderly action.
In this imitative play we see from the first the artistic tendency to set forth what is characteristic in the things represented. Thus in the unstudied acting of the nursery, the nurse, the coachman, and the rest, are presented by a few broad touches; characteristic actions, such as pouring out the medicine, jerking the reins, being aided by one or two rough accessories, as the medicine bottle or the whip. In this way child's play, like primitive art, shows a certain unconscious selectiveness. It presents what is constant and typical, imperfectly enough no doubt. The same selection of broadly distinctive traits is seen where some individual person,e.g., a particular newsboy or gardener, seems to be represented. A similar tendency to a somewhat bald typicalness of outline is seen in the first rude attempts of children to construct, whether with materials like cards or bricks, or with pencil, the semblance of a house, a garden and so forth.
As observation widens and grows finer, the first bald representation becomes fuller and more life-like. A larger number of distinctive traits is taken up into the play. Thus the coachman's talk becomes richer, fuller of reminiscences of the stable, etc., and so colour is given to the dramatic picture. Similarly with the products of the plastic impulse.
With this more realistic tendency to exhibit thecharacteristic with something like concrete fulness we see the germ at least of the idealistic impulse to transcend the level of common things, to give prominence to what has value, to touch the representation with the magic light of beauty. Even a small child playing with its coloured petals or its shells will show a rudiment of this artistic feeling for beautiful arrangement.
No doubt there are striking variations among children in this respect. Play discloses in many ways differences of feeling and ideas: among others, in the unequal degrees of tastefulness of the play scene. Yet the presence of an impulse, however rudimentary, to produce what has beauty and charm for the eye is a fact which we must recognise.
Along with this feeling for the sensuous effect of beauty we can discern the beginnings of fancy and invention whereby the idea represented is made more prominent and potent. This tendency, like the others, shows itself in a crude form at first, as in the earlier and coarser art of the race. In children's play we can see much of the uncultured man's love of strong effect. The pathos of the death of the pet animal or of the child has to be made obvious and strongly effective by a mass of painful detail; the comic incident must be made broadly farcical by heavy touches of caricature; the excitement of perilous adventure has to be intensified by multiplying the menacing forces and the thrilling situations. Yet crude as are these early attempts at strengthening the feebleness of the actual they are remotely akin to the idealising efforts of true art.
Nevertheless, children's play, though akin to it, isnot completely art. As pointed out above, the action in a child's play is not intended as a dramatic spectacle. The small player is too self-centred, if I may so say. The scenes he acts out, the semblances he shapes with his hands, are not produced, as art is produced, for its own worth's sake, but rather as providing a new world into which he may retire and enjoy privacy. A child in playing a part does not "play" in order to delight others. "I remember," writes R. L. Stevenson, "as though it were yesterday, the expansion of spirit, the dignity and self-reliance, that came with a pair of mustachios in burnt corkeven when there was none to see." The same is true when children play at being Indians or what not: they are not "acting" in the theatrical sense of the word.
While, then, one can say that there is something akin to art in the happy semi-conscious activity of the child at play, we must add that, for the development of the true impulse of the artist, a good deal more is needed. The play-impulse will only get specialised into the art-impulse when it is illumined by a growing participation in the social consciousness, and by a sense of beauty and the æsthetic worth of things; when, further, it begins to concentrate itself on one mode of imitative activity, as, for example, dramatic representation or drawing.
I have chosen here to deal with the more spontaneous manifestations of an art-like impulse in children, rather than to describe their first attempts at art as we understand it. Here—in the case of all but those endowed with a genuine artistic talent—we are apt to find too much of the adult's educative influence, too little of what is spontaneous and original.At the same time, some of this art-activity, more particularly the first weaving of stories, is characteristic enough to deserve a special study. I have made a small collection of early stories, and some of them are interesting enough to be quoted. Here is a quaint example of the first halting manner of a child of two and a half years as invention tries to get away from the sway of models: "Three little bears went out a walk, and they found a stick, and they poked the fire with it, and they poked the fire and then went a walk". Soon, however, the young fancy is apt to wax bolder, and then we get some fine invention. A boy of five years and a quarter living at the sea-side improvised as follows. He related "that one day he went out on the sea in a lifeboat, when suddenly he saw a big whale, and so he jumped down to catch it; but it was so big that he climbed on it and rode on it in the water, and all the little fishes laughed so".
With this comic story may be compared a more serious not to say tragic one from the lips of a girl one month younger, which is characterised by an almost equal fondness for the wonderful. "A man wanted to go to heaven before he died. He said, 'I don't want to die, and I must see heaven!' Jesus Christ said he must be patient like other people. He then gotsoangry, and screamed out as loud as he could, and kicked up his heels as high as he could, and they (the heels) went into the sky, and the sky fell down and broke the earth all to pieces. He wanted Jesus Christ to mend the earth again, but he wouldn't, so this was a good punishment for him." This last, which is the work of one now grown into womanhood and no longer a story-teller, is interesting in manyways. The wish to go to heaven without dying is, as I know, a motive derived from child-life. The manifestations of displeasure could, one supposes, only have been written by one who was herself experienced in the ways of childish "tantrums". The naïve conception of sky and earth, and lastly the moral issue of the story, are no less instructive.
These samples may serve to show that in the stories of by no means highly gifted children we come face to face with interesting traits of the young mind, and can study some of the characteristic tendencies of early and primitive art. Of the later efforts to imitate older art, as verse writing, the same cannot, I think, be said. Children's verses, so far as I have come across them, are poor and stilted, showing all the signs of the cramping effect of models and rules to which the young mind cannot easily accommodate itself, and wanting in true childish inspiration. No doubt, even in these choking circumstances, childish feeling may now and again peep out. The first prose compositions, letters before all if they may be counted art, give more scope for the expression of this feeling and the characteristic movements of young thought, and might well repay careful study.
There is one other department of children's art which clearly does deserve to be studied with some care—their drawing. And this for the very good reason that it is not wholly a product of our influence and education, but shows itself in its essential characteristics as a spontaneous self-taught activity which takes its rise, indeed, in the play-impulse. To this I propose to devote my next and last chapter.
A child's first attempts at drawing are not art proper, but a kind of play. As he sits at the table and covers a sheet of paper with line-scribble he is wholly self-centred, "amusing himself," as we say, and caring nothing about the production of a thing of æsthetic value.
Yet even in this infantile scribbling we see a tendency towards art-production in the effort of the small draughtsman to make his lines indicative of something to another's eyes, as when he bids his mother look at the "man," "gee-gee," or what else he cheerfully imagines his scribble to delineate. Such early essays to represent objects by lines, though commonly crude enough and apt to shock the æsthetic sense of the matured artist by their unsightliness, are closely related to art, and deserve to be studied as a kind of preliminary stage of pictorial design.
In studying what is really a large subject it will be well for us to narrow the range of our inquiry by keeping to delineations of the human figure and of animals, especially the horse. These are the favourite topics of the child's pencil, and examples of them are easily obtainable.
As far as possible I have sought spontaneousdrawings of quite young children,viz., from between two and three to about six. In a strict sense, of course, no child's drawing is absolutely spontaneous and independent of external stimulus and guidance. The first attempts to manage the pencil are commonly aided by the mother or other instructor, who, moreover, is wont to present a model drawing, and, what is even more important at this early stage, to supply model-movements of the arm and hand. In most cases, too, there is some slight amount of critical inspection, as when she asks, "Where is papa's nose?" "Where is doggie's tail?" In one case, however, I have succeeded in getting drawings of a little girl who was carefully left to develop her own ideas. Even in the instances where adult supervision is apt to interfere, we can, I think, by patient investigation distinguish traits which are genuinely childish.
A child's drawing begins with a free aimless swinging of the pencil to and fro, which movements produce a chaos of slightly curved lines. These movements are purely spontaneous, or, if imitative, are so only in the sense that they follow roughly the directions of another's pencil.
In this first line-scribble there is no serious intention to trace a particular form. What a child seems to do in this rough imitation of another's movements is to make a tangle of lines, more or less straight, varied by loops, which in a true spirit of play he makes believe to be the semblance of "mamma," "pussy," or what not, as in Fig. 1 (a) and (b). Possibly in not a few cases the interpretation first suggests itself after the scribble, the child's fancy discerningsome faint resemblance in his formless tangle to a human head, a cat's tail, and so forth.
Fig. 1aFig. 1 (a).[11]Fig. 1bFig. 1 (b).[11]
Fig. 1aFig. 1 (a).[11]
Fig. 1bFig. 1 (b).[11]
This habit of scribble may persist after a child attempts a linear description of the parts of an object. Thus a little girl in her fourth year when asked to draw a cat produced the two accompanying figures (Fig. 2 (a) and (b)).
Fig. 2aFig. 2 (a).Fig. 2bFig. 2 (b).
Fig. 2aFig. 2 (a).
Fig. 2bFig. 2 (b).
Here it is evident we have a phase of childish drawing which is closely analogous to the symbolism of language. The form of representation is chosen arbitrarily and not because of its likeness to what is represented. This element of symbolic indication will be found to run through the whole of childish drawing.
As soon as the hand acquires a certain readiness in drawing lines and closed lines or "outlines," and begins to connect the forms produced with the necessary movements, drawing takes on a more intentional character. The child now aims at constructing a particular linear representation, that of a man, a horse, or what not. These first attempts to copy in line the forms of familiar objects are among the most curious products of the child's mind. They follow standards and methods of their own; they are apt to get hardened into a fixed conventional manner which may reappear even in mature years. They exhibit with a certain range of individual difference a curious uniformity, and they have their parallels in what we know of the first crude designs of the untutored savage.
It has been wittily observed by an Italian writer, Signor Corrado Ricci, that children in their drawings reverse the order of natural creation by beginning instead of ending with man. It may be added that they start with the most dignified part of this crown of creation,viz., the human head. A child's attempt to represent a man appears commonly to begin by drawing a sort of circle for the front view of the head. A dot or two, sometimes only one, sometimes as manyas five, are thrown in as a rough way of indicating the features.
I speak here of the commoner form. There are however variations of this. Some children draw a squarish outline for head, but these are childrenat school. In one case, that of a little girl aged three years four months, the outline was not completed, the facial features being set between two vertical columns of scribble, which do duty for legs (Fig. 3). Sometimes the features are simply laid down without any enclosing contour; and this arrangement appears not only in children's drawings but in those of savage adults.
The representation of the head sometimes appears alone, but a strong tendency to bring in the support of the legs soon shows itself. This takes at first the crude device of a couple of vertical lines attached to the head (see Fig. 4).
Fig. 3Fig. 3.[12]Fig. 4Fig. 4.
Fig. 3Fig. 3.[12]
Fig. 4Fig. 4.
Coming now to the mode of representing the face, we find at an early stage the commencement of an attempt to differentiate the features. In drawings of children of three we frequently see that while the eyes are indicated by dots the nose is given as ashort vertical line. Similarly when the mouth appears it does so commonly as a horizontal line. We notice that more attention is given to the problem of placing a feature than to that of making a likeness of it. Indeed this first drawing is largely a pointing out or noting down of features without any serious effort to draw them. The representation is a kind of local description rather than a true drawing. Curious differences appear in respect of the completeness of this linear noting or enumerating of features. The nose more particularly appears and disappears in a capricious way in the drawings of the same child.
Fig. 5Fig. 5.Fig. 6Fig. 6.
Fig. 5Fig. 5.
Fig. 6Fig. 6.
Odd differences, reflecting differences of intelligence, show themselves in the management of this diagram of the human face. One child, a Jamaica girl of seven, went so far as to draw the face with only one eye (Fig. 5). Again though, as I have said, a child will try to give a correct local arrangement,for example putting the nose between and below the eyes, he does not always reach accuracy of localisation. Many children habitually set the two eyes far up towards the crown of the head, as in Fig. 6. When the features begin to be represented by something more like a form we find in most cases a curious want of proportion. The eye, for instance, is often greatly exaggerated; so is the mouth, which is sometimes drawn right across the face, as in Fig. 6.
As the drawing progresses we note a kind of evolution of the features. In the case of the eye, for example, we may often trace a gradual development, the dot being displaced by a small circle or ovoid, this last supplemented by a second outer circle, or by an arch or pair of arches. In like manner the mouth, from being a bare symbolic indication, gradually takes on form and likeness. There appears a rude attempt to picture the mouth cavity and to show those interesting accessories, the teeth. The nose, too, tries to look more like a nose by help of various ingenious expedients, as by drawing an angle, a triangle, and a kind of scissors arrangement in which the holders stand for the nostrils (see Fig. 7 (a) and (b); compare above, Fig. 4).
Fig. 7aFig. 7 (a).Fig. 7bFig. 7 (b).
Fig. 7aFig. 7 (a).
Fig. 7bFig. 7 (b).
Ears, hair, and the other adjuncts come in later as after-thoughts. Much the same characteristics are observable in the treatment of these features.
At first, as I have observed, the trunk is commonly omitted. The indifference of the young mind to this is seen in the obstinate persistence of the first schemeof a head set on two legs, even when two arms are added and attached to the sides of the head. Indeed a child will sometimes complete the drawing by adding feet and hands before he troubles to bring in the trunk (see Fig. 8).
From this common way of spiking the head on two forked or upright legs there occurs an important deviation. The contour of the head may be left incomplete, and the upper part of the curve be run on into the leg-lines, as in the accompanying example by a Jamaica girl (Fig. 8).
Fig. 8Fig. 8.Fig. 9aFig. 9 (a).[13]
Fig. 8Fig. 8.
Fig. 9aFig. 9 (a).[13]
Fig. 9bFig. 9 (b).Fig. 9cFig. 9 (c).
Fig. 9bFig. 9 (b).
Fig. 9cFig. 9 (c).
The drawing of the trunk may commence in different ways. Sometimes a lame attempt is made to indicate it by leaving space between the head and the legs, that is, by not attaching the legs to the head. Another contrivance is where the space between the legs is shown to be the trunk by shading or by drawing a vertical row of buttons. In other cases the contour of the head appears to be elongatedso as to serve for head and trunk. A better expedient is drawing a line across the two vertical lines and so marking off the trunk (see Fig. 9 (a) to (d)). Indrawings made by Brazilian Indians we see another device,viz., a pinching in of the vertical lines (see Fig. 9 (e)).
Fig. 9dFig. 9 (d).Fig. 9eFig. 9 (e).
Fig. 9dFig. 9 (d).
Fig. 9eFig. 9 (e).
After the trunk has been recognised by the young draughtsman he is apt to show his want of respect for it by making it absurdly small in proportion to the head, as in Fig. 10. It assumes a variety of shapes, triangular, rectangular, and circular or ovoid, this last being, however, the most common.
At this stage there is no attempt to show the joining on of the head to the trunk by means of the neck. When this is added it is apt to take the exaggerated look of caricature, as in Fig. 11.
Fig. 10Fig. 10.Fig. 11Fig. 11.
Fig. 10Fig. 10.
Fig. 11Fig. 11.
A curious feature which not infrequently appears in this first drawing of the trunk is the doubling of the corporeal ovoid, one being laid upon the other. As this appears when a neck is added it looks like a clumsy attempt to indicate the pinch at the waist—presumably the female waist (see Fig. 12).
The introduction of the arms is very uncertain. Tothe child, as also to the savage, the arms seem far less important than the legs, and are omitted in rather more than one case out of two. After all, the divine portion, the head, can be supported very well without their help.
Fig. 12Fig. 12.Fig. 13Fig. 13.
Fig. 12Fig. 12.
Fig. 13Fig. 13.
The arms, being the thin lanky members, are, like the legs, commonly represented by lines. The same thing is noticeable in the drawings of savages. They appear, in the front view of the figure, as more or less stretched out, so as to show beyond the trunk; and their appearance always gives a certain liveliness to the form, an air of joyous expression, as if to say, "Here I am!" (see Fig. 13, the drawing of a boy of six).
Fig. 14Fig. 14.Fig. 15Fig. 15.
Fig. 14Fig. 14.
Fig. 15Fig. 15.
In respect of their structure a process of gradual evolution may be observed. The primal rigidity of the straight line yields later on to the freedom of an organ. Thus an attempt is made to represent bymeans of a curve the look of the bent arm, as in the accompanying drawing by a boy of five (Fig. 14). In other cases the angle of the elbow is indicated. This last improvement seems to come comparatively late in children's drawings, which here, as in other respects, lag behind the crudest outline sketches of savages.
Fig. 16Fig. 16.—Humpty Dumpty on the wall.Fig. 17Fig. 17.
Fig. 16Fig. 16.—Humpty Dumpty on the wall.
Fig. 17Fig. 17.
Fig. 18Fig. 18.
The mode of insertion or attachment of the arms is noteworthy. Where they are added to the trunkless figure they sometimes appear as emerging from the sides of the head, as in a drawing by a boy of two and a half years (see Fig. 15), but more commonly, from the point of junction of the head and legs (see above, Fig. 7 (b)). After the trunk is added they appear to sprout from almost any point of this. It may be added that their length is often grotesquely exaggerated.
The arm in these childish drawings early develops the interesting adjunct of a hand. Like other featuresthis is apt at first to be amusingly forced into prominence by its size.
The treatment of the hand illustrates in a curious way the process of artistic evolution, the movement from a bare symbolic indication towards a more life-like representation. Thus one of the earliest and rudest devices I have met with, though in a few cases only, is that of drawing strokes across the line of the arm to serve as signs of fingers (Fig. 16).
It is an important advance when the branching lines are set in a bunch-like arrangement at the extremity of the arm-line. From this point the transition is easy to the common "toasting-fork" arrangement, in which the finger-lines are set on a hand-line (see above, Figs. 8 and 7 (b)). From this stage, again, there is but a step to the first crude attempt to give contour first to the hand alone, as in Fig. 13, and then to hand and fingers, as in Figs. 11 and 17.
Various odd arrangements appear in the first attempts to outline arm and hand. In one, which occursnot infrequently, a thickened arm is made to expand into something like a fan-shaped hand, as in Fig. 18.
There is a corresponding development of the foot from a bare indication by a line to something like a form in which toes are commonly represented by much the same devices as fingers. In the better drawings, however, one notes signs of a tendency to hide the toes, and to indicate the notch between the heel and the sole of the boot.
So far, I have dealt only with the child's treatment of the front view of the human face and figure. New and highly curious characteristics begin to appear when he attempts to give the profile aspect.
Fig. 19Fig. 19.—A miner.
A child, it must be remembered, prefers the full face arrangement, as he wants to indicate all its important features, especially the two eyes. "If," writes a Kindergarten teacher, "one makes drawings in profile for quite little children, they will not be satisfied unless they see two eyes; and sometimes they turn a picture round to see the other side." This reminds one of a story told, I believe, by Catlin of the Indian chief, who was so angry at a representation of himself in profile that the unfortunate artist went in fear of his life.
At the same time children do not rest content with this front view. After a time they try, without any aidfrom the teacher, to grope their way to a new mode of representing the face and figure, which, though it would be an error to call it a profile drawing, has some of its characteristics.
The first clear indication of an attempt to give the profile aspect of the face is the introduction of the side view of the nose into the contour. The little observer is soon impressed by the characteristic, well-marked outline of the nose in profile; and the motive to bring this in is strengthened by his inability, already illustrated, to make much of the front view of the organ. The addition is made either by adding a spindle-like projection after completing the circle of the head, as in Figs. 6 and 7 (a), or more adroitly by modifying the circular outline. The other features, the eyes and the mouth, are given in full view as before.
It may well seem a puzzle to us how a normal child of five or six can complacently set down this self-contradictory scheme of a human head. How little any idea of consistency troubles the young draughtsman is seen in the fact that he will, not infrequently, reach the absurdity of doubling the nose, retaining the vertical line which did duty in the first front view along with the added nasal projection (see Fig. 19).
This appearance of the nose as a lateral projection is apt to be followed by a similar side view of the ear (as seen in Fig. 19), of the beard and other adjuncts which the little artist wants to display in the most advantageous way.
Some children stop at this mixed scheme, continuing to give the two eyes and the mouth, as in the front view, and frequently also the front view of thebody. This becomes a fixed conventional way of representing a man. With children of finer perception the transition to a correct profile view may be carried much further. Yet a lingering fondness for the two eyes is apt to appear at a later stage in this development of a consistent treatment of the profile; a feeling that the second eye is not in its right place prompting the artist in some cases to place itoutside the face(see Fig. 20 (a) and (b)).
Fig. 20aFig. 20 (a).Fig. 20bFig. 20 (b).
Fig. 20aFig. 20 (a).
Fig. 20bFig. 20 (b).
Other confusions are apt to appear in these early attempts at drawing a man in profile. The trunk, for example, is very frequently represented in front view with a row of buttons running down the middle, though the head and feet seem clearly shown in side view. The arms, too, not uncommonly are spread out from the two sides of the trunk just as in the front view.
It would take too long to offer a complete explanation of these characteristics of children's drawings.I must content myself here with touching on one or two of the main causes at work.
First of all, then, it seems pretty evident that most children when they begin to draw are not thinking of setting down a likeness of what they see when they look at an object. In the first simple stage we have little more than a jotting down of a number of linear notes, a kind of rude and fragmentary description in lines rather than in words. Here a child aims at bringing into his scheme what seems to him to have most interest and importance, such as the features of the face, the two legs, and so forth. In the later and more ambitious attempt to draw a man in profile the old impulse to set down what seems important continues to show itself. Although the little draughtsman has decided to give to the nose, to the ear, and possibly to the manly beard and the equally manly pipe, the advantage of a side view, he goes on exhibiting those sovereign members, the two round eyes, and the mouth with its flash of serried teeth, in their full front-view glory. It is enough for him to know that the lord of creation has these members, and he does not trouble about so small a matter as our capability of seeing them all at the same moment. In like manner a child will sometimes, on first clothing the human form, exhibit arms and legs through their covering (see Fig. 21 (a) and (b)). All this shows that even at this later and decidedly "knowing" stage of his craft he is not much nearer the point of view of our pictorial art than he was in the earlier stage of bald symbolism.
Fig. 21aFig. 21 (a) (from General Pitt Rivers' collection of drawings).Fig. 21bFig. 21 (b) (reproduced from a drawing published by Mr. H. T. Lukens).
Fig. 21aFig. 21 (a) (from General Pitt Rivers' collection of drawings).
Fig. 21bFig. 21 (b) (reproduced from a drawing published by Mr. H. T. Lukens).
Much the same kind of thing shows itself in a child's manner of treating the forms of animals, which his pencil is wont to attack soon after that of man.Here the desire to exhibit what is characteristic and worthy naturally leads at the outset to a representation of the body in profile. A horse is rather a poor affair looked at from the front. A child must show his four legs, as well as his neck and his tail. But though the profile seems to be the aspect selected, the little penciller by no means confines himself to a strict record of this. The four legs have to be shown not half hidden by overlappings but standing quite clear one of another. The head, too, must be turned towards the spectator, or at least given in a mixed scheme—half front view, half side view (see Fig. 22 (a) and (b)).
Fig. 22aFig. 22 (a).—A horse.Fig. 22bFig. 22 (b).—A quadruped.
Fig. 22aFig. 22 (a).—A horse.
Fig. 22bFig. 22 (b).—A quadruped.
A like tendency to get behind the momentary appearance of an object and to present to view what the childknowsto be there is seen in early drawings of men on horseback, in boats, railway carriages,houses, and so forth. Here the interest in the human form sets at defiance the limitations of perspective, and shows us the rider's second leg through the horse's body, the rower's body through the boat, and so forth.
The widespread appearance of these tendencies among children of different European countries, of half-civilised peoples, like the Jamaica blacks, as well as among adult savages, shows how deeply rooted in the natural mind is this quaint notion of drawing.
At the same time there are, as I have allowed, important differences in children's drawings. A few have the eye and the artistic impulse needed for picturing, roughly at least, thelookof an object. I have lately looked through the drawings of a little girl in a cultured home where every precaution was taken to shut out the influences of example and educational guidance. When at the age of four years eight months she first drew the profile of the human face she quite correctly put in only one eye, and added a shaded projection for nose (see Fig. 23). In like manner she was from the first careful to show only one leg of the rider, one rein over the horse'sneck, and so forth; and would sometimes, with a child's sweet thoughtfulness, explain to her mother why she proceeded in this way. Yet even in the case of this child one could observe now and again a rudiment of the tendency to bring in what is hidden. Thus in one drawing she shows the rider's near leg through the trouser; in another she introduces the front view of a horse's nostrils (if not also of the ears) in what is otherwise a drawing of the profile (see Fig. 24 (a) and (b)).