James Sully

First Attempts to Draw.

A child’s first attempts at drawing are pre-artistic and a kind of play, an outcome of the instinctive love of finding and producing semblances of things illustrated in the last essay. Sitting at the table and covering a sheet of paper with line-scribble he is wholly self-centred, ‘amusing himself,’ as we say, and caring nothing about the production of “objective values”.

Yet even in the early stages of infantile drawing the social element of art is suggested in the impulse of the small draughtsman to make his lines indicative of something to others’ eyes, as when he bids his mother look at the ‘man,’ ‘gee-gee,’ or what else he fancies that he has delineated.^[228] And this, though crude enough and apt to shock the Æsthetic sense of the matured artist by its unsightliness, is closely related to art, forming, indeed, in a manner a preliminary stage of pictorial design.

We shall therefore study children’s drawings as a kind of rude embryonic art. In doing this our special aim will be to describe and explain childish characteristics. This, again, will compel us to go to some extent into the early forms of observation and imagination. It will be found, I think, that the first crude drawings are valuable as throwing light on the workings of children’s minds. Perhaps, indeed, it may turn out that these spontaneous efforts of the childish hand to figure objects are for the psychologist a medium of expression of the whole of child-nature, hardly less instructive than that of early speech.

In carrying out our investigation of children’s drawings we shall need to make a somewhat full reference to the related phenomena, the drawings of modern savages and those of early art. While important points of difference will disclose themselves the resemblances are important enough to make a comparison not only profitable but almost indispensable.

I have thought it best to narrow the range of the 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 spontaneous drawings of quite young children, viz., from between two and three to about six.^[229] 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, 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?’ Yet perfect spontaneity, even if obtainable, is not necessary here. The drawings of men and quadrupeds of a child of five and later disclose plainly enough the childish fashion, even though there has been some slight amount of elementary instruction. Hence I have not hesitated to make use of drawings sent me by kindergarten teachers. I may add that I have used by preference the drawings executed by children in elementary schools, as these appear to illustrate the childish manner with less of parental interference than is wont to be present in a cultured home.

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 at a considerable distance the movements of the mother’s pencil.^[230] They may be made expressive or significant in two ways. In the first place, a child may by varying the swinging movements accidentally produce an effect which suggests an idea through a remote resemblance. A little boy when two years and two months, was one day playing in this wise with the pencil, and happening to make a sort of curling line, shouted with excited glee, ‘Puff, puff!’ i.e., smoke. He then drew more curls with a rudimentary intention to show what he meant. In like manner when a child happens to bend his line into something like a closed circle or ellipse he will catch the faint resemblance to the rounded human head and exclaim, ‘Mama!’ or ‘Dada!’

But intentional drawing or designing does not always arise in this way. A child may set himself to draw, and make believe that he is drawing something when he is scribbling. This is largely an imitative play-action following the direction of the movements of another’s hand. Preyer speaks of a little boy who in his second year was asked when scribbling with a pencil what he was doing and answered ‘writing houses’. He was apparently making believe that his jumble of lines represented houses.^[231] Almost any scribble may in this earliest stage take on a meaning through the play of a vigorous childish imagination.

Fig. 1 (a) and (b).

The same play of imagination is noticeable in the child’s first endeavours to draw an object from memory when he is asked to do so. Thus a little girl in her fourth year referred to by Mr. E. Cooke when asked to draw a cat produced a longish irregularly curved line crossed by a number of shorter lines, which strange production she proceeded quite complacently to dignify by the name ‘cat,’ naming the whiskers, legs, and tail (Fig. 1 (a); compare the slightly fuller design in Fig. 1 (b)).^[232]

Here it is evident we have a phase of childish drawing which is closely analogous to the symbolism of language. The representation is arbitrarily chosen as a symbol and not as a likeness. This element of a non-imitative or symbolic mode of representation will be found to run through the whole of childish drawing.

Even this chaotic scribble shows almost from the beginning germs of formative elements, not merely in the fundamental line-elements, but also in the loops, and in the more abrupt changes of direction or angles. A tendency to draw a loop-like rudimentary contour soon emerges, and thus we get the transition to a possible outlining of objects. Miss Shinn gives a good example of an ovoid loop drawn by her niece in her hundred and ninth week.^[233] With practice the child acquires by the second or third year the usual stock in trade of the juvenile draughtsman, and can draw a sort of straight line, curved lines, a roughish kind of circle or oval, as well as dots, and even fit lines together at angles.^[234] When this stage is reached we begin to see attempts at real though rude likenesses of men, horses and so forth. These early essays are among the most curious products of the child-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.

First Drawings of the Human Figure.

It has been wittily observed by an Italian writer on children’s art that they reverse the order of natural creation in beginning instead of ending with man.^[235] It may be added that they start with the most dignified part of this crown of creation, viz., the human head. A child’s first attempt to represent a man proceeds, so far as I have observed, by drawing the front view of his head. This he effects by means of a clumsy sort of circle with a dot or two thrown in by way of indicating features in general. A couple of lines may be inserted as a kind of support, which do duty for both trunk and legs. The circular or ovoid form is, I think, by far the most common. The square head in my collection appears only very occasionally and in children at school, who presumably have had some training in drawing horizontal and vertical lines. The accompanying example (Fig. 2) is the work of a Jamaica girl of five, kindly sent me by her teacher.

Fig. 2.

This first attempt to outline the human form is, no doubt, characterised by a high degree of arbitrary symbolism. The use of a rude form of circle to set forth the human head reminds one of the employment by living savage tribes of the same form as the symbol of a house (hut?), a wreath, and so forth.^[236] Yet there is a measure of resemblance even in this abstract symbolism: the circle does roughly resemble the contour of the head: as, indeed, the square or rectangle may be said less obviously to do when hair and whiskers and the horizontal line of the hat break the curved line.

Fig. 3.

But it is not the mere contour which represents the face: it is a circle picked out with features. These, however vaguely indicated, are an integral part of the facial scheme. This is illustrated in the fact that among the drawings by savages and others collected by General Pitt-Rivers, one, executed by an adult negro of Uganda, actually omits the contour, the human head being represented merely by an arrangement of dark patches and circles for eyes, ears, etc. (Fig. 3).^[237]

Coming now to the mode of representing the features, we find at an early stage of this schematic delineation an attempt to differentiate and individualise features, not only by giving definite position but by a rough imitation of form. Thus we get the vertical line as indicating the direction of the nose, the horizontal line that of the mouth, and either a rounded dot or a circular line as representative of the curved outline of the eye—whether that of the iris, of the visible part of the eyeball, or of the orbital cavity. A precisely similar scheme appears in the drawings of savages.^[238]

Fig. 4 (a). Fig. 4 (b).

At first the child is grandly indifferent to completeness in the enumeration of features. Even ‘the two eyes, a nose and a mouth’ are often imperfectly represented. Thus when dots are used we may have one or more specks ranging, according to M. Perez, up to five.^[239] The use of a single dot for facial feature in general has its parallel in the art of savage tribes.^[240] It is, however, I think, most common to introduce three dots in a triangular arrangement, presumably for eyes and mouth,—a device again which reappears in the art of uncivilised races.^[241] Even when the young draughtsman has reached the stage of distinguishing the features he may be quite careless about number and completeness. Thus a feature may be omitted altogether. This funnily enough happens most frequently in the case of that one which seems to us ‘grown-ups’ most self-assertive and most resentful of indignity, viz., the nose. These moon-faces with two eyes and a mouth are very common among the first drawings of children. The mouth, on the other hand, is much less frequently omitted. The same thing seems to hold good of the drawings of savages.^[242] The eyes are rarely omitted. The single dot may perhaps be said to stand for ‘eye’. Some drawings of savages have the two eyes and no other feature, as in the accompanying example from Andree, plate 3 (Fig. 4 (a)). On the other hand, a child will, as we have seen, sometimes content himself with one eye. This holds good not only where the dot is used but after something like an eye-circle is introduced, as in the accompanying drawing by a Jamaica girl of seven (Fig. 4 (b)).

Fig. 4 (c).—Moustache = horizontal line above curve of cap.

In these first attempts to sketch out a face we miss a sense of relative position and of proportion. It is astonishing what a child on first attempting to draw a human or animal form can do in the way of dislocation or putting things into the wrong place. The little girl mentioned by E. Cooke on trying, about the same age, to draw a cat from a model actually put the circle representing the eye outside that of the head. With this may be compared the drawings of Von den Steinen and other Europeans made by his Brazil Indian companions, in which what was distinctly said by the draughtsman to be the moustache was in more than one instance set above the eyes (Fig. 4 (c)). When dots are inserted in the linear scheme they are apt at first to be thrown in anyhow. The two eyes, I find, when these only are given, may be put one above the other as well as one by the side of the other, and both arrangements occur in the drawings of the same child. And much later when greater attention to position is observable there is a general tendency to put the group of features too high up, i.e., to make the forehead or brain region too small in proportion to the chin region (cf. above, Fig. 2, p. 336).^[243]

Fig. 5 (a).

The want of proportion is still more plainly seen in the treatment of the several features. The eye, as already remarked, is apt to be absurdly large. In the drawing of Mr. Cooke’s little girl mentioned above it is actually larger than the head outside which it lies. This enlargement continues to appear frequently in later drawings, more particularly when one eye only is introduced, as in the accompanying drawing by a boy in his seventh year (Fig. 5 (a); cf. above, Fig. 4 (b)). The mouth is apt to be even more disproportionate, the child appearing to delight in making this appalling feature supreme, as in the following examples, both by boys of five (Fig. 5 (b) and (c)). The ear, when it is added, is apt to be enormous, and generally the introduction of new details as ears, hair, hands, is wont to be emphasised by an exaggeration of their magnitude.

Fig. 5 (b).

Fig. 5 (c).

Very interesting is the gradual artistic evolution of the features. Here, as in organic evolution, there is a process of specialisation, the primordial indefinite form taking on more of characteristic complexity. 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 circle outside the first,^[244] or by one or by two arches, the former placed above, the latter above and below the circle. The form remains throughout an abstract outline or scheme, there being no attempt to draw even the lines—e.g., those of the lid-margins—correctly, or to indicate differences of light and dark, save in the case where a central black dot is used. In this schematic treatment so striking and interesting a feature as the eye-lash only very rarely finds a place. A similar schematic treatment of the eye in the use of a dot, a dot in a circle, and two circles, is observable in the drawings of savages and of Egyptian and other archaic art.^[245]

The evolution of the mouth is particularly interesting. It is wont to begin with a horizontal line (or what seems intended for such) which is frequently drawn right across the facial circle. But a transition soon takes place to a more distinctive representation. This is naturally enough carried out by the introduction of the characteristic and interesting detail, the teeth. This may be done, according to M. Perez, by keeping to the linear representation, the teeth being indicated by dots placed upon the horizontal line. In all the cases observed by me the teeth are introduced in a more realistic fashion in connexion with a contour to suggest the parted lips. The contour—especially the circular or ovoid—occasionally appears by itself without teeth, but the teeth seem to be soon added. The commonest forms of tooth-cavity I have met with are a narrow rectangular and a curved spindle-shaped slit with teeth appearing as vertical lines (see the two drawings by boys of six and five, Fig. 6 (a) and (b)). These two forms are improved upon and more likeness is introduced by making the dental lines shorter, as in Fig. 5 (c) (p. 340). With this may be compared a drawing by a boy of five (Fig. 6 (c)), where however we see a movement from realism in the direction of a freer decorative treatment.

Fig. 6 (a).

Fig. 6 (b).

Fig. 6 (c).

A somewhat similar process of evolution is noticeable in the case of the nose, though here the movement is soon brought to a standstill. Thus the vertical line gives place to an angle, which may point to the side, as in the drawing of a country-boy between three and four (Fig. 7 (a)), but more frequently, I think, points upwards, as in the drawing of a boy of six (Fig. 7 (b)). This in its turn leads to an isosceles triangle with an acute angle at the apex, as in the drawing of a boy of six (Fig. 7 (c)). In a few cases a long spindle-shaped or rectangular form similar to that of the mouth is employed, as in a drawing of a nervous child of six (Fig. 7 (d)). Refinements are introduced now and again by an attempt at the nostrils, as in the accompanying curious drawing by a seven-years-old Jamaica girl (Fig. 7 (e)).^[246]

Fig. 7 (a).

Fig. 7 (b).

Fig. 7 (c).

Fig. 7 (d).

Fig. 7 (e).

Fig. 8 (a).

Fig. 8 (b).

The introduction of other features, more especially ears and hair, must, according to my observations, be looked on as occasional only, and as a mark of an advance to a more naturalistic treatment. Differences of treatment occur here too. Thus the ears, which are apt to be absurdly large, are now inserted inside the head circle, now outside it. The hair appears now as a dark cap of horizontal strokes, now as a kind of stunted fringe, now as a bundle or wisp on one side, which may either fall or stand on end (see above, Fig. 7 (d), and the accompanying drawing by a girl of nearly four, Fig. 8 (a)). These methods of representation are occasionally varied by a more elaborate line-device, as a curly looped line similar to that employed for smoke, as in the annexed drawing by a girl of seven (Fig. 8 (b)).

Fig. 9.

As implied in this account of the facial features, a good deal of convention-like agreement of method is enlivened by a measure of diversity of treatment. Perhaps one of the most striking instances of daring originality is seen in the attempt by a girl of four—who was subjected to a great deal of instruction—to give separate form to the chin (Fig. 9). This may be compared with the attempt of the Uganda negro to indicate symbolically the cheeks (see above, p. 336, Fig. 3).

As I have remarked, to the child bent on representing ‘man’ the head or face is at first the principal thing, some early drawings contenting themselves with this. But in general the head receives some support. The simplest device here is the abstract mode of representation by two supporting lines, which do duty for legs and body. These are for the most part parallel (see above, p. 336, Fig. 2), though occasionally they are united at the top, making a kind of target figure. This same arrangement, fixing the head on two upright lines, meets us also in the rude designs of savages, as may be seen in the accompanying rock inscription from Schoolcraft (Fig. 10).^[247]

Fig. 10.

The comparative indifference of the child to the body or trunk is seen in the obstinate persistence of this simple scheme of head and legs, to which two arms attached to the sides of the head are often added. A child will complete the drawing of the head by inserting hair or a cap, and will even add feet and hands, before he troubles to bring in the trunk (see above, p. 336, Fig. 2, and p. 342, Fig. 7 (d), also the accompanying drawing by a boy of six, Fig. 11 (a)). With this neglect of the trunk by children may be compared the omission of it—as if it were a forbidden thing—in one of General Pitt-Rivers’ drawings, executed by a Zulu woman (Fig. 11(b)).

Fig. 11 (a).

Fig. 11 (b).

From this common way of spiking the head on two forked or upright legs there is one important deviation. The contour of the head may be left incomplete, and the upper occipital part of the curve be run on into the leg-lines, as in the accompanying example by a Jamaica girl of seven (Fig. 12). I have met with no example of this among English children.

Fig. 12.

The drawing of the trunk may commence in one of two ways. With English children it appears often to emerge as an expansion or prolongation of the head-contour, as in the accompanying drawings of the front and side view (Fig. 13 (a) and (b)).^[248] Or, in the second place, the leg-scheme may be modified, either by drawing a horizontal line across them and so making a rectangle, as in the accompanying drawing by a boy of six, or by shading in the upper part of the space, as in the other figure by a girl of five (Fig. 13 (c) and (d)). A curious and interesting variant of this second mode of introducing the trunk is to be found in the drawings of Von den Steinen’s Brazilians, where the leg-lines are either kept parallel for a while and then made to diverge, or are pinched in below what may be called the pelvis, though not completely joined (Fig. 13 (e) and (f)).

Fig. 13 (a).

Fig. 13 (b).

Fig. 13 (c).

Fig. 13 (d).

Fig. 13 (e) and (f).

When the trunk is distinctly marked off, it is apt to remain small in proportion to the head, as in the following two drawings by boys of about five (Fig. 14 (a) and (b)). As to its shape, it is most commonly circular or ovoid like the head. But the square or rectangular form is also found, and in the case of certain children it is expressly stated that this came later. A triangular cape-like form also appears now and again, as in the accompanying drawing by a boy of six (Fig. 14 (c)).^[249] The treatment of the form of trunk often varies in the drawings of the same child.

Fig. 14 (a).

Fig. 14 (b).

Fig. 14 (c).

At this stage there is no attempt to show the joining on of the head to the trunk by means of the neck. The oval of the head is either laid on the top of that of the trunk, or more commonly cuts off the upper end of the latter. The neck, when first added, is apt to take the exaggerated look of caricature. It may be represented by a single line, by a couple of parallel lines, or by a small oval or circle, as in the accompanying drawings by a girl of six and a boy of five respectively (Fig. 15 (a) and (b); cf. above, p. 342, Fig. 7 (b)).

Fig. 15 (a).

Fig. 15 (b).

Fig. 16 (a).

Fig. 16 (b).

Fig. 16 (c).

It is noticeable that there is sometimes a double body, two oval contours being laid one upon the other. In certain cases this looks very like an expansion of the neck, as in the accompanying drawing by the same boy that drew the round neck above (Fig. 16 (a)). In other cases the arrangement plainly does not aim at differentiating the neck, since this part is separately dealt with (Fig. 16 (b)). Here it may possibly mean a crude attempt to indicate the division of the trunk at the waist, as brought out especially by female attire, as may be seen in the accompanying drawing where the dots for buttons on each oval seem to show that the body is signified (Fig. 16 (c); cf. above, p. 342, Fig. 7 (c)).^[250] This, along with the triangular cape-shape of the trunk, is one of the few illustrations of the effect of dress on the first childish treatment of the figure. As a rule, this primitive art is a study of nature in so far as the artificial adjuncts of dress are ignored, and the rounded forms of the body are, though crudely enough no doubt, hinted at.

Coming now to the arms we find that their introduction is very uncertain. To the child, as also to the savage, the arms are what the Germans call a Nebensache—side-matter (i.e., figuratively as well as literally), 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. 17.

The arms, as well as the legs, being the thin lanky members, are commonly represented by lines. The same thing is noticeable in the drawings of savages.^[251] The arms appear in the front view of the figure as stretched out horizontally, or, at least, reaching out from the sides; and their appearance always gives a certain liveliness to the figure, an air of joyous self-proclamation, as if they said in their gesture-language, ‘Here I am’ (see above, p. 339, Fig. 5 (a), and the accompanying drawing of a boy of six, Fig. 17).

In respect of shape and structure a process of evolution may be observed. In certain cases the abstract linear representation gives place to contour, the arm being drawn of a certain thickness. But I find that the linear representation of the arm often persists after the legs have received contour, this being probably another illustration of the comparative neglect of the arm; as in the accompanying drawing by a boy of five (Fig. 18 (a)). The primal rigid straightness yields later on to the freedom of an organ. Thus an attempt is made to represent by means of a curve the look of the bent arm, as in the accompanying drawings by boys of five (Fig. 18 (b) and (c)). In other cases the angle of the elbow is indicated. This last comes comparatively late in children’s drawings, which here, too, lag behind the crudest outline sketches of savages.

Fig. 18 (a).

Fig. 18 (b).

Fig. 18 (c).—A miner.

Fig. 19.

The mode of insertion or attachment of the arms is noteworthy. Where they are added to the trunkless figure they appear as emerging either from the sides of the head, as in the accompanying drawing by a boy of two and a half years, or from the point of junction of the head and legs (Fig. 19; cf. above, p. 342, Fig.7 (d) and (e)). In the case of savage drawings wanting the trunk the arm is also inserted at this point of junction (see above, pp. 344, 346, Figs. 10 and 13 (f)).^[252]

After the trunk has been added, the mode of insertion varies still more. In a not inconsiderable number of cases the arms spring from the bottom of the head-circle, and sometimes even from the median region, as before the trunk appeared (cf. above, p. 346, Fig. 14 (b)). In the last case the most grotesque arrangements occur, as if the arms might sprout at any point of the surface.^[253] In the majority of cases, however, and certainly among the better drawings, the arms spring from the side of the trunk towards the median level (cf. above, p. 341, Fig. 6 (a)).

The length of the arm is frequently exaggerated. This adds to the self-expansive and self-proclamatory look of the mannikin, as may be seen in the accompanying drawings by boys of five and of six respectively (Fig. 20 (a) and (b)).

Fig. 20 (a).

Fig. 20 (b).

This arrangement of the arms stretched straight out, or less commonly pointing obliquely upwards or downwards, continues until the child grows bold enough to represent actions. When this stage is reached their form and length may be materially modified, as also their position.^[254]

The arm in these childish drawings early develops the interesting adjunct of a hand. Like other features this is apt at first to be amusingly forced into prominence by its size, and not infrequently by heaviness of stroke as well.

Fig. 21 (a).—Humpty Dumpty on the wall.

Fig. 21 (b).

The treatment of the hand illustrates the process of artistic evolution, the movement from a bold symbolism in the direction of a more life-like mode of 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 by way of digital symbols. Here we have merely a clumsy attempt to convey the abstract idea of branching or bifurcation. These cross-strokes are commonly continued upwards so that the whole visible part of the arm becomes tree-like. It is an important step from this to the drawing of twig-like lines which bifurcate with the line of the arm (Fig. 21 (a) and (b)).

It is a still more significant advance in the process of evolution when the digital bifurcations are placed rightly, being concentrated in a bunch-like arrangement at the extremity of the arm-line. Here, again, various modes of treatment disclose themselves, marking stages in the development of the artist.

The simplest device would seem to be to draw one short line on either side of the termination of the arm-line so as to produce a rude kind of bird’s foot form. This may be done clumsily by drawing a stroke across at right angles to the line of the arm, or better by two independent strokes making acute angles with this line. These two modes of delineation manifestly represent a restriction of the two varieties of diffuse or dispersed treatment of the fingers already illustrated. Both forms occur among children’s drawings. They may be found among the drawings of savages as well.^[255]

In this terminal finger-arrangement the number of finger-lines varies greatly, being, in the cases observed by me, frequently four and five, and sometimes even as great as ten. It varies, too, greatly in the drawings of the same child, and in some cases even in the two hands of the same figure, showing that number is not attended to, as may be seen in the two annexed drawings, both by boys of five (Fig. 22 (a) and (b)). The idea seems to be to set forth a multiplicity of branching fingers, and multiplicity here seems to mean three or more. The same way of representing the hand by a claw-form, in which the number of fingers is three or more, reappears in the drawings of savages (cf. above, p. 339, Fig. 4 (c)).^[256]

Fig. 22 (a).

An important advance on these crude devices is seen where an attempt is made to indicate the hand and the relation of the fingers to this. One of the earliest of these attempts takes the form of the well-known toasting-fork or rake hand. Here a line at right angles to that of the arm symbolically represents the hand, and the fingers are set forth by the prongs or teeth (see above, p. 341, Fig. 6 (a), and p. 349, Fig. 18 (a)). Number is here as little attended to as in the radial arrangements. It is worth noting that this schema seems to be widely diffused among children of different nationalities, and occurs in the drawings of untaught adults. I have not, however, noticed any example of it among savage drawings.

Another way of bringing in the hand along with the fingers is by drawing a dark central patch or knob. This not infrequently occurs without the fingers as the symbol for hand. It becomes a complete symbol by arranging finger-lines after the pattern of a burr about this (see above, p. 347, Fig. 15 (a)).

A further process of artistic evolution occurs when the fingers take on contour. This gives a look of branching leaves to the hand. The leaf-like pattern may be varied in different ways, among others by taking on a floral aspect of petal-like fingers about a centre, as in the two annexed drawings by boys of six (Fig. 23 (a) and (b); cf. above, p. 350, Fig. 20 (a)).

One curious arrangement by which a thickened arm is made to expand into something like a fan-shaped hand appears with considerable frequency. It is zoologically interesting as being a kind of rough representation of the fundamental typical form from which hand, fin, and wing may be supposed to have been evolved. Here the arm sinks into insignificance, the whole limb taking on the aspect of a prolonged hand, save where the artist resorts to the device of making the double organ go across the body (Fig. 24 (a) and (b)).

The legs come in for very much the same variety of treatment as the arms. The abstract straight line here, as already pointed out, soon gives place to the pair of lines representing thickness. They are for the most part parallel and drawn at some distance one from the other, though in certain cases there is a slight tendency to give to the figure the look of the ‘forked biped’ (cf. above, p. 342, Fig. 7 (c)). In a large proportion of cases there is a marked inclination of the legs, as indeed of the whole figure, which seems to be falling backwards (see above, pp. 340, 352, Figs. 5 (c) and 22 (b)). In many instances, in front and profile view alike, one of the legs is drawn under the body, leaving no room for the second, which is consequently pushed behind, and takes on the look of a tail (see above, p. 352, Fig. 22 (b)s).

Both legs are regularly shown alike in front and in profile view. Yet even in this simple case attention to number may sometimes lapse. Among the drawings collected by me is one by a boy of five representing the monster, a three-legged ‘biped’ (Fig. 25).^[257]

The shape of the leg varies greatly. With some children it is made short and fat. It develops a certain amount of curvature long before it develops a knee-bend. This is just what we should expect. The standing figure needs straight or approximately straight legs as its support. When the knee-bend is introduced it is very apt to be exaggerated (cf. above, Fig. 24 (b)). This becomes still more noticeable at a later stage, where actions, as running, are attempted.

The treatment of the foot shows a process of evolution similar to that seen in the treatment of the hand. At first a bald abstract indication or suggestion is noticeable, as where a short line is drawn across the extremity of the leg. In place of this a contour-form, more especially a circle or knob, may be used as a designation. Very interesting here is the differentiation of treatment according as the booted or naked foot is represented. Children brought up in a civilised community like England, though they sometimes give the naked foot (see p. 342, Fig. 7 (d), where the claw pattern is adopted), are naturally more disposed to envisage the foot under its boot-form. Among the drawings of the Jamaica children, presumably more familiar with the form of the naked foot, I find both the toasting-fork and the burr arrangement, as also a rude claw, or birch-like device used for the foot (see above, pp. 336, 338, 345, Figs. 2, 4 (b), and 12). The toasting-fork arrangement appears in General Pitt-Rivers’ collection of savage drawings. Also a bird’s foot treatment often accompanies a similar treatment of the hand in the pictographs of savage tribes, and in the drawings of Von den Steinen’s Brazilians (see above, pp. 338, 339, Fig. 4 (a) and (c)).

An attempt to represent the booted foot seems to be recognisable in the early use of a triangular form, as in the accompanying drawing by a small artist of five (Fig. 26 (a)).^[258] Very curious is the way in which the child seeks to indicate the capital feature of the boot, the division of toe and heel. This is very frequently done by continuing the line of the leg so as to make a single or a double loop-pattern, as in the following (Fig. 26 (b), (c); cf. above, p. 342, Fig. 7 (b)). A tendency to a more restrained and naturalistic treatment is sometimes seen (see above, p. 354, Fig. 24 (a) and (b)). It may be added that the notch between toe and heel is almost always exaggerated. This may be seen by a glance at Figs. 17 and 22 (a), pp. 348, 352. The same thing is noticeable in a drawing by a young Zulu in General Pitt-Rivers’ collection.

Front and Side View of Human Figure.

So far, I have dealt only with the treatment of the front view of the human face and figure. New and highly curious characteristics come into view when the child attempts to give the profile aspect. This comes considerably later than the early lunar representation of the full face.

Children still more than adults are interested in the full face with its two flashing and fascinating eyes. ‘If,’ writes a lady teacher of considerable experience in the Kindergarten, ‘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 by Catlin of the Indian chief, who was so angry at a representation of himself in profile that the unfortunate artist was in fear of his life.

At the same time children do not rest content with this front view. There is, I believe, ample reason to say that, quite apart from teaching, they find their own 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 the characteristics of what we understand by this expression.

The first clear indication of an attempt to give the profile aspect of the face is the introduction of the angular line 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 as he cannot make much of the front view of the organ, he naturally begins at an early stage, certainly by the fifth year, to vary the scheme of the lunar circle, broken at most by the ears, by a projection answering to a profile nose.

This change is sometimes made without any other, so that we get what has been called the mixed scheme, in which the eyes and mouth retain their front-view aspect. This I find very common among children of five. It may be found—even in the trunkless figure—along with a linear mouth (see above, pp. 340-344, Figs. 5 (c) and following, also 11 (a)). The nasal line is, needless to say, treated with great freedom. There is commonly a good deal of exaggeration of size. In certain cases the nose is added in the form of a spindle to the completed circle (Fig. 27; cf. above, p. 340, Fig. 5 (c)).

It may well seem a puzzle to us how a normal child of five or six can complacently set down this irrational and inconsistent scheme of a human head. We must see what can be said by way of explanation later on. It is to be noticed, further, that in certain cases the self-contradiction goes to the point of doubling the nose. That is to say, although the interesting new feature, the profile nose, is introduced, earlier habit asserts itself so that the vertical nasal line appears between the two eyes (see above, p. 349, Fig. 18 (c)).

The further process of differentiation of the profile from the primitive full-face scheme is effected in part by adding other features than the nose to the contour. Thus a notch for the mouth appears in some cases below the nasal projection (Fig. 28 (a)), though the grinning front view is apt to hold its own pertinaciously. A beard, especially the short ‘imperial,’ as it used to be called, shooting out like the nose from the side, also helps to mark profile.^[259] Less frequently an ear, and in a very few cases, hair, are added on the hinder side of the head, and assist the impression of profile. Adjuncts, especially the pipe, and sometimes the peak of the cap, contribute to the effect, as in the accompanying drawing by a boy of six (Fig. 28 (b); cf. above, Figs. 6 (a), 18 (c), and 24 (b), pp. 341, 349, 354).^[260]

At the same time the front features themselves undergo modification. The big grinning mouth is dropped and one of the eyes omitted. The exact way in which this occurs appears to vary with different children. In certain cases it is clear that the front view of the mouth cavity disappears, giving place to a rough attempt to render a side view, before the second eye is expunged; and in one case I have detected a survival of the two eyes in what otherwise would be a consistent profile drawing of head and figure (Fig. 29 (a); cf. above, p. 349, Fig. 18 (b)). This late survival of the two eyes agrees with the results of observation on the drawings of the uncultured adult. One of General Pitt-Rivers’ African boys inserted the two eyes in a profile drawing. Von den Steinen’s Brazilians drew by preference the full face, so that we cannot well judge as to how they would have treated the profile. Yet it is curious to note that in what is clearly a drawing of a side view of a fish one of these Brazilians introduces both eyes (Fig. 29 (b)). The insertion of two eyes is said by some never to occur in the drawings of savages on stone, hide, etc.^[261] But I have come across what seems to me a clear example of it, and this in a fairly good sketch of a profile view of the human figure on an Indian vase (Fig. 29 (c)).^[262] Yet this late retention of the two eyes in profile, though the general rule in children’s drawings, is liable to exceptions. Thus I have found a child retaining the big front view of the mouth along with a single eye.

It may be added that children at a particular stage show a preference for some one arrangement; for example, the profile nose and mouth, and the two front-view eyes, which tends to become the habitual form used, though a certain amount of variation is observable. The differences noticeable among different children’s drawings suggest that all of them do not go through the same stages. Thus some may pass by the two-eyed profile stage altogether, or very soon rise above it, whereas others may linger in it.^[263]

One notices, too, curious divergences with respect to the mixture of incompatible features. Differences in the degree of intelligence show themselves here also. Thus in one case a child, throughout whose drawings a certain feeble-mindedness seems to betray itself, actually went so far as to introduce the double nose without having the excuse of the two eyes (Fig. 30). In such odd ways do the tricks of habit assert themselves.

The difficulty which the child feels in these profile representations is seen in the odd positions given to the eyes. These are apt to be pushed very high up, to be placed one above the other, and, what is more significant, to be put far apart and close to the line of contour (see above, Fig. 29 (a)). In the following drawing by a boy of five one of the eyes may be said to be on this line (Fig 31 (a)). In General Pitt-Rivers’ collection we find a still more striking instance of this in a drawing by a boy of eleven, the second eye appearing to be intentionally put outside the contour, as if to suggest that we must look round to the other side of the facial disc in order to see it (Fig. 31 (b)). Curious variations of treatment appear, as in inserting two eyes between the same pair of curves as in Fig. 20 (b), p. 350, and in enclosing two pairs of dots or small circles in two larger circles as in Figs. 14 (b), and 22 (a), pp. 346, 352 (both by the same boy).^[264]

It may be added that even when only one eye is drawn, a reminiscence of the anterior view is seen in its form. It is the round or spindle-shaped contour of the eye as seen in front. That is to say the eye of the profile like that of the full face looks directly at the spectator, so that in a manner the one-eyed profile is a front view (see for an example, Fig. 5 (a), p. 339). The designs of savages, and the archaic art of civilised races, including a people so high up as the Egyptians, share this tendency of children’s drawings of the profile, though we find scarcely a trace of the tendency to insert both eyes.

A like confusion or want of differentiation shows itself in the management of other features in the profile view. As observed, a good large ear at the back sometimes helps to indicate the side view (see above, p. 341, Fig. 6 (a)). But the wish to bring in all the features, seen in the obstinate retention of the two eyes, shows itself also in respect of the ears. Thus one occasionally finds the two ears as in the front view (see above, p. 346, Fig. 14 (a), where the aspect is clearly more front view than profile), and sometimes, according to M. Passy—as if the profile nose interfered with this arrangement—both placed together on one side. The treatment of the moustache when this is introduced follows that of the mouth. So imposing a feature must be given in all the glory of the front view (see above, p. 350, Fig. 20 (b)).

Other curious features of this early crude attempt to deal with the profile show themselves in the handling of the trunk and the limbs. I have met with only one or two instances of a profile head appearing before the addition of the trunk as in Fig. 28 (a) (p. 358). In the large majority of cases the trunk appears and retains the circular or oval form of the primitive front view. When, as very frequently happens, the interesting vertical row of buttons is added it is apt to be inserted in the middle, giving a still more definitely frontal aspect. The juxtaposition of this with the head turned to the left need cause no difficulty to the little draughtsman, after what he has comfortably swallowed in the shape of incompatibilities in the face itself (see above, p. 347, Fig. 15 (b)). In rare cases, however, one may light on a distinctly lateral treatment of the buttons. In one instance I have found it in a drawing which would be a consistent profile but for the insertion of the second eye, and the frontal treatment of the legs and feet (Fig. 32).

In the arrangement of the arms there is more room for confusion. The management of these in the profile view naturally gives difficulty to the little artist, and in some cases we find him shirking the point by retaining the front view or spread-eagle arrangement. This occurs as a rule where the profile modification is limited to the introduction of a lateral nose or nose and pipe (see, e.g., Figs. 24 (a) and 28 (b), pp. 354, 358). What is more surprising is that it appears in rare cases in drawings which otherwise would be fairly consistent profile sketches. [Fig. 33; all this child’s completed drawings, four in number, adopt the same front-view scheme of arms.]

The view of the profile with both arms stretched out in front seems, however, early to impress itself on the child’s imagination, and an attempt is made to introduce this striking arrangement. The addition of the forward-reaching arms helps greatly to give a profile aspect to the figure (see above, p. 349, Fig. 18 (b)).

The addition of the forward-reaching arms is carried out more especially when it is desired to represent an action, as in the drawing given above, p. 342, Fig. 7 (c), by a boy of six, which represents a nurse apparently walking behind a child, and in the accompanying figure, by a boy of eight and a half, of an Irishman knocking a man’s head inside a tent (Fig. 34).

The crudest mode of representing the side view of the forward-reaching arms is by drawing the lines from the contour, as in Fig. 35 (a). Difficulties arise when the lines are carried across the trunk. Very often both arms are drawn in this way, as in Fig. 35 (b). There is a certain analogy here to the insertion of the two eyes in the profile representation, a second feature being in each case added which in the original object is hidden.^[265]

When the two arms are thus introduced their position varies greatly, whether they start from the contour or are drawn across the body. That is to say, they may be far one from the other (as in Fig. 35 (b)), or may be drawn close together. And again the point of common origin may be high up at the meeting point of trunk and chin, as in a drawing by a boy of five (Fig. 36), or at almost any point below this.

In the cases I have examined the insertion of both arms in profile representations is exceptional. More frequently, even when action is described, one arm only is introduced, which may set out from the anterior surface of the trunk, or, as we have seen, start from the posterior surface and cross the trunk (see above, pp. 353, 356, Figs. 23 (a) and 26 (c)). In most cases where no action such as walking and holding a cane is signified both arms are omitted. The uncertainty of the arms is hardly less here than in the front view.

With respect to the legs, we find, as in the primitive frontal view, an insertion of both. An ordinary child can still less represent a human figure in profile with only one leg showing than he can represent it with only one eye. As a rule, so long as he is guided by his own inner light only he does not attempt to draw one leg over and partially covering the other, but sets them both out distinctly at a respectful distance one from the other. The refinement of making the second foot or calf and foot peep out from behind the first, as in Fig. 29 (a) (p. 359), and possibly also Fig. 18 (c) (p. 349), shows either an exceptional artistic eye, or the interference of the preceptor.

The treatment of the feet by the childish pencil is interesting. It is presumable that at first no difference of profile and front view attaches to the position of the foot. It has to be shown, and as the young artist knows nothing of perspective and foreshortening, and, moreover, would not be satisfied with that mode of delineation if he could accomplish it, he proceeds naturally enough to draw the member as a line at right angles to that of the leg. This is done in one of two ways, in opposed directions outwards, or in the same direction, answering to what we should call the front or the side view. At first, I believe, no significance of front and side view is attached to these arrangements. Thus in some sketches by a little girl of four and a half I find the primitive front view of the head combined with each of these arrangements of the foot. In drawings, too, of older children of six and upwards I have met with cases both of a profile representation of head and trunk with spread-eagle feet, as also of a side view of the feet with a front face (see Figs. 5 (a) and 13 (c), pp. 339, 345). This last arrangement, I find, appears in a profile treatment of the whole leg and foot among the drawings of North American Indians (Fig. 37); and this suggests that the side view in which the two feet point one way is more easily reached and fixed by the untutored draughtsman.

A regular and apparently intelligent addition of the side view of the feet to the child’s crude profile drawing of the human figure produces a noticeable increase of definiteness. One common arrangement, I find, in the handling of the profile is the combination of the side view of the feet with a more or less consistent profile view of the head, while the bust is drawn in front view (see above, Figs. 35 (a), 36). The effect is of course greater where the side view of the bent leg is added (see Fig. 38 and compare with this Fig. 37). I find a liking for this same arrangement in the drawings of the unskilled adult. An example may be seen in a drawing by an English carpenter in General Pitt-Rivers’ Museum at Farnham. In the pictographs of the North American Indians we meet with cases of a similar treatment.^[266] In the drawings on the Egyptian Mummy cases in the British Museum instances of a precisely similar treatment are to be found. We seem to have here a sort of transition from the first crude impossible conception to a more naturalistic and truthful conception. This twist of the trunk does not shock the eye with an absolutely impossible posture, as the early artistic solecisms shock it, and it is an arrangement which displays much that is characteristic and valuable in the human form.^[267]

One point to be noticed among these drawings of the profile by children is that in a large majority of cases the figure looks to the left of the spectator. In the drawings which I have examined this appears like a rule to which there is scarcely any exception, save where the child wants to make two figures face one another in order to represent a fight or the less sensational incident of a salute. The way in which the new direction of the figure is given in these cases shows that children are not absolutely shut up to the one mode of representation by any insuperable difficulty. There is a like tendency observable in the treatment of the quadruped, which nearly always looks to the left. It may be added that a similar habit prevails in the drawings of untutored adults, as the pictographs of the North American Indians. The explanation of this, as well as of other generalisations here reached, will be touched on later.

I conceive, then, that there reveals itself in children’s drawings of the human figure between the ages of three or four and eight a process of development involving differentiation and specialisation. This process, instead of leading to a fuller and more detailed treatment of the front view, moves in the direction of a new and quasi-profile representation, although few children arrive at a clear and consistent profile scheme. Different children appear to find their way to different modifications of a mixed front and side view, some amazingly raw, others less so according to the degree of natural intelligence, and probably also the amount of good example put in their way by drawings in books, and still more by model-drawings of mother or other instructor.

I have met with only a few examples of a contemporaneous and discriminative use of front view and profile. Here and there, it is true, one may light on a case of the old lunar scheme surviving side by side with the commoner mixed scheme; but this sporadic survival of an earlier form does not prove clear discrimination. In the case of one boy of five the two forms were clearly distinguished, but this child was from a cultured family, and had presumably enjoyed some amount of home guidance. In the case of the rougher and less sophisticated class of children it appears to be a general rule that the draughtsman settles down to some one habitual way of drawing the human face and figure, which can be seen to run through all his drawings, with only this difference, that some are made more complete than others by the addition of mouth, arms, etc. Even the fact of the use of one or two eyes by the same child at the same date does not appear to me to point to a clear distinction in his mind between a front and side view. The omissions in these cases may more readily be explained as the result of occasional fatigue and carelessness, or, in some cases, of want of room, or as indicating the point of transition from an older and cruder to a later and more complete scheme of profile. This conclusion is supported by the fact that a child of six or seven, when asked to draw from the life, will give the same scheme, whether the model presents a front or a side view. This has been observed by M. Passy in the drawings of himself which he obtained from his own children, by General Pitt-Rivers in the drawings of uneducated adults, and by others. We may say, then, that children left to themselves are disposed each to adopt some single stereotyped mode of representing the human figure which happens to please his fancy.^[268]

In this naÏve childish art of profile drawing we have something which at first seems far removed from the art of uncivilised races. No doubt, as Grosse urges, the drawings of savages discovered in North America, Africa, Australia, are technically greatly superior to children’s clumsy impossible performances. Yet points of contact disclose themselves. If a North American Indian is incapable of producing the stupid scheme of a front view of the mouth and side view of the nose, he may, as we have seen, occasionally succumb to the temptation to bring both eyes into a profile drawing. We may see, too, how in trying to represent action, and to exhibit the active limb as he must do laterally, the untutored nature-man is apt to get odd results, as may be observed in the accompanying drawing by a North American Indian of a man shooting (Fig. 39 (a)).^[269] This may be compared with the accompanying Egyptian drawing (Fig. 39 (b)).^[270]

I have already touched on the modifications which appear in a child’s drawing of the human figure when the sculpturesque attitude of repose gives place to the dramatic attitude of action. This transition to the representation of action marks the substitution of a more realistic concrete treatment for the early abstract symbolic treatment. Very amusing are some of the devices by which a child tries to indicate this. As Ricci has pointed out, the arm will sometimes be curved in order to make it reach, say, the face of an adversary (Fig. 40 (a)). A similar introduction of curvature appears in the accompanying drawing from a scalp inscription (Fig. 40 (b)). Sometimes a curious symbolism appears, as if to eke out the deficiencies of the artist’s technical resources, as when a boy of five represents the junction of two persons’ hands by connecting them with a line (Fig. 40 (c)).^[271] With this may be compared the well-known device of indicating the direction of sight by drawing a line from the eye to the object.^[272] The most impossible attitudes occur when new positions of the legs are attempted, as in the accompanying endeavours to draw the act of running, kneeling to play marbles, and kicking a football (Fig. 40 (d), (e), and (f)).

One other point needs to be referred to before we leave the human figure, viz., the treatment of accessories. As pointed out, the child when left to himself is for the most part oblivious of dress, though the triangular cape-like form of the body may be a rude attempt to delineate a clothed figure. In general he cares merely to crown his figure with the hat of dignity, and, at most, to ornament the body with a row of buttons. Even when he grows sophisticated and attempts clothes he still shows his primitive respect for the natural frame. A well-known anthropologist tells me that his little boy on watching his mother draw a lady insisted on her putting in the legs before shading in the petticoats. In General Pitt-Rivers’ collection there is a drawing by a boy of ten which in clothing the figure naÏvely indicates the limbs through their covering (Fig. 41). This agrees with what Von den Steinen tells us of the way the Brazilian Indians drew him and his companions.

Yet the artificial culture which children in the better classes of a civilised community are wont to receive is apt to develop a precocious respect for raiment, and this respect is reflected in their drawings. The early introduction of buttons has been illustrated above. One boy of six was so much in love with these that he covered the bust with them (Fig. 42 (a)). Girls are wont to lay great emphasis on the lady’s feathered hat and parasol, as in the accompanying drawing by a maiden of six (Fig. 42 (b)). Throughout this use of apparel in the crude stage of child-art we see the desire to characterise sex, rank, and office, as when the man is given his hat, the soldier his military cap, and so forth. This applies, too, of course, to such frequent accessories as the walking-stick (or less frequently the whip, as in Fig. 35 (b), p. 363) and the pipe, each of which is made the most of in giving manliness of look. The pipe, it may be added, figures bravely in a drawing of a European by one of Von den Steinen’s Brazilians.

First Drawings of Animals.

Many of the characteristics observable in the child’s treatment of the human figure reappear in his mode of representing animal forms. This domain of child-art follows quickly on the first. Children’s interest in animals, especially quadrupeds, leads them to draw them at an early stage. In prescribed exercises, moreover, the cat and the duck appear to figure amongst the earliest models. An example of this early attempt to draw animals has been given above (p. 334, Fig. 1).

Fig. 43 (a).—A duck.

The first crude attempts about the age of three or four to draw animal forms exhibit great incompleteness of conception and want of a sense of position and proportion. In one case the head seems to be drawn, but no body—if, indeed, head and body are not confused; and in others where a differentiation of head and trunk is attempted there is no clear local separation, or if this is attempted there is no clear indication of the mode of connexion (see, for example, Fig. 43 (a)). In the case of animals the side view is for obvious reasons hit on from the first. But, needless to say, there is no clear representation of the profile head. As a rule we have the front view, or at least the insertion of the two eyes. Both eyes appear in Mr. Cooke’s illustrations of drawings of the cat by children between three and four (Fig. 43 (b)), as also commonly in drawings of horses. The position of the eyes is often odd enough, these organs being in one drawing by a boy of five pushed up into the ears (Fig. 43 (c)).^[273] The front view of the animal head along with profile body appears occasionally in savage drawings also.^[274] In some of children’s drawings we see traces of a mixed scheme. Thus I have a drawing by a boy of five in which a front view is reached by a kind of doubling of the profile (Fig. 43 (d)).

More remarkable than all, perhaps, we have in one case a clear instance of the scheme of the human face, the features, eyes, nose, and mouth being arranged horizontally to suit the new circumstances (Fig. 44 (a)). With this may be compared the accompanying transference of the animal ear to the human figure, though this suggests—especially in view of the pipe—a bit of jocosity on the part of the young draughtsman (Fig. 44 (b)).

The forms of both head and trunk vary greatly. In a few drawings I have found the extreme of abstract treatment in the drawing of the trunk, viz., by means of a single line, a device which, so far as I have observed, is only resorted to in the case of the human figure for the neck and the limbs. An example of this was given above in Fig. 1 (p. 334). The following drawing of a dog by a little girl between five and six years old illustrates the same thing (Fig. 44 (c)).^[275] On the other hand we see sometimes a tendency to give the trunk abnormal thickness, as if the model used had been the wooden toy-horse, as in the accompanying drawing by a boy of five (Fig. 44 (d)). Rectilinear instead of rounded forms occur, and the head is often triangular, these rectilinear contours being probably suggested by the teacher in his model schemes (see Fig. 44 (e)).

The legs are of course all visible. The strangest inattention to number betrays itself here. As we saw, a child in beginning his scribble-drawing piles on lines for the legs (see above, p. 334, Fig. 1). A girl between three and four years of age endowed a cat with two legs and a bird with three (see Fig. 45 (a) and (b)).^[276] A boy in his sixth year drew a quadruped with ten legs (Fig. 45 (c)). They are often drawn absurdly out of position. In more than one case I find them crowded behind, as in the accompanying drawing of some quadruped by the same little girl that drew the cat and the bird, and in a drawing of a mouse by another child about the same age, viz., three and a half years (Fig. 45 (d) and (e)). They commonly remain apart from one another throughout their course, following roughly a parallel direction. But this simple scheme is soon modified, first of all by enlarging the space between the fore and the hind legs, and then by introducing some change of direction answering to the look of the animal in motion. This is most easily effected by making the fore and the hind pair diverge downwards, as in Fig. 43 (b) and (c) (p. 373). In rarer cases the divergence appears between the two legs of the fore and of the hind pair (Fig. 45 (f)). The knee-bend is early introduced as a means of suggesting motion. Either the legs are all bent backwards, as in Fig. 45 (g) (cf. above, Fig. 44 (e)); or, with what looks like a perverted feeling for symmetry, each pair is bent inwardly, as in Fig. 45 (h). The forms are often extraordinary enough, a preternatural thickness of leg being not infrequently given, and the knee-joint occasionally taking on grotesque shapes as if the little draughtsman had just been attending a class on the anatomy of the skeleton. The hoof is drawn in a still freer manner, various designs, as the bird-foot, the circle, and the looped pattern, appearing here as in the case of the human foot (Fig. 45 (i) and (j); cf. Figs. 43 (c) and 44 (a) (p. 373)).

In this unlearned attempt to draw animal forms the child falls far below the level of the untutored savage. The drawings of animals by the North American Indians, by Africans, and others, have been justly praised for their artistic excellence. A fine perception of form is, in many cases, at least, clearly recognisable, the due covering of one part by another is represented, and movement is vigorously suggested. Lover though he is of animals, the child, when compared with the uncivilised adult, shows himself to be woefully ignorant of his pets.

Men on Horseback, etc.

Childish drawing moves as the dialectic progress of the Hegelian thought from distinction and antithesis to a synthesis or unity which embraces the distinction. After illustrating the human biped in his contradistinction to the quadruped he proceeds to combine them in a higher artistic unity, the man on horseback. The special interest of this department of childish drawing lies in the fresh and genial manner of the combining. To draw a man and a horse apart is one thing, to fit the two figures one to the other, quite another.

At first the degree of connexion is slight. There is no suggestion of a composite or mixed animal, such as may have suggested to the lively Greek imagination the myth of the centaur. The human figure is pitched on to the quadruped in the most unceremonious fashion. Thus in many cases there is no attempt even to combine the profile aspects, the man appearing impudently in frontal aspect, or what would be so but for the lateral nasal excrescence, as in the accompanying drawing by a boy of five (Fig. 46).

With this indifference to a consistent profile there goes amazing slovenliness in attaching the man to the animal, and this whether the front or side view of the human figure is introduced. No attempt is made in many cases to show attachment: the man is drawn just above the quadruped, that is all. It seems to be a chance whether the two figures meet, whether the feet of the man rest circus-fashion on the animal’s back, or, lastly, whether the human form is drawn in part over the animal, and, if so, at what height it is to emerge from the animal’s back. Various arrangements occur in the same sheet of drawings (see Fig. 47 (a), (b) and (c)).

When this overlapping takes place the presence of the animal’s trunk makes no difference in the treatment of the man. He is drawn with his two legs just as if he were in relief against the horse; and this arrangement is apt to persist even when a child can draw a rude semblance of a horse and knows at what level to place the rider. So difficult to the little artist is this idea of one thing covering another that even when he comes to know that both the legs of the rider are not seen, he may get confused and erase both (see above (p. 376), Fig. 45 (f)).^[277]

The savage is in general as much above the child in the representation of the rider as he is in that of the animal apart. Yet traces of similar confusion do undoubtedly appear. Von den Steinen says that his Brazilians drew the rider with both legs showing. Andree gives an illustration, among the stone-carvings (petroglyphs) of savages, of the employment of a front view of the human figure rising above the horse with no legs showing below (Fig. 48 (a)).^[278] Even among the drawings of the North American Indians, in which the horse is in general so well outlined, we occasionally find what appear to be the germs of confusions similar to those of the child. Thus Schoolcraft gives among drawings from an inscription on a buffalo skin one in which we have above the profile view of a horse the front view of a man, with arms stretched out laterally while the legs are wanting.^[279] A clearer case of confusion is supplied by the following drawing, also by a North American Indian, in which the lines of the horse’s body cut those of the rider’s legs (Fig. 48 (b)).^[280]

The same tendency to show the whole man where the circumstances hide a part appears in children’s drawings of a man in a boat, a railway carriage and so forth. Ricci has shown that the different ways in which the child-artist puts a human figure in a boat are as numerous as those in which he sets it on a horse. The figure may stand out above the boat or overlap, in which last case it may be cut across by the deck-line and its lower part shown, or be clapped wholly below the deck, or again be half immersed in the water below the boat, or, lastly, where an attempt to respect fact is made, be truncated, the trunk appearing through the side of the boat, though the legs are wanting.^[281] A man set in a house, train, or tram car, is seen in his totality (Fig. 49 (a) and (b)). It is much the same thing when a child flattens out a house or other object so as to show us its three sides, that is to say one which in reality is hidden (Fig. 49 (c) and (d)). With these habits of the child may be compared those of the savage. The impulse to show everything, even what is covered, is illustrated in a drawing of a singer in his wigwam by an Indian (Fig. 49 (e)).^[282] Even where colour comes in and one thing has to be hidden by a part of another thing the savage artist, like the child insists on drawing the whole. This is illustrated in a curious custom, the drawing of two serpents (in dry, coloured powder) by North American fire-dancers. They are drawn across one another, and the artist has first to draw completely the one partly covered, and then the second over the first.^[283]

The child’s drawing of the house, though less remarkable than that of the man and the quadruped, has a certain interest. It illustrates, as we have just seen, not merely his determination to render visible what is hidden, but also his curious feeling for position and proportion. In one case I found that in the desire to display the contents of a house a girl of six had actually set a table between the chimneys. The accompanying drawing done by the boy C. at the age of five years five months illustrates the fine childish contempt for proportion (Fig. 50). A curious feature in these drawings of the house is the care bestowed on certain details, pre-eminently the window. This is even a more important characteristic feature than the chimney with its loops of smoke. Some children give a quite loving care to the window, drawing the lace curtains, the flowers, and so forth.

RÉsumÉ of Facts.

We may now sum up the main results of our study. We find in the drawings of untrained children from about the age of three to that of eight or ten a curious mode of dealing with the most familiar forms. At no stage of this child-art can we find what we should regard as elements of artistic value: yet it has its quaint and its suggestive side.

The first thing that strikes us here is that this child-delineation, crude and bizarre as it is, illustrates a process of development. Thus we have (a) the stage of vague formless scribble, (b) that of primitive design, typified by what I have called the lunar scheme of the human face, and (c) that of a more sophisticated treatment of the human figure, as well as of animal forms.

This process of art-evolution has striking analogies with that of organic evolution. It is clearly a movement from the vague or indefinite to the definite, a process of gradual specialisation. Not only so, we may note that it begins with the representation of those rounded or ovoid contours which seem to constitute the basal forms of animal organisms, and proceeds like organic evolution by a gradual differentiation of the ‘homogeneous’ structure through the addition of detailed parts or organs. These organs in their turn gradually assume their characteristic forms. It is, perhaps, worth observing here that some of the early drawings of animals are strongly suggestive of embryo forms (compare, e.g., Fig. 45 (b) and (d), p. 375).

If now we examine this early drawing on its representative side we find that it is crude and defective enough. It proceeds by giving a bare outline of the object, with at most one or two details thrown in. The form neither of the whole nor of the parts is correctly rendered. Thus in drawing the foot it is enough for the child to indicate the angle: the direction of the foot-line is comparatively immaterial. In this respect a child’s drawing differs from a truly artistic sketch or suggestive indication by a few characteristic lines, which is absolutely correct so far as it goes. The child is content with a schematic treatment, which involves an appreciable and even considerable departure from truthful representation. Thus the primitive lunar drawing of the human face is manifestly rather a diagrammatic scheme than an imitative representation of a concrete form.

In this non-imitative and merely indicative treatment there is room for all sorts of technical inaccuracies. Form is woefully misapprehended, as in the circular trunk, the oblong mouth, the claw foot, and so forth. Proportion—even in its simple aspect of equality—is treated with contempt in many instances (cf. the legs of the quadruped and the bird in Fig. 45 (a), (b), and (c) (p. 375)). What is no less important, division of space and relative position of parts, which seem vital even to a diagrammatic treatment, are apt to be overlooked, as in drawing the facial features high up, in attaching the arms to the head, and so forth. Even the element of number is made light of, and this, too, in such simple circumstances as when drawing the legs of an animal.

One of the most curious of these misrepresentations comes into view in the third or sophisticated stage, viz., the introduction of more than is visible. This error, again, assumes a milder and a graver form, viz., (a) the giving of the features more distinctly and completely than they appear in the object represented, and (b) the introducing of features which have no place in the object represented. Examples of the first are the introduction of the nasal angle into the front view of the human face; the separation throughout their length of the four legs of the horse; and such odd tricks as detaching the reins of the horse from the animal, as in Fig. 51 (a). Illustrations of the second are numerous and varied. They include first of all the naÏve introduction of features of an object which are not on the spectator’s side and so in view, as the second eye and the second arm in what are predominantly profile representations. With these may be classed the attempt to exhibit three sides of a house. Closely related to these errors of perspective is the exposure of objects or parts of objects which are covered by others. It is possible that the spread-eagle arrangement of the two joined arms is an attempt to represent a feature of childish anatomy, viz., the idea that the arms run through and join in the middle of the trunk. A clearer example of this attempt to expose to view what is covered is the exhibition of the whole human figure in a boat, house or carriage. With this may be compared the disclosure of the whole head of a horse when drinking, as in the accompanying drawing by a boy of five (Fig. 51 (b)), of the whole head of the man through his hat (see above, p. 350, Fig. 20 (b)), and of the human limbs through the clothes (Fig. 41, p. 371).

A class of confusions, having a certain similarity to some of these, consists in the transference of the features of one object to a second, as when a man or quadruped is given a bird-like foot (Figs. 7 (d) and 43 (c), pp. 342, 373), and still more manifestly when the facial scheme of the man is transferred to the quadruped or vice vers (Fig. 44 (a) and (b), pp. 373, 374).

These last errors clearly illustrate the tendency to a conventional treatment, a tendency which, as I have observed already, runs through children’s spontaneous drawings. This free conventional handling of natural forms has been illustrated in the habitual drawing of the mouth and eyes, and still more strikingly in that of the hands and feet.

Paradoxical though it may seem, these drawings, while in general bare and negligent of details, show in certain directions a quite amusing attention to them. Thus, we find at a very early stage certain details, as the pipe of the man, insisted on with extravagant emphasis; and may observe at a somewhat later stage in the elaborate drawing of hair, buttons, parasol, and so forth, a tendency to give some feature to which the child attaches value a special prominence and degree of completeness.

The art of children is a thing by itself, and must not straight away be classed with the rude art of the untrained adult. As adult, the latter has knowledge and technical resources above those of the little child; and these points of superiority show themselves, for example, in the fine delineation of animal forms by Africans and others.^[284] At the same time, after allowing for these differences, it is, I think, incontestable that a number of characteristic traits in children’s drawings are reflected in those of untutored savages.

Explanation of Facts.

Let us now see how we are to explain these characteristics. In order to do so we must try to understand what process a child’s mind goes through when he draws something, and to compare this with what passes in the mind of an adult artist. The problem has, it is evident, to do with drawing from memory or out of one’s head, for though the child may begin to draw by help of models, he develops his characteristic art in complete independence of these.

In order to draw an object from memory two things are obviously necessary. We must have at the outset an idea of the form we wish to represent, and this visual image of the form must somehow translate itself into a series of manual movements corresponding to its several parts. In other words, it presupposes both an initial conception and a correlated process of execution.

In psychological language this correlation or co-ordination between the idea of a form and the carrying out of the necessary movements of the hand is expressed by saying that the visual image, say, of the curve of the full face, calls up the associated image of the manual movement. This last, again, may mean either the visual image of the hand executing the required movement, or the image of the muscular sensations experienced when the arm is moved in the required way, or possibly both of these.

The process of drawing a whole form is of course more complex than this, each step in the operation being adjusted to preceding steps. How far the movements of the draughtsman’s hands are guided here by a visual image of the form, which remains present throughout, how far by attention to what has already been set down, may not be quite certain. Judging from my own case, I should describe the process somewhat after this fashion. In drawing a human face we set out with a visual image of the whole, which is incomplete in respect of details, but represents roughly size and general form or outline. This image is projected indistinctly and unsteadily, of course, on the sheet of paper before us, and this projected image controls the whole operation. But as we advance we pay more and more attention to the visual presentation supplied by the portion of the drawing already produced, and only realise with any distinctness that part of the projected visual image which is just in advance of the pencil.

It is evident that the carrying out of such a prolonged operation involves a perfected mechanism of eye, brain and hand connexions; for much of the manual adjustment is instantaneous and sub-conscious. At the same time the process illustrates a very high measure of volitional control or concentration. Unless we keep the original design fixed before us, and attend at each stage to the relations of the executed to the unexecuted part, we are certain to go wrong.

Practice tends, of course, to reduce the conscious element in the process. In the case of a person accustomed to draw the outline of a human head, a cat or what not, the operation is very much one of hand-memory into which visual representations enter only faintly. The movements follow one another of themselves without the intervention of distinct visual images (whether that of the linear form or of the moving hand). There is an approach here to what happens when we put last year’s date to a letter, the hand following out an old habit.

Now the child has to acquire the co-ordinations here briefly described. He may have the visual image of the human face or the horse which he wishes to depict. This power of visualising shows itself in other ways and can be independently tested, as by asking a child to describe the object verbally. But he has as yet no inkling of how to reproduce his image. That his inability at the outset is due to a want of co-ordination is seen in the fact that at this stage he cannot draw even when a model is before his eyes.

The process of learning here is very like what takes place when a child learns to speak. The required movements have somehow to be performed and attached to the effects they are then found to produce. Just as a child first produces sounds, partly instinctively or spontaneously, partly by imitating the seen movements of another’s lips, etc., so he produces lines by play-like scribble and by imitating the visible movements of another person’s hand. The tendency to imitate is observable in the first loop-formations, and possibly also in the abrupt angular changes which give a zig-zag look to some of these early tracings.

In this early stage we see a marked want of control. The effort is spasmodic and short-lived: the little draughtsman presently runs off into nonsense scribble. The want of control is seen, too, in the tendency to prolong lines unduly, and to repeat or multiply them, the primitive play-movements being very much under the empire of inertia or habit, i.e., the tendency to repeat or go on with an action. The effect of limitating natural conditions in the motor apparatus is illustrated, not only in the slightly curved form of these first scribble lines, but in the general obliquity or inclination of the line; it being manifestly easier for the hand when brought in front of the body to describe a line running slightly upwards from left to right (or in the reverse direction) than one running horizontally. The want of control by means of a steady visual image is further seen in the absence of any attempt at a plan, at a mapping out of the available space, and at an observation of proportion.

It might be thought that, though a child at this inexperienced stage were unable to produce the correct form of a familiar object, he would at once detect the incorrectness of the one he sets down. No doubt, if he were in the attitude of cold critical observation, he would do so: in fact, as Mr. Cooke and others have shown, he sees the absurdities of his workmanship as soon as they are pointed out to him. But when drawing he is in another sort of mood, akin to that imaginative mood in which he traces forms in the plaster of the ceiling, or in the letters of his spelling-book. He means to draw a man or a horse, and consequently the formless jumble of lines becomes, to his fancy, a man or a horse. His first drawings are thus, in a sense, playthings, which, like the battered stump of a doll, his imaginative intention corrects, supplements, and perfects.

With repetition, and that amount of supervision and guidance which most children who take a pencil in hand manage to get from somebody, he begins to note the actual character of his line-effects, and to associate these with the movements which produce them. A straight horizontal line, a curved line returning upon itself, and so forth, come to be differentiated, and to be co-ordinated with their respective manual movements.

We may now pass to the second stage, the beginning of true linear representation, as illustrated in the first abstract schematic treatment of the human face and figure.

A question arises at the very outset here as to whether, and if so to what extent, children re-discover this method of representation for themselves. Here, as in the case of child-language, such as ‘bow-wow,’ ‘gee-gee,’ tradition and example undoubtedly play their part. A parent, or an older brother and sister, in setting the first models, is pretty certain to adopt a simple scheme, as that of the lunar face; and even where there is no instruction a child is quick at imitating other children’s manner of drawing. Yet this does not affect the contention that such manner of drawing is eminently childish, that is, the one a child finds his way to most readily, any more than the fact of the nurse’s calling the horse ‘gee-gee’ in talking to baby affects the contention that ‘gee-gee’ is eminently a baby-name.

The scanty abstract treatment, the circle enclosing two dots and the vertical and horizontal lines, points to the absence of any serious attempt to imitate a form closely and fully. It seems absurd to suppose that a child of three or four does not image a human face better than he delineates it; and even if this were doubtful it is certain that when he sets down a man without hair, ears, trunk, or arm, his execution is falling far short of his knowledge. How is this to be accounted for? My explanation is that the little artist is still much more of a symbolist than a naturalist, that he does not in the least care about a full and close likeness, but wants only a barely sufficient indication. This scantiness of treatment issuing from want of the more serious artistic intention is of course supported by technical limitations. The lunar face with the two propping lines answers to what the child can do easily and comfortably. Much more than his elder brethren our small limner is bound by the law of artistic economy, the need of producing his effects with the smallest expenditure of labour, and of making every touch tell.

Defects of executive resource and of manual skill appear plainly in other characteristics. The common inclination of the lines of the legs points to the unconscious selection of easiest directions of manual movement.^[285] The unduly lengthened arm and leg, the multiplication of legs—as seen most strikingly in the case of the quadruped—illustrate the influence of motor or muscular inertia. There is, too, a noticeable want of measurement and management of the space to be covered, as when one eye is put in so large as to leave no room for a second, or when filling in details from above downwards the eyes are put in too near the occipital curve, and so all the features set too high up. The same want of measurement of space may contribute to the child’s habit of drawing the trunk so absurdly small in proportion to the head; for he begins with the head, and by making this large finds he has not left, within the limits of what he considers the right size of figure, space enough for the trunk.

Very noticeable is the influence of habit in this abstract treatment. By habit I here mean hand-memory, or the tendency to combine movements in the old ways, though this is commonly aided, as we shall see, by “association of ideas”. Thus a child falls into a stereotyped way of drawing the human face and figure; line follows line in the accustomed sequence; the only variation showing itself is in the insertion or omission of nose, ears, or arms; these uncertainties being due to fluctuations of energy and concentration. A child’s art is, in respect of its unyielding sameness, a striking example of a conservative conventionality. He gets used to his pencil-forms, and pronounces them right, to the greater and greater neglect of their relation to natural forms. Habit shows itself in other ways too. Notice, for example, how a child, after adding the trunk, will go on inserting the arms into the head as he used to do. Such a habit is an affair not only of the hand but of the eye. The arms have by repeated delineation come in the art-sphere to belong to the head.

Coming now to the more elaborate and sophisticated stage of five or thereabouts, in which the shape of eyes, mouth, and nose is shadowed forth, the difficult appendages as hands and feet attempted, and the profile aspect introduced, we notice first of all a step in the direction of naturalism. The child like the race gets tired of his bald primitive symbolism, and essays to bring more of concrete fulness and life into his forms. Only this first attempt does not lead to a continued progress, but stops short at what is rude and arbitrary enough, substituting merely a second rigid conventionalism for the first.

This transition indicates an advance in technical skill; hence we find a measure of free and bold invention, as in the management of the facial features, e.g., the scissors-shaped nose, and still more in the treatment of hands and feet, which is at once exaggerative, as in the big burr forms, and freely conventional, as in the leaf-pattern for the hand, and the wondrous loop-designs for the foot.

Yet though this freer treatment shows a certain technical advance it illustrates the effect of the limitations of the child’s executive power. Thus the new partially profile figures are very apt to lean, looking as if they were falling backwards. It is probable that the wide-spread tendency to make the profile face look towards the spectator’s left rather than his right is due to the circumstance that the eye can much better follow and control the pencil in this case than in the opposite one. In the latter the hand is apt to interfere with seeing the line of the face, especially if the pencil is held near its point.

Habit, too, continues to assert its dominion. The tendency noticeable now and again, even among English children, to treat the feet after the manner of the hands illustrates this. Habit is further illustrated in the tendency to a transference of forms appropriate to the man to the animal; or, when (owing to the interposition of the instructor) the drawing of animals is in advance of the other, in the reverse process; as when a cat is drawn with two legs, or a horse is given a man’s face, or the human form develops a horse’s ears, or a bird’s feet. With these may be compared the transference of a bird-like body and tail to a quadruped in Fig. 45 (i), p. 377. The accompanying two drawings by a child of six show how similar forms are apt to be used for the man and for the animal (Fig. 52).

But the really noticeable thing in this later sophisticated treatment is the bringing into view of what in the original is invisible, as the front view of the eye as well as both eyes into what otherwise looks a side view of the face, the two legs of the rider and so forth. Here, no doubt, we may still trace the influence of technical limitations and of habit. The influence of the former is seen in the completing of the contour of the head before or after drawing the hat: for the child would not know how to start with the lines which form the commencement of the visible part of the head. The influence of habit is also recognisable here. A child having learned first of all to draw the front view of the eye, the two eyes and the two legs side by side, tends partly as the result of organised hand-trick, partly in consequence of ‘association of ideas,’ to go on drawing in the same fashion in the new circumstances. A specially clear illustration of this effect of habit already alluded to is the introduction of the front view of the nose in the mixed scheme. These cases are exactly paralleled by the Egyptian drawing in which while one shoulder is pulled round the other is left in square front view (see above, p. 369, Fig. 39 (b)). Still, habit does not account for everything here. It does not, for example, explain why the child brings into view three sides of a house. The technical deficiencies of the small draughtsman, his want of serious artistic purpose, seem an insufficient explanation of these later sophistries. They appear to point plainly to certain peculiarities of the process of childish conception. We are compelled then to inquire a little more closely into the characteristics of children’s observation and of their mental representation of objects.

We are apt to think that children when they look at things at all scrutinise them closely, and afterwards imagine clearly what they have observed. But this assumption is hardly justified. No doubt they often surprise us by their attention to small unimportant details of objects, especially when these are new and odd-looking. But it is a long way from this to a careful methodic investigation of objects. Children’s observation is for the most part capriciously selective and one-sided. They apprehend one or two striking or especially interesting features and are blind to the rest. This is fully established in the case of ordinary children by the wondrous ignorance they display when questioned about common objects. It is hardly necessary to add that their spontaneous untrained observation is quite unequal to that careful analytical attention to form-elements in their relations which underlies all clear grasp of the direction of linear elements, the relative position of the several parts of a figure, and proportion.

This being so it maybe said that defects of observation are reflected in children’s drawing through all its phases. Thus the primitive bare schematism of the human face answers to an incomplete observation and consequently incomplete mode of imagination, just as it answers to a want of artistic purpose and to technical incapacity. How far defective observation assists at this first stage I do not feel sure. Further experimental inquiries are needed on this point. I lean to the view already expressed, that at this stage manual reproduction is far behind visual imagination.

When, however, we come on to the delineation of an object under its different aspects the defects of mental representation assume a much graver character. We must bear in mind that a child soon gets beyond the stage of recalling and imagining the particular look of an object, say the front view of his mother’s face, or of his house. He begins as soon as he understands and imitates others’ language to synthesise such pictorial images of particular visual presentations or appearances into the wholes which we call ideas of things. A child of four or five thinking of his father or his house probably recalls in a confused way disparate and incompatible visual aspects, the front view as on the whole the most impressive being predominant, though striking elements of the side view may rise into consciousness also. With this process of synthesising aspects into the concrete whole we call a thing there goes the further process of binding together representations of this and that thing into generic or typical ideas answering to man, horse, house, in general. A child of five or six, so far from being immersed in individual presentations and concrete objects, as is often supposed, has carried out a respectable measure of generalisation, and this largely by the help of language. Thus a ‘man’ reduced to visual terms has come to mean for him (according to his well-known verbal formula) something with a head, two eyes, etc., etc., which he does not need to represent in a mental picture because the verbal formula serves to connect the features in his memory.

Hence when he comes to draw he has not the artist’s clear mental vision of the actual look of things to guide him. He is led not by a lively and clear sensuous imagination, but by a mass of generalised knowledge embodied in words, viz., the logical form of a definition or description. This, I take it, is the main reason why with such supreme insouciance he throws into one design features of the full face and of the profile; for in setting down his linear scheme he is aiming not at drawing a picture, an imitative representation of something we could see, but rather at enumerating, in the new expressive medium which his pencil supplies, what he knows about the particular thing. Since he is thus bent on a linear description of what he knows he is not in the least troubled about the laws of visual appearance, but setting perspective at naught compels the spectator to see the other side, to look through one object at another, and so forth.

Since the process at this sophisticated stage is controlled by knowledge of things as wholes and not by representations of concrete appearances or views, we can understand why the visible result does not shock the draughtsman. The little descriptor does not need to compare the look of his drawing with that of the real object: it is right as a description anyhow. How strongly this idea of description controls his views of pictures has already been pointed out. Just as he objects to a correct profile drawing as an inadequate description, so he objects to a drawing of the hind part of a horse entering the stable, and asks, ‘Where is his head?’ We may say then that what a lively fancy did in the earlier play-stages childish logic does now, it blinds the artist to the actual look of what his pencil has created.

Use soon adds its magic force, and the impossible combination, the two eyes stuck on at the side of the profile nose, the two legs of the rider untroubled by the capacious trunk of the animal which he strides, the man wholly exposed to view inside the boat or carriage, gets stereotyped into the right mode of linear description.

All this shows that the child’s eye at a surprisingly early period loses its primal ‘innocence,’ grows ‘sophisticated’ in the sense that instead of seeing what is really presented it sees, or pretends to see, what knowledge and logic tell it is there. In other words his sense-perceptions have for artistic purposes become corrupted by a too large admixture of intelligence. This corruption is closely analogous to what we all experience when we lose the primal simplicity of the eye for colour, and impart into our ‘visual impressions,’ as we call them, elements of memory and inference, saying, for example, that a distant mountain side is ‘green’ just because we can make out that it is grass-covered and know that grass when looked at nearer is of a green colour.

I have dwelt on what from our grown-up standpoint we must call the defects of children’s drawing. Yet in bringing this study to a close it is only just to remark that there are other and better qualities well deserving of recognition. Crude, defective, self-contradictory even, as these early designs undoubtedly are, they are not wholly destitute of artistic qualities. The abstract treatment itself, in spite of its inadequacy, is after all in the direction of a true art, which in its essential nature is selective and suggestive rather than literally reproductive. We may discern, too, even in these rude schemes a nascent sense of values, of a selection of what is characteristic. Even the primitive trunkless form seems to illustrate this, for though, as we have seen in a previous essay, the trunk plays an important part in the development of the idea of self, it is for pictorial purposes less interesting and valuable than the head. However this be, it is clear that we see this impulse of selection at work later on in the addition of the buttons, the pipe, the stick, the parasol and so forth.

It is to be noted, too, that even in these untutored performances, where convention and tradition exercise so great a sway, there are faint indications of a freer individual initiative. Witness, for example, the varying modes of representing hair, hands, and feet. We may say then that even rough children in elementary schools who are never likely to develop artistic talent display a rudiment of art-feeling. It is only fair to them to testify that in spite of the limitations of their stiff wooden treatment they express a certain individuality of feeling and aim, that like true artists they convey a personal impression. These traits appear most plainly in the later representations of action, but they are not altogether absent from the earlier statuesque figures. Compare, for example, the look of alert vigour in Fig. 5 (a) (p. 339), of grinning impudence in Fig. 6 (a) (p. 341), of provoking ‘cheekiness’ in Fig. 20 (b) (p. 350), of a seedy ‘swagger’ in Fig. 32 (p. 362), of inebriate gaiety in Fig. 17 (p. 348), of absurd skittishness in Fig. 24 (b) (p. 354), of insane flurry in Fig. 26 (a) (p. 355), of Irish easy-goingness even when somebody has to be killed in Fig. 34 (p. 363), of wiry resoluteness in Fig. 29 (a) (p. 359), of sly villainy in Fig. 38 (p. 365), and of demure simplicity in Fig. 26 (c) (p. 356); and note the delicious variety of equine character in Fig. 45 (f) (p. 376) and following.

If a finer Æsthetic feeling is developed the first rude descriptive drawing loses its attractions. A friend, a well-known psychologist, has observed in the case of his children that when they try to draw something pretty, e.g., a beautiful lady, they abandon their customary mode of description and become aware of the look of their designs and criticise them as bad. This seems to me a most significant observation. It is the feeling for what is beautiful which makes a child attend closely to the bare look of things, and the beginning of a finer observation of forms commonly takes its rise in this nascent sense of beauty. Indeed, may one not say that only when a germ of the Æsthetic feeling for beauty arises, and a child falls in love with the mere look of certain things, can there appear the beginnings of genuinely artistic work, of a conscientious endeavour to render on paper the aspect which pleases the eye?

228. This indicative or communicative function of drawing has, we know, played a great part in the early stages of human history. Modern savages employ drawings in sand as a means of imparting information to others, e.g., of the presence of fish in a lake, see Von den Steinen, Unter den NaturvÖlkern Braziliens, kap. x., s. 243 f.