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 versâ (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.