VOL. VI.

NUMBER 4.

Fifty years ago there was practically no drawing, or, as we say, art, taught in the common schools. Today it is a recognized branch of our educational system, provided for from the beginning of the primary to the end of the high school course. I presume that there is no one here who doubts the usefulness of the subject, or questions the permanency of its tenure. It is just at this point that we maymany do-stumble into one of the deepest pitfalls of our age, by displaying an enthusiastic cheerfulness which we dignify with the high-sounding term of optimism, born of thinking upon this marvelous advance of our own half century. "Fifty years since, no instruction in art. Art today taught everywhere! Wonderful!"

It is not my intention to deny that we have advanced. I could not if I would. Neither do I wish to dampen enthusiasm. It is a splendid thing, this enthusiasm, if rightly derived. So is imagination. But the one and the other when ungoverned by reason, and a just apprehension of fact, become insane; sheer madness. I will say, once for all, that I rejoice in the widespread zeal for art, expression of which we behold in the unnumbered opportunities for its study offered by our public schools.

And yet I see what I believe to be grave and menacing errors in our system of instruction; grave in that it often leads students, not truly interested in the subject, into ways of careless thinking, seeing, working, and casts them finally, intellectual shipwrecks, on the reef of dilettantism; menacing, because it frequently trains up students, really interested in the

subject, to a misconception of the true dignity of it. There is nothing less than a war on the hands of those of us who, amidst present tendencies, would restrain. art from becoming the encourager of idleness or the handmaid of sentimentalism. To be vital, art must concern itself with what is most serious, as well as all that is most delightful in life.

Instruction in the use of pencils and water colors, which almost any reasonably intelligent and hard-working teacher can give, seems to me to be desirable for all children, because the tools and materials, new to young children, can scarcely fail to interest them, though the subjects chosen for their work may utterly fail to do so. I shall pass over the interesting questions concerning the power which such instruction, with its accompaniment of practice, may develop. have great doubts as to the advisability of allowing even the larger part of the pupils in the grammar schools to take art at all. But as you have been so kind as to ask me to speak about art in the high school, I will at once take up my task and stick to it.

I

In the short time possible for each sitting, and because of the infrequency of the lessons, it stands to reason that no pupil, even the most apt, can accomplish much in the way of drawing or painting. On account of the considerable number of pupils in the average class it is unreasonable to expect a teacher, even the most proficient, to give any single member more than passing attention. Now, as human beings all differ in taste and aptitude for the various branches of learning,

some, as we say, taking to language, and others to mathematics, so some are by nature better fitted than others to study art. As I do not believe that it is well to force language on one who dislikes it, not necessarily because he finds it difficult, or to compel another to take mathematics, beyond, let us say, the elementary branches, arithmetic, algebra, and plane geometry, so I do not think it can be wise to urge, or require, any student to take art, who, having reached the high school, does not care for it. There are useful and delightful fields of learning for each of us. Their acres are unnumbered and their bounds unset. Only those realms of knowledge are confined in which the unwilling and the uninterested labor. It is certain that everyone will be happier, which implies the doing of better work, for being in a congenial field. As teachers and guides we shall be greater successes, I feel sure, when we think more of placing each one of our pupils where he may develop his natural bent, than of forcing all of them along any general way, no matter how straight and narrow. First of all, then, I should be glad to see fewer high school boys and girls taking art. And second, I should rejoice to have those who take it because of a real zeal or ability, given more time in which to work, and enabled to receive more of their instructor's direct and personal attention.

I now wish to say a few things about drawing and work in color. Throughout this address wherever I use the term drawing, I mean the representation of things individually and in various combinations, rendered in pure outline, or in outline combined with light and shade, either cross-hatching or washes. As there can be no doubt in respect to the far greater nobility of works in full, natural color, so there is no question but that they are many times harder to produce than drawings. As the best poetry is above the best prose, so the finest works in color, paintings, must ever take a long precedence of those that are without color. Color is probably by far the loveliest attribute of nature. It is the very life of nature. Form may be partially apprehended by a blind man through the

sense of touch. Color can be perceived only by the eye, and alone appreciated by sensitive and in some measure adoring souls.

Now, design, that which comes, de (from) and signum (the mark), is commonly supposed to appertain more to drawing than to painting. This is an error. Some of the very greatest masters of design have been the world's greatest painters. Yet it is true that design, as commonly understood, does belong in large measure to drawing rather than to painting. This is the design that underlies so many of our practical arts, making patterns for fabrics, and wall papers, to mention a single vast instance, the designing by which hundreds of men and women earn their living. Herein appears a strictly utilitarian reason why a large per cent. of the pupils who take art should devote their time mainly to drawing. I am not unmindful of the part played in this connection by flat and conventional color, but we must bear in mind that such coloring is mere child's play beside that understanding of color and training of eye and hand requisite for painting firstrate portraits or landscapes. Herein also lies the basis of my belief that the pupils should, as a rule, devote their efforts to drawing rather than to painting; that only the rare few should be urged, or even permitted, to use color other than in a conventional manner. In the forms of things-in their flexures and bendings; in their subtle curves; in the exquisite play of light and shade, bathing and veiling the commonest objects in radiance and mystery and at the same moment declaring them to be realities, and possessed of the three dimensions; in the forms of wayside pebbles; the inexpressible beauty of leaves, at once symmetrical and endlessly varied; in the strength, made evident by the contours, of muscles; these and numberless things studied with or without light and shade, will afford the most inspiring and enjoyable, as well as useful material for the student of drawing. They offer problems in form and suggestions for design without end.

Work in colors, painting; landscape, figures, even still-life subjects, I would

reserve for the very few, because so much more difficult, and because, for even an approximate mastery, so much more time and ability are required than for drawing. In the selection of these, the very few, whoever does the choosing ought always to be on his guard against being misled by apparent enthusiasm for painting on the part of pupils in general. Painting is generally esteemed as a far higher and finer occupation than drawing. Let him or her who would paint establish, through long willingness and enthusiasm for hard work at drawing, the right to devote time to and to accept good teachers' help for color work; painting.

I am now going to bring up a matter at which I know there will be much demur; more perhaps than to all that I have hitherto said put together. It is of the desirability of copying, first directly, when possible, from the drawings of others; second from photographs. I would certainly not recommend any student to spend all his time in copying. I would urge the greatest care on the part of the teacher in selecting the copy, or rather in selecting a proper group of drawings to be used as copies, the student's choice being free and his range wide, within limitations. The benefit derived from such work is threefold.

First. By leading a student to some comprehension of a master's methods or style, when dealing with a subject that is identical with many of those about which he himself is busy.

Second. By comparing his own efforts and strength with the accomplishment of a master and his power, it on one hand induces a spirit of humility, while it acts as a powerful stimulus on the other.

Third. By developing the critical faculties and leading toward a complete appreciation of great work, in which appreciation lies one of the truest sources of human happiness. This is perhaps the weightiest reason of the three. Let us go over these reasons point by point.

First. By leading a student to some comprehension of a master's methods or style, when dealing with a subject that is identical with many of those about which he is himself busy. Let us suppose, for

sake of illustration, that the particular subject in question is landscape. The boy or girl who goes into the woods to sketch for the first time is confused by the multiplicity of details; of trunks, boughs, branches; the uncountable grasses, flowers, stones. Because he thinks clearly or because he has good instruction, or because of both, it dawns on him at last that his labor must consist chiefly in simplifying, selecting, omitting, perhaps emphasizing details in order to produce a desired effect. At this stage in the student's development let him be put to making careful, even slavish copies, line for line and dot for dot, from Turner's landscape etchings; from those classics of the landscape painter's art, models of unequaled beauty; from those pages of the so-called "Liber Studiorum," book of studies, of which Professor Norton recently said: "It is probable that on this work hereafter will rest the fame of the greatest of landscape painters." Accurate and lovely reproductions of these etchings are to be had for 25 cents each. Copying them will teach any student capable of learning, some vital truths about simplification by omission and by emphasis; not a little of nature's laws of growth and decay; much of composition; finally, as much as he has mind or heart to receive, for with these things, as with all works of great art, the rule is, to him who hath shall be given. This rule fails never nor ever lapses.

Second. By comparing his own efforts and strength with the accomplishment of a master, and his power, it on one hand induces a spirit of humility, while it acts as a powerful stimulus on the other. I mean that when a pupil through trying to copy these etchings begins to realize. how his best touches, his cleverest work, are puerile compared with skill displayed by Turner, the real truth, which breeds humility, is born within him. He learns, in the words of old John Donne, that "We are scarce our father's shadows cast at noon."

Suppose he is the right sort, and he is likely to be, if with the specious praise of the undiscriminating in his ears, he can humble himself to such a degree, the

chances are all, and all at once, in favor of his being exalted hereafter. At this point the great work becomes his goal, and desire to reach that goal the powerfulest incentive.

Third. By developing the critical faculties and leading toward an appreciation of great work, in which appreciation lies one of the highest sources of human happiness. Copying a masterpiece leads to incessant consideration of the model, to constant reasoning about it, to repeated questionings, Why so? Why so? at every line; questions often unanswerable, but never barren; to love for, and wonder at the grandest achievement of humanity in this particular sphere of human effort; in a word, right appreciation, true enjoyment. With this comes culture. It is the alpha and omega of culture. Neither in school nor in life will it do to overlook the fact.

The same is true of figure drawing and of still life. Set a student to copying, mark on mark, a drawing or an etching, or a good photograph from either (they are the same thing so far as our purpose is concerned) of heads or figures after Holbein or Rembrandt. Good reproductions of these things are abundant and cheap. To copy them as I suggest is one of the best means of studying them, just as reading and re-reading, looking up meanings of words, weighing the purport of phrases, or text and context, is a wonderful help in the study of literature. Of course in both instances the means look to certain desired ends. Let us not mistake them for ends in themselves.

If a student is especially interested in still life or architectural subjects, put within his reach reproductions of the exquisite and almost superhumanly accurate works of those two wonderful Frenchmen, Viollet-le-Duc and Jaquemat, the latter a giant among men, the former a giant among giants. If he chances to care for the picturesque aspects of these two important classes of artistic subject, rather than for the formal, give him the English William Hunt and Samuel Prout. They are easily had. Finally I must touch on a single characteristic of all good, and of every bit

con

of great work, that this world has produced or yet shall. I mean delicacy; nothing weak, over-fine or "niggled," as one hears said of drawing or painting. Delicacy implies the subtle modeling of flower petals; the yet subtler tours of a human face; that unappreciable fineness of color gradation which is spread alike over the leaves of a rose and the vault of heaven; that fades and flushes on the cheek of a child. All good or great work is delicate and fine; full of changefulness and variation, subject to human capacity for seeing and reproducing. It is at once foundation and finish of what is really worth while in any art. It comes of a trained vision alone, and is to be looked for in the work of skilled fingers only. It may be demanded, and had to greater or less degree, of a pupil in all his work, and it is a requirement that no teacher can ever be pardoned not making. There may be good reasons for hasty or unfinished drawing or painting. There is never any excuse for coarse. The broadest as well as the finest work may be delicate so far as it goes. One will be finished and the other unfinished. One great temptation is to permit broad, blotty, coarse work to pass as unfinished, failing sadly to see that its very nature precludes its ever being finished or leading to what may be finished. Nothing is easier than for a dull man to deceive men a little duller than himself; a careless man, men more careless; a heedless draughtsman of coarse touch, an audience of slow wit and vulgar perceptions. It is fatally easy to hoodwink ourselves in this regard. But so long as we insist upon exquisite touches in his drawing, marks, every one of which has a ponderable reason, we can not but do our pupil good and ourselves likewise.

It has too long been the custom to confound what is exquisite with what is finicky. They are as unlike as truth and falsehood. It has too long been the vogue to think provable accuracy in a drawing, inartistic. If we can get accuracy, which is truth, we need not trouble ourselves with the artistic. I do not want to be vague. What I have been saying of delicacy in drawing comes to this. Let us

demand of pupils not quantity but quality; fineness of perception and a corresponding fineness of execution. Let him, by copying the drawings of the best artists of all ages, and by studying the sole source of artistic inspiration-Naturelearn for certain that painstaking has been at the bottom of all that has been worthily done.

In the best, though at times faulty, treatise yet written on practice for beginners, and methods of teaching art, "The Elements of Drawing," Ruskin says: "You may in the time that other vocations leave at your disposal produce finished, beautiful and masterly drawings in line and shade. But to color well requires your life." Again he says, "Nothing can make a colorist but the devotion of a life and great genius besides." can think of no course for any of us who are teachers to pursue so thoroughly useful as reading "The Elements of Drawing" with unswerving attention over and over again. To any one who teaches art and does not know this book, I can think of no advice one-hundredth part as good as this. Get a copy before ever you give another lesson. Read it. Then reread it.

We ought to remember that not one in every forty pupils with whom, as art teachers, we come in contact, will after leaving school devote much or any attention to the subject, i. e., as being

themselves in any sense artists. On the other hand, many will through life depend for such enjoyment of works of art, and such appreciation as they may possess, on the training we have given them. The cultivation of the power of appreciation becomes then of greater importance than that of the power of production, no matter how remarkable, if so soon to cease to be exercised. But we must not forget that the power of appreciating can be greatly strengthened by developing the powers of production to the utmost; that utmost, always subject to the accurate, fine, and exquisite character, the truthfulness of the work done under our supervision.

In closing I wish to recall to your minds what Daniel Deronda said of music. It is quite as applicable to drawing and painting. More trenchant words never came from the mouth of any art critic, practitioner or theorist. They are true and good altogether, and might stand, of use from hour to hour, in simple letters on the walls of every high school room in which art is taught:

"We should have a poor life of it if we were reduced for all our pleasures to our own performances. A little private imitation of what is good is a sort of private devotion to it, and most of us ought to practice art only in the light of private study, preparation to understand and enjoy what the few can do for us."

Language is an expression of thought, and should be based upon the natural interests that cling to the concrete. Consequently it should be the aim of the teacher to summon to her aid the material things with which the child is surrounded and in which there is natural interest. The story, presented in an intelligent and interesting manner, is the usual basis for the work. But if the teacher is content with this simple and