Part 31

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.

Footnote 261:

Ricci’s remarks seem to me to come to this, _op. cit._, p. 25.

Footnote 262:

From _The Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology_, 1880-1, p. 406.

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]

Footnote 263:

Ricci says that seventy per cent. insert two eyes in their first profile drawings (_op. cit._, p. 17). But this seems a rather loose statement.

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]

Footnote 264:

I assume that these are intended for two eyes; but the scheme is not easy to interpret.

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]

Footnote 265:

According to Ricci the second arm is supposed to be seen through the body.

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]

Footnote 266:

_Annual Report of Bureau of Ethnology_, 1882-3, p. 160.

Footnote 267:

Professor Petrie has pointed out to me that the Egyptian of to-day with his more supple body easily throws himself into this position.

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]

Footnote 268:

These results do not seem to agree with those of M. Passy or of Professor Barnes. M. Passy distinguishes in children’s drawings a front and a side view, both of which may be used by the same child at the same time. The former consists of nose and mouth of profile and eyes and ears of full face, the latter, of nose and mouth of profile with one eye and one ear; that is to say the two differ only in the number of eyes and ears (_Revue Philosophique_, 1891, p. 614 ff.). It would be interesting to know on how large an examination this generalisation is based. As suggested above, the occasional omission of the second eye and ear where both are commonly used can be explained without supposing the child to distinguish between profile and full face. Professor Barnes goes so far as to state with numerical exactness the relative frequency of profile and full face by children at different stages. He makes, however, no serious attempt to explain the criterion by which he would distinguish the two modes of representation (see his article, _Pedagogical Seminary_, ii., p. 455 ff.).

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]

Footnote 269:

Taken from Schoolcraft, vol. i., pl. 48.

Footnote 270:

From Maspero’s _Dawn of Civilisation_, p. 469.

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_)).

Footnote 271:

This I take to be the meaning of this odd arrangement.

Footnote 272:

_Cf._ Barnes, _loc. cit._

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).