THE PAINTING AND DRAWING
Painting is certainly the earliest art of Egypt; but, being more
perishable than sculpture, many periods of it are hardly represented
at present. A very early prehistoric vase, painted with white slip on
the red ground, shows the crude figures of two men fighting (fig. 65).
Other such vases have plants and other objects painted. From the middle
of the prehistoric age, belonging to the second civilisation, are the
light-brown vases painted in red, with figures of ships and people
(fig. 66), plants, and imitations of stone and wicker patterns. The
joints are fairly correct in the men and animals, though deficient in
the woman with raised arms. But the whole air is very crude as compared
with the roughest efforts of the dynastic race. Another painting rather
later in the prehistoric age is the ship from a tomb fresco (fig. 67).
The arms of the woman are more correctly drawn as straight, but the
men are worse posed than in the earlier work. The idea of the figures
seen above the ships, but entirely detached from them, may be that they
are seen on the opposite bank of a narrow river, beyond the ships.
The advanced painting of the early pyramid times is shown by the geese
(fig. 68), stalking along in a meadow amid tufts of herbage. The air of
grave self-sufficiency is admirably caught, and this small piece of a
great wall-scene at Medum is deservedly admired. Of the Middle Kingdom
there is no fine example remaining.
[Illustration: EARLIEST PAINTING
65. First age of prehistoric painting
66. Second age
67. Ship on wall-painting
68. Geese of Medum]
The great age of painting was the XVIIIth and XIXth dynasties. The
sculpturing of tombs was then abandoned in favour of the cheaper paint;
and the taste of the age for graceful and light treatment found its
best scope in the use of the brush. Here we have a group of pelicans
(fig. 69) with an old herdsman and baskets of eggs. Next (fig. 70) is
a harvest scene. Two men are carrying a load of the ears of corn in a
net. Behind are the stalks of straw after the ears have been cut. Two
girls who were gleaning have stopped to quarrel over the corn; one has
seized a wrist of the other, and the two free hands have each taken a
grip of the other one’s hair. To the right, under a sycamore fig-tree,
one boy is asleep, while another plays on a long reed pipe, with a
water-skin hung over his head. In the lower line a girl with a thorn in
her foot is stretching it out to be examined by another girl. Further,
a lad is stripping the heads of millet by dragging them through a fixed
fork. The whole scene is full of incident, and the drawing of the
figures in unusual action is excellent. The curious dress of the men
is a linen waist-cloth, with a net of slit leather-work to take the
wear, and a solid piece of leather left in the middle of it for sitting
on, as in fig. 140. Such slit leather-work is dealt with in the last
chapter.
[Illustration: NEW KINGDOM PAINTING
69. Pelicans and keeper
70, 71. Harvest scenes]
A third scene (fig. 71) is in the harvest field; the ears have been put
into a net, and to press them down a stick is passed through a hole on
one edge, while a man has hooked his arm over the stick, and jumped up
so as to bring his weight with a jerk to press the stick down; with
his other hand he holds the end of a cord tied to the net, so as to be
ready to secure the stick when pressed down and prevent it springing up
again. The spirit shown in this action is very good, and it is perhaps
the only figure given in the act of jumping. On the left is a young
woman, one of the daughters, behind the owner of the tomb; on the right
is a gleaning girl, stopping in the tall corn to drink, with her basket
set on the ground.
On the next plate a portion of a ceiling pattern (fig. 72) shows how
such designs were drawn. The rhombic lines were done first, then the
dark groundwork, leaving white discs, and lastly these were filled up
with the spirals. The whole was copied from _appliqué_ leather-work,
with lines of stitching.
A boating scene (fig. 73) shows the beautifully bold, clean lines of
the drawing, for which in this case there does not seem to have been
any preliminary sketch of position. The crouching girl picking a lotus
bud from the water is very unusual. The drawing of wavy water-lines,
with lotus flowers, is the general convention, and the figures of fish
and birds are often seen.
A scene at a party (fig. 74) shows the guests seated on the ground
holding lotus flowers, while a serving-girl stretches forward to
arrange the earrings of one of the guests.
[Illustration: NEW KINGDOM PAINTING
72. Ceiling
73. Boating scene
74. A party]
Painting received a great stimulus under Akhenaten: the new movement
suited the brush much better than the chisel. The two figures of the
princesses (fig. 76) show possibilities which were not then fully
carried out. The conventional attitudes are dropped, and the actual
positions of two little girls are carefully copied. The elder is
seated on a cushion, with the knees drawn up, and resting one arm on
the knee, while with the other hand she pushes up her little sister’s
chin. The younger has none of this self-possession, but is propping
herself up with one arm, while she clings to her elder’s shoulder with
the other. The drawing is free and true, within the usual conventions
of perspective. Further, the colouring has shade on the backs of the
figures, and a high light on the thigh of the younger daughter. Such
shade does not appear in Greek art till a thousand years later. The
pattern in front is the border of the carpet on which the queen was
seated, her foot and drapery appearing above.
A surprising drawing which belongs to the same school of observation
is the tumbler (fig. 75). Here an acrobatic position is so skilfully
drawn as to suggest its truth and to avoid any impossibility. The form
of each part is admirable; and if we trace it piece by piece into an
upright position, the resulting figure is correctly proportioned,
except in the length of the arms. In reality such an attitude requires
the hands to rest on the finger-tips where the wrist now is drawn. As a
drawing of a violent attitude this is a marvellous work, not only for
the directness and perfection of the line, but also for the complete
lightness and swing of the whole figure.
Another good piece of action is the man (fig. 77) who is standing
on a boat’s cabin hauling in a rope. The dead-weight of the body is
well thrown back; and as the base is small, one leg is kept in reserve
behind so as to recover any slip. The dead pull, with both feet planted
together and the whole body rigidly leaning back, is often drawn in
the early fishing scenes; but such an attitude would be unsafe when
standing on the top of a narrow cabin.
[Illustration: NEW KINGDOM PAINTING
75. Girl somersaulting
76. The young princesses]
We now turn to outline drawing, in which the Egyptians always had a
grand facility. There is no instance, even in degraded times, of an
outline made as in modern work by little tentative touches feeling the
way. If they made a mistake, they at least “sinned splendidly.” The
long free strokes, always taking the whole length of a bone at once,
and often going down a whole figure without raising the hand--even,
true, without a quiver or hesitation--shame most modern outlines. The
group of heads (fig. 78) shows well the amount of character given by a
simple outline. The furthest is a negro, the next a Syrian, the third
an Abyssinian, the last a Libyan. The type of each is shown with zest
and energy, and the line-work could not be improved.
[Illustration: NEW KINGDOM DRAWING
77. The boatman hauling
78. The four races
79. Sketched tablet
80. Tomb decoration]
In fig. 79 is a very rough sketch for a little tablet of adoration. It
shows the faint outlines in red which were laid in first to space out
the figure. Such were used in nearly all cases as a preliminary guide;
but they were freely improved on in the final black drawing, as here
the whole base has been lowered. This also shows the sketch-forms of
hieroglyphic writing.
The final work for a royal tomb is seen in fig. 80, Sety I offering to
Osiris. We can here admire the perfect freedom and exactitude of the
handling, although this was only intended as a guide to the sculptor,
and was not to be finally visible.
A large branch of drawing which we have not space to illustrate here
is that of the papyri and hieroglyphs. The papyri show the clear,
fine outlines in the good examples. In later times, rough as the work
may be, the feeling for expression never deserts the artist. The
hieroglyphs form a great study by themselves. The sources of the signs,
the various treatment of them, the minute details introduced, are all
full of interest. The great result was that the Egyptian had a writing
which, though cumbrous, was a continual pleasure to see, and which
adorned the artistic monuments on which it was placed.