i. It may perhaps be thought, that in prefacing a manual of drawing, I
ought to expatiate on the reasons why drawing should be learned; but
those reasons appear to me so many and so weighty, that I cannot quickly
state or enforce them. With the reader's permission, as this volume is
too large already, I will waive all discussion respecting the importance
of the subject, and touch only on those points which may appear
questionable in the method of its treatment.
ii. In the first place, the book is not calculated for the use of
children under the age of twelve or fourteen. I do not think it
advisable to engage a child in any but the most voluntary practice of
art. If it has talent for drawing, it will be continually scrawling on
what paper it can get; and should be allowed to scrawl at its own free
will, due praise being given for every appearance of care, or truth, in
its efforts. It should be allowed to amuse itself with cheap colors
almost as soon as it has sense enough to wish for them. If it merely
daubs the paper with shapeless stains, the color-box may be taken away
till it knows better: but as soon as it begins painting red coats on
soldiers, striped flags to ships, etc., it should have colors at
command; and, without restraining its choice of subject in that
imaginative and historical art, of a military tendency, which children
delight in, (generally quite as valuable, by the way, as any historical
art delighted in by their elders,) it should be gently led by the
parents to try to draw, in such childish fashion as may be, the things
it can see and likes,--birds, or butterflies, or flowers, or fruit.
iii. In later years, the indulgence of using the color should only be
granted as a reward, after it has shown care and progress in its
drawings with pencil. A limited number of good and amusing prints should
always be within a boy's reach: in these days of cheap illustration he
can hardly possess a volume of nursery tales without good wood-cuts in
it, and should be encouraged to copy what he likes best of this kind;
but should be firmly restricted to a _few_ prints and to a few books. If
a child has many toys, it will get tired of them and break them; if a
boy has many prints he will merely dawdle and scrawl over them; it is by
the limitation of the number of his possessions that his pleasure in
them is perfected, and his attention concentrated. The parents need give
themselves no trouble in instructing him, as far as drawing is
concerned, beyond insisting upon economical and neat habits with his
colors and paper, showing him the best way of holding pencil and rule,
and, so far as they take notice of his work, pointing out where a line
is too short or too long, or too crooked, when compared with the copy;
_accuracy_ being the first and last thing they look for. If the child
shows talent for inventing or grouping figures, the parents should
neither check, nor praise it. They may laugh with it frankly, or show
pleasure in what it has done, just as they show pleasure in seeing it
well, or cheerful; but they must not praise it for being clever, any
more than they would praise it for being stout. They should praise it
only for what costs it self-denial, namely attention and hard work;
otherwise they will make it work for vanity's sake, and always badly.
The best books to put into its hands are those illustrated by George
Cruikshank or by Richter. (See Appendix.) At about the age of twelve or
fourteen, it is quite time enough to set youth or girl to serious work;
and then this book will, I think, be useful to them; and I have good
hope it may be so, likewise, to persons of more advanced age wishing to
know something of the first principles of art.
iv. Yet observe, that the method of study recommended is not brought
forward as absolutely the best, but only as the best which I can at
present devise for an isolated student. It is very likely that farther
experience in teaching may enable me to modify it with advantage in
several important respects; but I am sure the main principles of it are
sound, and most of the exercises as useful as they can be rendered
without a master's superintendence. The method differs, however, so
materially from that generally adopted by drawing-masters, that a word
or two of explanation may be needed to justify what might otherwise be
thought willful eccentricity.
v. The manuals at present published on the subject of drawing are all
directed, as far as I know, to one or other of two objects. Either they
propose to give the student a power of dexterous sketching with pencil
or water-color, so as to emulate (at considerable distance) the slighter
work of our second-rate artists; or they propose to give him such
accurate command of mathematical forms as may afterwards enable him to
design rapidly and cheaply for manufactures. When drawing is taught as
an accomplishment, the first is the aim usually proposed; while the
second is the object kept chiefly in view at Marlborough House, and in
the branch Government Schools of Design.
vi. Of the fitness of the modes of study adopted in those schools, to
the end specially intended, judgment is hardly yet possible; only, it
seems to me, that we are all too much in the habit of confusing art as
_applied_ to manufacture, with manufacture itself. For instance, the
skill by which an inventive workman designs and molds a beautiful cup,
is skill of true art; but the skill by which that cup is copied and
afterwards multiplied a thousandfold, is skill of manufacture: and the
faculties which enable one workman to design and elaborate his original
piece, are not to be developed by the same system of instruction as
those which enable another to produce a maximum number of approximate
copies of it in a given time. Farther: it is surely inexpedient that any
reference to purposes of manufacture should interfere with the education
of the artist himself. Try first to manufacture a Raphael; then let
Raphael direct your manufacture. He will design you a plate, or cup, or
a house, or a palace, whenever you want it, and design them in the most
convenient and rational way; but do not let your anxiety to reach the
platter and the cup interfere with your education of the Raphael. Obtain
first the best work you can, and the ablest hands, irrespective of any
consideration of economy or facility of production. Then leave your
trained artist to determine how far art can be popularized, or
manufacture ennobled.
vii. Now, I believe that (irrespective of differences in individual
temper and character) the excellence of an artist, as such, depends
wholly on refinement of perception, and that it is this, mainly, which a
master or a school can teach; so that while powers of invention
distinguish man from man, powers of perception distinguish school from
school. All great schools enforce delicacy of drawing and subtlety of
sight: and the only rule which I have, as yet, found to be without
exception respecting art, is that all great art is delicate.
viii. Therefore, the chief aim and bent of the following system is to
obtain, first, a perfectly patient, and, to the utmost of the pupil's
power, a delicate method of work, such as may insure his seeing truly.
For I am nearly convinced, that when once we see keenly enough, there is
very little difficulty in drawing what we see; but, even supposing that
this difficulty be still great, I believe that the sight is a more
important thing than the drawing; and I would rather teach drawing that
my pupils may learn to love Nature, than teach the looking at Nature
that they may learn to draw. It is surely also a more important thing,
for young people and unprofessional students, to know how to appreciate
the art of others, than to gain much power in art themselves. Now the
modes of sketching ordinarily taught are inconsistent with this power of
judgment. No person trained to the superficial execution of modern
water-color painting, can understand the work of Titian or Leonardo;
they must forever remain blind to the refinement of such men's
penciling, and the precision of their thinking. But, however slight a
degree of manipulative power the student may reach by pursuing the mode
recommended to him in these letters, I will answer for it that he cannot
go once through the advised exercises without beginning to understand
what masterly work means; and, by the time he has gained some
proficiency in them, he will have a pleasure in looking at the painting
of the great schools, and a new perception of the exquisiteness of
natural scenery, such as would repay him for much more labor than I have
asked him to undergo.
ix. That labor is, nevertheless, sufficiently irksome, nor is it
possible that it should be otherwise, so long as the pupil works
unassisted by a master. For the smooth and straight road which admits
unembarrassed progress must, I fear, be dull as well as smooth; and the
hedges need to be close and trim when there is no guide to warn or bring
back the erring traveler. The system followed in this work will,
therefore, at first, surprise somewhat sorrowfully those who are
familiar with the practice of our class at the Working Men's College;
for there, the pupil, having the master at his side to extricate him
from such embarrassments as his first efforts may lead into, is _at
once_ set to draw from a solid object, and soon finds entertainment in
his efforts and interest in his difficulties. Of course the simplest
object which it is possible to set before the eye is a sphere; and,
practically, I find a child's toy, a white leather ball, better than
anything else; as the gradations on balls of plaster of Paris, which I
use sometimes to try the strength of pupils who have had previous
practice, are a little too delicate for a beginner to perceive. It has
been objected that a circle, or the outline of a sphere, is one of the
most difficult of all lines to draw. It is so;[A] but I do not want it
to be drawn. All that his study of the ball is to teach the pupil, is
the way in which shade gives the appearance of projection. This he
learns most satisfactorily from a sphere; because any solid form,
terminated by straight lines or flat surfaces, owes some of its
appearance of projection to its perspective; but in the sphere, what,
without shade, was a flat circle, becomes, merely by the added shade,
the image of a solid ball; and this fact is just as striking to the
learner, whether his circular outline be true or false. He is,
therefore, never allowed to trouble himself about it; if he makes the
ball look as oval as an egg, the degree of error is simply pointed out
to him, and he does better next time, and better still the next. But his
mind is always fixed on the gradation of shade, and the outline left to
take, in due time, care of itself. I call it outline, for the sake of
immediate intelligibility,--strictly speaking, it is merely the edge of
the shade; no pupil in my class being ever allowed to draw an outline,
in the ordinary sense. It is pointed out to him, from the first, that
Nature relieves one mass, or one tint, against another; but outlines
none. The outline exercise, the second suggested in this letter, is
recommended, not to enable the pupil to draw outlines, but as the only
means by which, unassisted, he can test his accuracy of eye, and
discipline his hand. When the master is by, errors in the form and
extent of shadows can be pointed out as easily as in outline, and the
handling can be gradually corrected in details of the work. But the
solitary student can only find out his own mistakes by help of the
traced limit, and can only test the firmness of his hand by an exercise
in which nothing but firmness is required; and during which all other
considerations (as of softness, complexity, etc.) are entirely excluded.
x. Both the system adopted at the Working Men's College, and that
recommended here, agree, however, in one principle, which I consider the
most important and special of all that are involved in my teaching:
namely, the attaching its full importance, from the first, to local
color. I believe that the endeavor to separate, in the course of
instruction, the observation of light and shade from that of local
color, has always been, and must always be, destructive of the student's
power of accurate sight, and that it corrupts his taste as much as it
retards his progress. I will not occupy the reader's time by any
discussion of the principle here, but I wish him to note it as the only
distinctive one in my system, so far as it _is_ a system. For the
recommendation to the pupil to copy faithfully, and without alteration,
whatever natural object he chooses to study, is serviceable, among other
reasons, just because it gets rid of systematic rules altogether, and
teaches people to draw, as country lads learn to ride, without saddle or
stirrups; my main object being, at first, not to get my pupils to hold
their reins prettily, but to "sit like a jackanapes, never off."
xi. In these written instructions, therefore, it has always been with
regret that I have seen myself forced to advise anything like monotonous
or formal discipline. But, to the unassisted student, such formalities
are indispensable, and I am not without hope that the sense of secure
advancement, and the pleasure of independent effort, may render the
following out of even the more tedious exercises here proposed, possible
to the solitary learner, without weariness. But if it should be
otherwise, and he finds the first steps painfully irksome, I can only
desire him to consider whether the acquirement of so great a power as
that of pictorial expression of thought be not worth some toil; or
whether it is likely, in the natural order of matters in this working
world, that so great a gift should be attainable by those who will give
no price for it.
xii. One task, however, of some difficulty, the student will find I have
not imposed upon him: namely, learning the laws of perspective. It would
be worth while to learn them, if he could do so easily; but without a
master's help, and in the way perspective is at present explained in
treatises, the difficulty is greater than the gain. For perspective is
not of the slightest use, except in rudimentary work. You can draw the
rounding line of a table in perspective, but you cannot draw the sweep
of a sea bay; you can foreshorten a log of wood by it, but you cannot
foreshorten an arm. Its laws are too gross and few to be applied to any
subtle form; therefore, as you must learn to draw the subtle forms by
the eye, certainly you may draw the simple ones. No great painters ever
trouble themselves about perspective, and very few of them know its
laws; they draw everything by the eye, and, naturally enough, disdain in
the easy parts of their work rules which cannot help them in difficult
ones. It would take about a month's labor to draw imperfectly, by laws
of perspective, what any great Venetian will draw perfectly in five
minutes, when he is throwing a wreath of leaves round a head, or bending
the curves of a pattern in and out among the folds of drapery. It is
true that when perspective was first discovered, everybody amused
themselves with it; and all the great painters put fine saloons and
arcades behind their Madonnas, merely to show that they could draw in
perspective: but even this was generally done by them only to catch the
public eye, and they disdained the perspective so much, that though they
took the greatest pains with the circlet of a crown, or the rim of a
crystal cup, in the heart of their picture, they would twist their
capitals of columns and towers of churches about in the background in
the most wanton way, wherever they liked the lines to go, provided only
they left just perspective enough to please the public.
xiii. In modern days, I doubt if any artist among us, except David
Roberts, knows so much perspective as would enable him to draw a Gothic
arch to scale at a given angle and distance. Turner, though he was
professor of perspective to the Royal Academy, did not know what he
professed, and never, as far as I remember, drew a single building in
true perspective in his life; he drew them only with as much perspective
as suited him. Prout also knew nothing of perspective, and twisted his
buildings, as Turner did, into whatever shapes he liked. I do not
justify this; and would recommend the student at least to treat
perspective with common civility, but to pay no court to it. The best
way he can learn it, by himself, is by taking a pane of glass, fixed in
a frame, so that it can be set upright before the eye, at the distance
at which the proposed sketch is intended to be seen. Let the eye be
placed at some fixed point, opposite the middle of the pane of glass,
but as high or as low as the student likes; then with a brush at the end
of a stick, and a little body-color that will adhere to the glass, the
lines of the landscape may be traced on the glass, as you see them
through it. When so traced they are all in true perspective. If the
glass be sloped in any direction, the lines are still in true
perspective, only it is perspective calculated for a sloping plane,
while common perspective always supposes the plane of the picture to be
vertical. It is good, in early practice, to accustom yourself to inclose
your subject, before sketching it, with a light frame of wood held
upright before you; it will show you what you may legitimately take into
your picture, and what choice there is between a narrow foreground near
you, and a wide one farther off; also, what height of tree or building
you can properly take in, etc.[B]
xiv. Of figure drawing, nothing is said in the following pages, because
I do not think figures, as chief subjects, can be drawn to any good
purpose by an amateur. As accessaries in landscape, they are just to be
drawn on the same principles as anything else.
xv. Lastly: If any of the directions given subsequently to the student
should be found obscure by him, or if at any stage of the recommended
practice he find himself in difficulties which I have not enough
provided against, he may apply by letter to Mr. Ward, who is my under
drawing-master at the Working Men's College (45 Great Ormond Street),
and who will give any required assistance, on the lowest terms that can
remunerate him for the occupation of his time. I have not leisure myself
in general to answer letters of inquiry, however much I may desire to do
so; but Mr. Ward has always the power of referring any question to me
when he thinks it necessary. I have good hope, however, that enough
guidance is given in this work to prevent the occurrence of any serious
embarrassment; and I believe that the student who obeys its directions
will find, on the whole, that the best answerer of questions is
perseverance; and the best drawing-masters are the woods and hills.
[1857.]