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MAX

BY THE SAME AUTHOR
RELATION IN ART

Oxford University Press, 1925

THE WAY TO SKETCH

Oxford University Press, 1925

DRAWING FOR CHILDREN ... & OTHERS
Oxford University Press, 1927

THE ART AND CRAFT OF

DRAWING

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
London Edinburgh Glasgow Copenhagen
New York Toronto Melbourne Cape Town
Bombay Calcutta Madras Shanghai
HUMPHREY MILFORD PUBLISHER TO
THE UNIVERSITY

PUVIS DK CHAVANNKS
JJthogrttfh />y Eugene Cttrricn"

THE ART AND

DRAWING

BY VERNON BLAKE

A STUDY BOTH OF THE PRACTICE
OF DRAWING AND OF ITS AES-
THETIC THEORY AS UNDERSTOOD
AMONG DIFFERENT PEOPLES AND
AT DIFFERENT EPOCHS ; ESPECIAL
REFERENCE BEING MADE TO THE
CONSTRUCTION OF THE HUMAN
FORM FROM THE PRACTICAL
DRAUGHTSMAN'S POINT
OF VIEW

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON : HUMPHREY MILFORD
1927

The primal object of painting is to show a body in
relief detaching itself from a plane surface.

Leonardo da VmcL TREATISE ON PAINTING

The greatest perfection should appear imperfect; it
will then be infinite in its effect. Tao-Te-kmgj 50

The Tao of which one can speak is not the Tao.

PREFACE

ONE of my principal intentions in writing this book was
to point out the uselessness of attempting, first, to separate
the abstract from the technical aspect of art ; and, secondly,
the equal folly of seeking to split up technique into various,
but supposititious, compartments. This desire led me to
avoid, to a great extent, the method of dividing into chapters
and into paragraphs classed according to the compartment
treated. If method there be in the composing of this book,
it consists in examining any given drawing under all its
aspects, however distinct they may be from one another ac-
cording to accepted tenets. Though such system or lack
of system may possibly do its work in calling attention
to the fundamental homogeneity of artistic expression, it is
evident that it is not a form of presentation convenient for
reference and for study. In order to palliate this defect to
some extent, I have taken considerable trouble with the index
or rather with the indexes, for it has been decided to assemble
all anatomical terms, together with those dealing with the
construction, and allied matters, into a separate list. This
decision alone will simplify the finding of any particular
point connected with the actual practice of figure-drawing.
Again, to further this end I have in many cases indicated, in
black Clarendon type, the references to the pages on which
the particular subject receives its fullest treatment. It is
obviously impossible to carry out such a plan in a strictly
methodical way, for it becomes a matter of mere opinion to
decide which reference is, and which just fails to be, worthy
of heavy type.

At the same time my intention is that this book should
be of more use to the student as a general training in outlook

viii PREFACE

upon art, upon its meaning, and upon its methods, than as
a craftsman's book of reference. Indeed, I have more than
once in its pages referred the reader to other works should
he require more detailed information on any special point.
On the whole I have tried to include in these pages informa-
tion not readily accessible elsewhere, and have omitted such
facts as may be found with ease in existing text- books.

The Clarendon Press has not thought fit to fall in with
my notions as to the general appearance of the book, hence
the text implies one point of view, the appearance of the
book belies it. When once attention is called to this fact it
becomes of less importance.

I must take this opportunity of expressing my apprecia-
tion of the trouble taken by Mr. William Bell in verifying re-
ferences and in correcting the text.

VERNON BLAKE.
LES BAUX, October 1926.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE vii

I. INTRODUCTION i

Inadequacy of artistic anatomies. Figure-drawing best method of
study. Ruskin. Equilibrium. Choice. Integrality. Finish.
Knowledge and intuition. Pseudo-science. Cezanne. Influence of
Far East. The TAO. Si< Ho's Six Laws. Want of figure-work
among Celts and Germans. Greek art.

II. RELATIONS BETWEEN COMPOSITION AND DRAW-
ING 23

Composition a bad term. Art a symbolism. Drawing and com-
position. Painting and sculpture. Mi Fu. Knowledge to be con-
cealed. Reason for plastic arts. Imitation of Nature. Van Gogh
and C6zanne. Modifications of natural form. Matisse. Michael-
Angeio, Matisse. Wang Wei. Plastic expression of abstract ideas.
Geometric rigidity. Luca Cambiaso.

III. TECHNICAL METHODS 48

Each tool has a particular use. Methods of brush-holding in Egypt,
Greece, China. How a drawing is made is important ; but academic
prescriptions are bad. Study and drudgery. Plumb and measuring.
Volumes essential. Rhythmic relation of mass. ' First lines.'

Size of drawings. Rodin. Moving model. Pagination of drawing.
Large number of drawings. Simultaneous observation. Measure-
ments anti-artistic. Rhythm. Tidiness. Proportions. Various kinds
of rhythm. Method of enlarging.

IV. MASS EQUILIBRIUM 75

Equilibrium. * Flat ' harmony and * mass ' harmony. Rhythm of
great masses. Analysis of a drawing. Recessional modelling. Model-

3109 b

x TABLE OF CONTENTS

ling in clay. Suggestion of solidity by line. Drawing from the antique.
Gravitation. Stability. Greek vases. Perspective surfaces. Volumes
in perspective. Centre of gravity. Puvis de Chavannes. Mou-hsi.
Curve equilibrium. Growth and gravitation. Human body is a
machine. Distorted equilibrium. Aesthetic balance and mechanical
balance. Intentional discords.

V. PERSPECTIVE 103

Artificiality, symbolism, assumption. Light and shade. Altamira. Ex-
perimental perspective. Method of setting out perspective. European
perspective. Binocular vision. Leonardo. Foreshortening. Accuracy,
Mental attitude. Proportions. Volumes in recession. Axes of
volumes. Michael-Angelo. Far East. Ku K'ai Chih. Chinese
perspective. Zen Buddhism. Impermanence of form. Defects of
European perspective. Multiple view-points. Whistler. Several
perspective systems in one drawing. Perspective of shadows. Drawing
by shadows.

VI. THE MAIN MASSES OF THE HUMAN BODY . 144

Mechanical laws. Relation between aesthetic and mechanical balance
in nude. Pelvis. Sacral triangle. Trunk and pelvis. Thorax.
Insertion of limbs into trunk. Rembrandt. Michael-Angelo. Light
and shade superposed on mass. Backbone. Waist rotation. Nude-
drawing and architecture. Ensemble. Tension. English cathedrals
compared with French. Salisbury. Lincoln. Combination of
different styles. Chateau d'O, Re-entering forms in architecture.
Peterborough. Beauvais. Pinnacles. Ensemble in Paris, Vistas in
London. Greek art. Chinese art Two forms of Gothic art are
comparable,

VII. VALUES 178

Definition, Light and shade. Tidiness. Scribbling. Insufficient
knowledge. Progressive finish. The palette and values. Value
studies on white ground. Simplicity in values. Chinese monochrome.
Mou-hsi, Zen. Line and value. Imitation and art. China. Anglo-

TABLE OF CONTENTS xi

Saxon. Language is a work of art. English, French, Chinese, and
Japanese poetry compared. Juxtaposition of elements. Philosophical
systems and art. Commerce. Claude. Pollaiuolo. Copying pictures.
Van Gogh. Rembrandt and Mantegna. Corot and values. Con-
centration in Studies.

VIII. ANATOMY AND FORM 220

Order of execution. Foreshortening everywhere. Michael-Angelo,
Puvis de Chavannes. Degas. Examination of Degas drawing.
Termination of lines. Decorative values. Formal art. Informal

art. Rodin's sculpture. Leonardo and light and shade. Euphronios
and Rembrandt. Greece and tangible mass. Mural decoration.
Flattening. Balance. Hazlitt and Moliere. Shakespeare. Individual
and universal. Impressionism. Toulouse-Lautrec. Ingres. The
frontispiece by Eugene Carriere. Modelling and sculpture. Carriere's
rhythm. Emotional values.

IX. CONSTRUCTION OF THE HUMAN FRAME . 266
Memory of main constructional facts. Art instruction. Pelvis.
Main facts. Rhythmic curves. Balance. Anatomy and construction.
Michael-Angelo. Construction of leg and thigh. Foot. ' Clasping '

of volumes. Rhythmic arrangement. Vesalius. Arm system. Neck.
Skull. Greek, Italian, Japanese face formulae. Flat drawing of eyes
and mouth. Foreshortening of * interior ' modelling. Analysis of
a second drawing by author. Knowledge. Aesthetic judgement.
Modification. Rodin and rhythm. Frontispiece by Carriere. Leo-
nardo. Leighton's sculpture. Formal rhythm. Pronation and supina-
tion of hand. Hukusai. Need of full study. Drapery. Simplicity.
Freedom of line.

"X. LANDSCAPE-DRAWING 334

Nude the best school. Figure- and landscape-drawing. Rembrandt's
landscape. Stability. Turner. C6zanne. Japanese trinity of heaven,
earth, man. Artistic unreality and inartistic reality. An Italian
drawing. Third-dimensional composition. Co-ordinate rhythmic
relation. Planes in a Claude. Recessional foliage masses. Errors in
landscape-drawing.

xii TABLE OF CONTENTS

XL * PRIMITIVE' DRAWING 354

Primitive mentality. M. Levy-Bruhl defines its nature. Law of
* Participation *. * Participation ' and Art. Tahiti and Altamira,
Artistic ' creation '. Mentality of European children. * Antithesis '
and opposition in * logical ' art. Symbolical rhythm in ' prelogical ' art.
Resemblance an * after-thought ' of art. Criterium of artistic worth.
Summary of * prelogical ' aesthetic. Comparison between recent and
1 primitive ' art. The work of art and * participation * Confusion of
past, present, and future not a drawback. Taste in Europe and taste
among ' primitives '. Comparison between * primitive ' thought and
possible future European thought.

XII. CONCLUSION 394

Ideas special to each art. Plastic logic. Verbal ratiocination. Com-
parative aesthetic of drawing. Artists and general culture. Experiment.
Travelling. Variability of creeds. Common factors in art. Palaeo-
lithic drawing. Abu SimbeL Chinese temple. Greek art. Germanic
influence. Christianity, Michael- A ngelo. Turner. Modern art.
Modern mechanical forms. Past art. Decoration. Pedantry and art.
Last word.

INDEX 405

ERRATA

p. 229, note. For fig. 74 read fig. 76.

p. 255, Hnes 13-17. Carricre's daughter informs me that this
is an error on my part. Her father was not short-sighted.
How careful we must be in controlling our ideas! I have
still so clearly in mind his habit of half closing his eyes with
the exact gesture of a myopic man, I had so definitely
classed him, on this account, as short-sighted, that it never
occurred to me that I possessed no real information on the
matter.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Puvis ^de Chavannes portrait, lithograph by Eugene Carriere.

Societe du Droit d'Auteur aux Artistes Frontispiece

1. Tomb of Puyemrd. Gathering and splitting papyrus reeds at

Thebes. Brit. Mus. .... face 18

2. Egyptian head. Example of naturalism . . 20

3. Baigneuse. Detail of ' Le Bain Turc ', by Ingres. Photogr.

Giraudon . . . . . 5J 28

4. ' Mountain after a summer shower '. Kao Jan Hai or Mi Fu 30

5. 4 Pugillatore '. Museo Nationals Rome. Photogr. Anderson 36

6. Han-Shan and Shih-te, by Liang K'ai . . 38

7. Drawings by Michael- Angelo. Brit, Mus. . . 40

8. Diagram of Michael-Angelo drawing . . .41

9. Waterfall. Wang Wei. Brit Mus. . . face 42

10. Diagram of Wang Wei drawing . . . .43

11. Composition by Luca Cambiaso. Photogr. Prof. A. M. Hind face 44

12. 13, 14. Three drawings of methods of holding brush, Egyptian,

Greek, Chinese . . . . .501

15, 1 6, 17. Two diagrams of arms copied from Hatton ; and one by

the Author . . . . .61

1 8. Diagram of * squaring out ' a drawing . . .71

19. Nude study by the Author .... face 76

20. Diagram of nude study . . . . .77

21. Greek vase drawing by Euphronios . . . .89

22. Detail of Puvis de Chavannes' * Doux Pays ' . face 92

23. Kwan-yin by Mou-hsi. Kyoto . . . ,,96

24. Jonah of Sistine Chapel. Michael-Angelo. Photogr. Anderson 98

25. Palaeolithic drawing of boar. Altamira. From M. FAbb6

Breuil's drawing . . . . .104

26. 27, 28, 29. Diagrams of experimental perspective apparatus 107, 109
30, 31. Diagrams showing relation between a squared-out ground-plan

and the corresponding * squares ' in a pictorial perspective view 113

32. Diagram showing too rapid perspective . . .117

33. Diagram of arch for perspective . . . .117

xiv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

34. Perspective drawing by Leonardo da Vinci. Uffizi Gallery,

Florence ..... face 118

35. Diagram of arm volumes . . . . .-123

36. Diagram of arm directions . . . . .123

37. Studies by Michael-Angelo. Photogr. Julius Bard . face 124

38. Diagram of arm construction - - .125

39- - - ' I2 5

40. Painting of family group. Ku K'ai Chih (?) . . face 126

41. Assyrian bas-relief, 'The battle of Ashur-bani-pal against the

Elamites'. Brit. Mus. . . . . 128
'42. Egyptian painting, 'Inspection and counting of cattle'. Brit. Mus. 130

43. Landscape by Shubun . . . - ,,,132

44. Diagram of shadow-perspective construction . . .136

45. Diagram of shadow perspective . . I 37
46.- Diagram of c cubical ' construction of the body . .145

47. Diagram of ' mechanical * construction of the body . ,149

48. Pen study of leg. Michael-Angelo . . . 151

49. Study of torso. Michael-Angelo. Photogr, Jlinari . face 150

50. Constructional diagram of Fig. 48 . . ,151

51. Constructional diagram of masses of arm in Fig. 49 . .152

52. Constructional diagram of masses in Fig. 54 . . .152

53. Constructional diagram of facts in Fig. 57 . . .152

54. Arm study by Michael-Angelo. Photogr, jilinari between i $2-3

55. Anatomy of neck. Leonardo da Vinci. Brit. Mus. . 1 5 2 ~3

56. Head and neck study. Leonardo da Vinci. AshmohanMus. ^S^ 3

57. Study of arms. Michael-Angelo. Brit. Mus. . 152-3

58. Diagram of pelvis and backbone . . , 153

59. Diagram of front view of pelvis and thorax . . ,154

60. Diagram of back view of shoulders and thorax . 1 5 5

6 1. Diagram of front view of shoulders and thorax . 155

62. Drawing of nude woman. Rembrandt. Brit. Mus. , face 156

63. Diagram of rotation of torso . . , ,163

64. Salisbury Cathedral. Photogr, Mansdl . . faca 166

65. Le Chateau d'O. Photogr. Levy et Neurdim rhmis , n 168

66. Peterborough Cathedral. Photogr. Mansell . . 170

67. La Cathe*drale (figlise Saint-Pi&rre) at Bcauvais. Photogr, Lny

fft Neurdein, reunis . . . . n 172

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xv

68. Rough pen drawing by the Author . . . .184

69. Indication of main masses by scribbling . . .185

70. Starling, by Mou-hsi .... face 198

71. ' Arhat' with serpent. The Saint Vanavisi, by Mou-hsi 200

72. Studies of back and arm. Leonardo da Vinci. Royal Library,

Windsor .... 222

55 -Z-

73. Diagrammatic section of the body showing subjacent planes

and surfaces ...... 227

74. Study of girl's torso by Degas. Societe du Droit d'Auteur aux

Artistes ..... f^g 228

75. Position of the bones in the right arm of the study by Degas . 229

76. Diagrams of planes and volumes in the right arm of the study

by Degas . . . . . .229

77. Horsemen from the Parthenon Frieze. Brit. Mus. . face 246

78. Detail of a panel of 'La Darned la Licorne'. Photogr.BraunetCie 250

79. Drawing of nude by Michael- Angelo . . >5 252

80. Mademoiselle Lender, by Toulouse-Lautrec. Societe du Droit

d?Auteur aux Artistes ?) 254

8 1. Study of the nude by Ingres. Photogr. Giraudon . 256

82. Diagram of leg and thigh construction . . . 272

83. Diagram of trunk and arm construction . . .273
8 3 A. Diagram of the lateral rectangle of the obliques . .281

84. Diagram of plane rhythm down front of leg . . .283

85. Diagram of transition of main rhythm from back to front of body . 287

86. Studies of legs. Leonardo da Vinci. Brit. Mus. . between 288-9

87. Studies of legs. Leonardo da Vinci. Brit. Mus . 5 , 288-9

88. Studies of legs. Leonardo da Vinci. Royal Library,

Windsor . . . . 288-9

89. Leg study showing sartorius. Leonardo da Vinci. Royal

Library, Windsor . . . . 2889

90. Diagram of construction of foot .... 289

91. Studies of legs and torsos by Michael-Angelo, Ashmohan

Museum ..... face 290

92. Drawing of a nude woman, Michael-Angelo. Photogr, Alinart 292

93. Vesalius' anatomical figure, front view . . . 294

94. Vesalius' anatomical figure, back view . . . 295

95. Head of DIadumenos. Photogr, Julius Bard . . face 296

96. Old man's head. Leonardo da Vinci. Photogr. Broun et Cie 298

xvi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

97. Diagram of head ... ... 300

98. Head. Japanese sculpture of the Suiko period. Warner :

'Japanese Sculpture o f the Suiko Period. Yale University

Press ..... face 300

99. Diagram of the head showing features arranged on curves . 301
100.' Nude drawing by the Author . . . face 304

101. A drawing by Rodin. Sodete du Droit d*Auteur aux Artistes 310

1 02. Study of arms and torso. Michael- Angelo. Photogr. Alinari 320

103. Study of arm. Leonardo da Vinci. Brit. Mus. . 5? 322

104. Hand study. Michael- Angelo. Ashmolcan Museum . 322

105. Hand studies. Michael-Angelo. Ashmolean Museum . 324

1 06. Diagram of knuckle-joints in perspective . . , 325

107. Hand studies. Hukusai. Mangwa. Brit. Mus. . between 326-7

1 08. Study of wrestlers. Hukusai. Mangwa. Brit. Mm. . ,, 3^67

109. Nude study. Michael-Angelo. Brit. Mus. . . 5> 328-9
HO, Nude study. Michael-Angelo. Brit. Mus. . . 3 , 328-9
in. Nude study. Michael-Angelo. Brit. Mus. . . ^ 3289

112. Nude study. Michael-Angelo. Brit. Mus. . . 328-9

113. Study of drapery. Michael-Angelo. Photogr. Giraudon 5> 33- *

114. 4 Three Fates \ Parthenon. Photogr. Manse// . 33- *

115. Diagram of * Three Fates ', showing main planes , , 331

116. Study of drapery. Leonardo da Vinci. Photogr, Mansell face 332

117. Landscape. Rembrandt. Brit, Mus. . . w 336

1 1 8. Italian landscape pen drawing. Brit. Mus. . . ?J 338

119. Schaffhausen. Turner. Photogr. Mansell . . n 340

120. Bridge. Cezanne. Societt du Droit d'Auteur aux Artistes 342

121. Japanese tree formulae. Hukusai. Mangwa. Brit. Mus. 344

1 22. The fisherman. Claude. Photogr. Mansell . . 5> 348

123. Bird on bamboo-stalk. Su Kuo . 3^0

124. c Sasabonsam '. Ashanti. Photogr. Capt.R. S.Rattray . 372

125. 1265 127. ' Akua mma' statuettes. Ashanti. Photogr.

R* S. Rattray ..... between 384-5
128, 129, 130. Ashanti stools, Photogr. Gapt.R. S. Rattray 384-5

Figs. 6, 23^ 43, 70 and 7 1 arc reproduced from Grossc : Das Ostasiatischff
Tuschbild by permission of the publisher, Bruno Cassirer, Berlin, and figs, 4 and
1 23 are reproduced from Kokka by permission of the Kokka Co., Tokyo.

CERTAIN FOREWORDS OF IMPORTANCE

MANY treatises on artistic anatomy exist ; there exists,
it may be, a less number of volumes on figure-drawing.
Several of these treatises, of these volumes, I have read,
still more have I glanced through ; years ago I consulted with
assiduity Marshall's Anatomy for Artists. Now, as a draughts-
man of the nude myself, as a sculptor, as a painter, I have faults
to find with one and all of the books on drawing that it has been
my lot to come across. Some of them are practically value-
less ; others are fairly good ; some, the artistic anatomies, I
mean, fulfil rather too well their allotted task, but unfortun-
ately the task that they have allotted themselves is far from
coinciding with the extent of the subject of figure-drawing ;
and figure-drawing implicitly contains all other forms of
drawing. I forget now which painter of seascapes was once
asked what was the best way of learning to paint the sea. The
churlish reply came : c Go and draw the Antique ! * This
answer I would, myself, modify : I would replace the word
* Antique ' by the word * Nude ' ; why I would do so will
appear hereafter. 1 For the moment I will return to my
accusation.

Let us examine the case of the anatomists. I must hasten
to say that, far from being hostile to anatomical studies, I
favour them highly. It is many years since I read the often
splendid, but as frequently inconsequent, prose of Ruskin.
One thing, however, I remember among others : his
denunciation of anatomical study. He named it as the cause

1 pp. 85 and 164.
3109 B

2 RUSKIN

of artistic decadence. Whether at some subsequent date (as
was often his wont) he contradicted this statement, I know
not. At any rate so great was his confusion of thought, that
at the same date of writing, he, on the one hand, praised
devout study of hill-form or of flower by Turner or by
Giotto, eulogized their minute knowledge of natural things,
and the while condemned anatomical study, which is naught,
after all, but more perfect knowledge and understanding of
one part of natural manifestation the part always to us the
most interesting, for it constitutes our very being. I fear
Mr. Ruskin would have been sore put to it to point out the
exact degree to which he permitted nature study to be
carried. What reply would he have made if a curious
questioner had asked : ' Why, Mr. Ruskin, do you tell us to
study with such intentness the working of the mechanical
forces that shape a mountain, that govern the growth of
trees, and at the same time do you discourage us from
taking even a summary interest in the mechanical economy
of the very remarkable machine that is the human body ;
to say nothing of the shapes and logical construction of
animals ? '

The explanation of this incoherence on the part of Raskin's
teaching is, I believe, threefold. First, he was incapable of
concatenated thinking ; he was a rash enthusiast, friend of the
fervid and romantic word for its own sake ; the co-ordinate
logos was to him anathema ; hence his small praise of
Grecian things ; hence his ignoring of a whole side of
Italian Renaissance art. From this failing springs, barely
separated from it, the second : abstract form was scarcely
understood even dimly by him. Tie would state that French
scenery was superior to English, but then he hastened to add
that Swiss landscape was as superior to French as French was
to English, The appreciation of the formal qualities of
French landscape had manifestly escaped him. The question

EQUILIBRIUM 3

of Form I will treat later in its proper place. Third, and last,
I fear we must place a puritan prudery far removed from the
spirit of fair Hellenic days, when the athlete's frame was
almost worshipped for the glorious balance of its detailed
mass, powerful yet fraught with grace, a bright gleaming
symbol of the measure of ourselves, glad vanquisher of things
beside a hyacinth sea ; when, too, was worshipped that con-
jugate meeting of extremes, a woman's form, now flower-
like in shrinking frailty, now magnificent as lasting archi-
tecture, yet again, glad with light gaiety of youth and
Artemisian liberty. No, Mr. Ruskin, you praised unstintedly
the mantling tints of Turner, the glory of his evening skies,
his fatalist rendering of the steadfast mystery of the Alps ;
you did work, even great work, in freeing the people from
convention's thraldom ; you were a preacher of better things,
but of better things that you yourself understood but dimly.
A revolutionist, you had the faults and the qualities of your
calling. Erasmus thinks ; the narrower Luther evangelizes.

Ignorance is not an asset of art, nor is knowledge baneful
to it, though pseudo-knowledge inevitably is. One of the
essential conditions of artistry is : Just and ordered choice.
The painter, the sculptor, who does not know how to choose
the elements of his intended manifestation in a co-ordinate
and balanced way fails. This is true whatever be his artistic
tenets, whether he be impulsive or cerebral, romantic or
classic ; it is only the nature of the method of co-ordination
that varies. The anatomy of Michael-Angelo was at least as
masterly as that of his successors ; the latter failed, not
because they studied anatomy, as Ruskin would have us
think, but simply because they were inferior artists ; simply
because they had little or nothing to express by means of
their knowledge which was, itself, imperfect. Their know-
ledge of anatomy may have been was, especially at Bologna
of a degree quite sufficiently great ; it does not follow that

4 CHOICE OF THE ESSENTIAL

their knowledge of all the othef composing factors of a work
of art was equally so. In every masterpiece an unquestion-
able equilibrium is established between all its parts. If undue
stress be laid on the anatomical components, the work will be
inferior. Any great work fuses to an integral whole, and the
technique (I use the word in its most extended sense) that
makes its presence felt is one of low quality. I must not be
understood to mean that the work must be so finished up as
to render the method of painting invisible ; I have equally
in mind certain Leonardo perfections of * added fact ' and
other rapid, nigh on instantaneous indications, masterly in
reserve of means, fully suggestive by reason of faultless choice
of the essential. There lies the difference between the clever
running of a water-colour wash, in order to make a vain show
of technical address, and the sure noting of a great man
dominated, obsessed by the need of transcribing some chance
movement of a model, some strange glint of sunlight on
a distant sea, some arabesque of his own thought's imagining,
Ruskin told us that finish was added fact ; in this he was
right. 1 The pity is that he remained content with his
aphorism, and sought no further the real meaning of his
words. Is anatomy an illusion ? He might well have put
the question to himself ; but he did not. Had he clone so,
and done similarly on every like occasion, the instructive
value of his teaching would have been far greater. Raskin
might have said that when artists began to investigate
anatomy, they began to render their own task far more
difficult of execution. In this there may be some truth ;
though it rather tacitly implies that it is easier to be a Giotto
than to be a Michael-Angelo ; a proposition that I am

* On re-reading I hesitated over this last phrase. Is Ruskm's aphorism applicable
to other than representational arts? is it applicable to the art of primitive peoples?
I think the words still are applicable, thouglx 1 fear we should sometimes be forced to
attach to the word i fact 3 a meaning distinctly different from that which was in Runkin's

mind. See, for example, Chapter XL

TECHNIQUE FOR TECHNIQUE'S SAKE 5

inclined to reject. What is unquestionably correct is that it
becomes increasingly difficult to maintain the suggestive and
aesthetic value of a work when we increase the number of
expressive factors, and thus augment the chances of com-
mitting error. On the other hand, the increasing difficulty
of execution is to some degree balanced by the increasing
difficulty of criticism ; the critic becomes slightly confused
in presence of a bewildering appeal to too many separate
critical efforts. In the years following on 1500 a decadence
of art set in ; this decadence was in no way due to the study
of anatomy, but to the mental inefficiency of the artists
themselves. The human body was contorted in the c manner *
of Michael-Angelo ; the light and shade of Leonardo was
exaggerated if possible ; the Italian school then suffered
a domination of technique for technique's sake (it will be
noticed that I am including even type of pose under the
heading of ' technique ') ; a domination quite analogous to
the nineteenth-century English abuse of technique and tidi-
ness, in the abuse of carefully careless water-colour blots and
slick brush-work, which followed on the valid work of
Turner. The knowledge of Turner can hardly be arraigned
as responsible for the inefficiency of those who came after him !
If, then, I am favourable to the study of anatomy, why
am I discontented with the anatomists ? A short while back
I stated that aesthetic transmission of idea was largely based
on choice of the essential (and, of course, on proper co-
ordination of that choice ; which is really the same thing).
This is equivalent to saying that we must judge the relative
values of the different elements which we employ in our work ;
in other words, we must use them in order. It is this aesthetic
order of importance that is so little realized by the greater
number of writers on so-called artistic anatomy. The use of
a muscle is stated ; its shape is roughly described, as is the
mode of its attachment ; but no means is given to the

6 DEFECTS OF MODERN ANATOMISTS

unhappy student of exactly estimating its artistic importance*
The omo-hyoid muscle, the presence of which it is exceed-
ingly difficult to detect, and which may be looked on from
the painter's or the sculptor's point of view as literally non-
existent, is described by Marshall with almost the same care
as the important mass of the gastrocnemius. Then again the
diagrams are the work of undistinguished draughtsmen, who
have no care for the real and solid conformation of a bone or
muscle, which it is, of course, paramount for an artist to have
and hold in mind as a concrete and perfected idea. The
anatomical drawings of Leonardo, of Michael-Angelo meet
this need ; why are they not employed to illustrate artistic
anatomies ? Why is an c art student * supposed to learn art
from teaching and diagrams from which every trace of art
is carefully expurgated, and replaced by tidiness, flatness,
and time-tables ?

Why has the knowledge of anatomy failed to endow the
world with more complete, more learned figure-work than
the Greeks, almost ignorant of the subject, have bequeathed
to us ? The primal cause is to be sought undoubtedly in the
lessening nearness of art to daily life ; in the relegation of
art to a very secondary place in the social order of importance;
in the general attempt to thrust it out of sight into galleries
and museums ; in the divorce between art and religious
beliefs ; in a word, in the conversion of art from a reality into
an artificiality. In this way art becomes an unusual thing to be
pursued under difficulties ; it ceases to be a natural factor in
life and so is executed with less freedom and with less natural-
ness. The subconscious source, its inspiration, is less sure, less
unhesitating. The artist gropes, stops to think; is not swiftly,
unreasoningly productive. Then we must take into account
the undeniable inferiority of the northern nations in aesthetic
sensitiveness. The centre of European art production has
migrated ethnically. True, art has carried with it the Hellenic

THE CULT OF UGLINESS 7

tradition ; still the tradition is but a tradition ; the sacred
fire of its inspiration has flickered low and all but died away.

Yet with some of us still lingers a pagan joy in the sheer
and splendid beauty of things, in the sheen;, in the lithe
rhythm of a young girl's form, in the male massiveness of an
athlete's torso. If, O would-be draughtsman, you fail to
poise high above you an intangible abstract vision, quint-
essentialized from such mystic harmony, leave drawing,
leave art, which is no other than the hopeless striving to
realize unattainable abstraction, leave the exercise of art to
the few who, branded from birth, slave-like, are condemned
to such Sisyphus task.

A new temptation has now arisen, but is already waning
to an end. Ugliness, deliberate ugliness, has momentarily
occupied the throne of beauty. Eccentric accentuation of
the hideous has been the device of recenjt art ; and in ways
that we have never seen before, unless it be in some of the
more degraded manifestations of savage output. To cut
a definite section through history, to say here begins a certain
development, there just beyond lies its cause, is idle. Cause
and effect pass by indefinite gradations one into the other.
A clear marking of commencement can be but an illusion.
Nevertheless in this, as in other matters, approximation may
serve a practical end. Though arguments may readily be
produced in opposition to the statement, we shall not be far
wrong in saying that the cult of ugliness dates from the work
of Cezanne. But let us be very wary of attributing to him
any such credo as those multiple beliefs professed by his
pseudo-imitators. To certain, to many sides of the world's
beauty Cfeanne was profoundly alive ; and to him it was
a source of unceasing sorrow that his lack of deftness, his
insufficient knowledge, kept him from transcribing to the
full such beauty in his work. Cezanne may almost be likened

8 PSEUDO-SCIENCE

to some uncouth artistic seer to whom came passing visions
of fair form rounded by unmeaning night. He would have
been himself the first to condemn much, if not all, of the
aesthetic chaos that has succeeded to his time. His self-
styled followers have chosen the easier task of imitating his
defects ; they have neglected, in almost every case, to
reproduce his qualities.

A spirit of dislocation, a pseudo-scientific pretence at
analysis has crept during the last three decades into the realm
of art ; faulty ratiocination has ofttimes replaced subcon-
scious aesthetic judgement, for the most part unhappily
absent. To what extent should I take count, in a work such
as this, of the doings of a whole period of artistic history ?
The answer remains to a very great degree a matter of
personal opinion. After consideration, after taking into
account that the present movement (and that of the immediate
past) in art has not yet shown us its definite crystallization,
I have decided not to treat in this volume of the more unusual
theories concerning the use of form. I myself have assisted
at the birth of the many latter-day aesthetic conventions ;
I have myself been profoundly influenced by them. It will
for the moment be enough to allow this influence to mould
subconsciously the making of my thought. What 1 shall
write could scarcely have been written thirty years ago. The
ineffaceable thought-tendency is there, be it or be it not
openly manifest in a chapter bearing some such title as
c Drawing in Modern Art '. Years ago Eugfcne Carri&re
said to us, his class : 1 1 do not wish you to paint as 1 do, I
arn here to point out certain facts in the construction of the
figure which I must find rendered in your work ; facts which
I have always found rendered in valid work of all periods.
How you render them is your own affair/ Can I do better
than follow his eclecticism ? Some of my readers may com-
plain that I have not fulfilled the promise of my title-page

CEZANNE 9

when they fail to find indexed a chapter on the * Art and
Craft of (say) Cubistic Drawing '. Let them bear with me ;
my subject is already large ; this volume would become
unwieldy were I to crowd within its covers every possibility
of this kind. I will limit myself to an incomplete statement
of what my own^ artistic experience has taught me to be the
essentials of the craft, whatever may be the particular work-
shop, in which we elect to work, whatever may be the trade-
mark we write above the door. I will leave largely aside the
tendencies which as yet are uncrystallized ; I will restrict
myself almost entirely in the matter of examples to past and
firmly established work ; and if dissident voices reach me,
I will content myself with asking : c Have you noticed how
curiously modern Claude Lorrain's drawings appear to us,
or how little out of date certain fragments of archaic Greek
statuary seem to be ? '

We are all, willy nilly, consciously or unconsciously the
artistic children of Cezanne ; or if we are not, we are simply
a quarter of a century or more behind the times. To be a child
of Cezanne is not, as perhaps too many think, to break with
the tradition of the great painting of the past ; on the con-
trary, few have been more fervent admirers of the old masters
than was Cezanne ; his unceasing desire was to be worthy
of taking his place one day in the august assembly of the
Louvre.

Nothing is more dangerous than the isolated phrase, than
the aphorism that stands alone deprived of all enlightening
context. Cezanne once cried out : ' Ces musses ! les
tableaux des musses ! nous ne voyons plus la nature, nous
revoyons des tableaux/ (Oh, these picture galleries ! the
pictures of these galleries ! we no longer see Nature, we
re-see pictures.) Thus stated alone this phrase betrays the
thought of its author almost completely. So completely did
it betray his intention that, but a short time after his death,

3109 C

io AESTHETIC FORMULAE OF FAR EAST

a section of his enthusiastic disciples armed with the seeming
authority of the master demanded the burning of the Louvre ;
a Bastille-like destruction of all anciens regimes. Yet the
thought of Cezanne is really evident enough.

In striking contrast with the vaguely formulated aesthetic
tenets of Europe there exists on another portion of the globe
a marvellously co-ordinated system of plastic laws, of laws
considered inviolable even to-day, although they count some
fifteen hundred years of existence ; perhaps it is because
they count so great a period of time since their inception,
that they are no longer, indeed they never were, a matter of
opinion ; they are an essentialized result of the aesthetic
convictions, not of a person, but of a whole race to whom
art was from the beginning an inherent part of life. Is it
needful to say that I speak of the two great nations of the
Farther East, of China, and of Japan who borrowed from the
former the bases of her artistic credo ? Two reasons lead me
to develop somewhat at length the position that the Extreme
Orient takes up with regard to the plastic arts. The first of
these reasons is the more evident one ; it is that I fail to see
in what way the general formulae of the Chinese or Japanese
aesthetic can be refuted. The second reason is a more subtle
one. I would call in the aid of a discussion of this aesthetic
in so many ways so different in its completeness from our
own unordered attempts to create an atmosphere which
I would fain conjure up so that it may, in a subtle way,
permeate all subsequent explanations that I hope to make.
For the moment I must be content with calling attention to
the profound significance of this Far Eastern art, to its keen
sense of the insoluble junctions that exist between the
rhythmic sweep of a brush stroke and the ultimate problems
of the universe. Such a view of art, it is hardly an exaggera-
tion to say, is wholly unknown in Europe. I may here be

NECESSITY OF ABSTRACT SPECULATION n

accused of quitting the ground of practical drawing instruc-
tion .to enter on that of metaphysical speculation. If I be so
accused, I must remind my reader that the title of this book
is : ' The Art and Craft of Drawing ' ; now by Art I mean
Art as distinct from Craft ; otherwise my title would contain
a redundancy. Art is essentially an abstract thing ; were my
aim simply to propound recipes for the production of colour-
able imitations of the human or other forms by means of
lead pencil or other media, all abstract discussion would
assuredly be beside the mark. But such is not my aim ;
indeed I would rather take up arms in the very contrary
cause ; I would try in. part to suppress the already too great
mass of drab and meaningless monotony of tidy work turned
out by the too numerous Art (?) Schools of England. Now
what concrete differences can we trace between the drawing
of a great master and that possibly more correct one by some
prize student whom a ruthless fate will subsequently condemn
to oblivion ? We are obliged to fall back on abstractions
before we can determine the very evident difference of
artistic value that exists between the two. This book is only
addressed to those who will accept the postulated position that
a mental attitude is at the basis of all artistic production of
worth ; that though one side of art be craft yet the other and
greater element of it, that which inspires the craft itself, is
intellectual, intangible, spiritual. What better way can I find
of creating here and now this atmosphere of transcendent
things than by shortly expounding the secular Chinese doc-
trine of the Tao ? How shall I put it better forth than by
translating into English the short and wonderfully able con-
densation that M. Chavannes has given of it ?

6 A European intellect but little used to the modes of
thought of the Extreme East hesitates to transpose into our
languages, designed for the expression of other thoughts, the

12 THE TAO

concise and energetic formulae in which this antique philo-
sophy finds expression, ... A unique principle reigns over
and is realized in the world in relation to which it Is at the
sam6 time transcendent and immanent. This principle is
that which has neither form nor colour, nor has it sound ; it
is that which exists before all things, that which is unnameable ;
yet it is that which appears among ephemeral beings, con-
straining them to follow a type, impressing upon them a
reflection of the supreme reason. Here and there In Nature
we perceive the luminous flashes by which the presence of
this principle is made manifest to the wise, and we conceive
some vague idea of its consummate majesty* But once these
rare heights are attained, the spirit worships silently, well
knowing that human words are incapable of expressing this
entity that encloses within itself the universe and more than
the universe. To symbolize this principle, at least in some
degree, we apply to it a term, which if it do not indicate the
unfathomable essence of this mystery, does to some extent
express the manner in which it makes itself known to us ;
we call the principle : The Way ; The TAO. The Way . * the
word first implies the idea of Power in Movement, of Action ;
the final principle is not a motionless term, of which the dead
perfection will, at most, satisfy the needs of pure reason ;
it is the life of a ceaseless becoming, at the same time relative,
because it is changing, and absolute, because it is eternal
The Way . . . again the word suggests the Idea of the fixed
and certain direction, of which all stages succeed to one
another in determined order ; the universal * becoming * is not
a vain agitation ; it is the realization of a law of harmony.'

Without understanding this vast naturalism by which is
governed the splendid hierarchy of Heaven, of Earth, of
Mankind, we cannot hope to penetrate to the significance of
the Six Laws of Painting formulated by Si<5 Ho, critic and
painter in late fifth-century China, These Laws have

SIE HO'S SIX LAWS 13

governed Chinese painting from then till now. Of a surety
they are worthy of some consideration. They are expressed
with that extreme and almost cryptic conciseness in which the
Chinese language delights ; hence their transference to an
occidental tongue is far from easy,
i st. K'i yun cheng tong : Consonance of spirit engenders

the movement (of life).

2nd. Kou fa yong pi : The law of bones by means of the
^ brush.

Cr~3rd. Ying wou siang hing : Form represented through con-
C formity with beings.

r^4th, Souei lei fou ts'ai : According to the similitude (of
P^ objects) distribute colour.

5th. King ying wei tche : Arrange the lines and attribute to

them their hierarchic places.
6th. Tch'ouan mou yi sie : Propagate forms by making them

pass into the drawing.

In the light of the preceding discussion of the nature of
/^ the Tao, these cryptic utterances take on shape and signifi-
^cance. The Spirit's consonance or rhythm constitutes the
creative element of movement of life. The unstaying flow is
-^naught but a tangible manifestation of this rhythm which
v5permeates all immensity. Harmonious motion of the spirit
QQ engenders the perpetual flow of things ; they are the con-
sequence themselves of its action ; they would disappear into
nothingness were the flow to stop. The artist should, it
follows, perceive, before all things, and over and across the
^movement of shapes, the rhythm of the spirit, the cosmic
^principle they express ; beyond appearances he should seize
upon the Universal. When Mr. Hatton writes about drawing,
he gives us excellent but incomplete advice ; he tells us :
* The drawing must be made in as long lines as possible,
there must be no patching together of little bits.' This
contains only a small part of the truth. In reality it is not

i 4 SIE HO'S SIX LAWS

the length of the drawn line that is important^ it is the rhythm
of it that Si 6 Ho would insist on as being a counterpart of the
rhythm of the Tao. A ' patched ' line will assuredly be void
of rhythm ; on the other hand it is not because we determine
to draw a long line that that line must necessarily be instinct
with rhythmic life. Before we can hope to reproduce such
rhythm we must, so to say, intoxicate ourselves both with the
abstract conception of universal harmony and with the parti-
cular manifestation of it that we have at the moment before
our eyes. Then, and then only, can we hope to create on our
paper some distant, not replica of the universal harmony, but
vague foreshadowing of its ever unattainable perfection. A
few days ago I tried to draw in a London Art SchooL After
a short time I got up and went out, too horribly oppressed
by the nullity of my surroundings. No spark of aesthetic
intelligence illuminated the thirty faces that surrounded me.
Their owners were there because it had occurred to them to
6 take up art '. Right and left of me, pseudo-industry dis-
played itself by temporary sketching in some half-inch of
weak line, as a trial, as an attempt to find if it would * do '.
It generally disappeared more swiftly than it came, erased by
a most necessary piece of india-rubber. No kind of applica-
tion was evident ; a sad uniformity of unintelligent action
pervaded the room. In vain one sought some sign of that
strained sympathy with the essentials of the harmonious
balance of the model's forms ; some sign of that * consonance
of spirit ' that c engenders the movement of life * ; and truly
the drawings about me were dead, lifeless enough. What was
a discussion concerning universal rhythm to such a crowd of
nonentities ? What, in consequence, was the value of their
drawings ? Neither a long line nor a short line will influence
the value of your work. The laws concerning the use and
shape of dots are complex and very complete in Japanese
teaching of art ; and a dot is essentially a short element.

SIE HO'S SIX LAWS 15

Dots arranged without rhythm are worthless ; in rhythmic
surface-sequence they are valuable aesthetic factors. One is
perhaps justified in re-editing the antique maxim of Sie Ho
into a first law of draughtsmanship for Europeans : Strive to
display the sense of universal rhythm through the particular
rhythm studied on the model. These pages can, indeed, without
any betrayal of their nature, be described as being a study
and an analysis of the details of plastic rhythm.

Si6 Ho himself passes in his second law to the consideration
of the composition of rhythm. The law is (it is well to repeat) :
The law of bones by means of the brush. This figurative
language of the East demands some explanation. In these
occult terms Sie Ho means to call attention to the necessity
for the painter, once he has seized the real nature of the
elements of the world, to penetrate to the secret folds and
centres of things and beings where the Tao lies hidden. The
expression, by means of the brush, of this secret governing of
things becomes confounded with the demonstration of the
internal construction. In this way the artist evokes the feeling
of the tangible object. His task is to define the essential
structure which gives to things their transitory individuality
wherein the eternal principle is reflected. It is only after he
has discovered the profound meaning of appearances ; after
he has found that it lies in the junction between the rhythm
of the spirit with the movement of life ; it is only after he has
conquered the possibility of expression by holding and con-
ceiving the essentials of internal structure, that he can hope
to reproduce form In its conformity with the beings of the earth.
Here we are in contact with an excessively ancient Chinese
notion, that of Saintliness in man. The Saint in China is one
who is possessed of perfect conformity with his own nature
or what comes to the same with the universal principle and
order which is in him. By this very conformity the Holy
Man becomes the equal of Heaven and of Earth ; by a

1 6 SIE HO'S SIX LAWS

similar conformity the painted semblance takes on more than
the value of a simple representation ; it becomes a veritable
creation realized in the principle, itself, of the Tao, This is
evident when we remember that as each being or each object
represented in the work of art is, according to our sup-
position, in complete conformity with its own inherent nature,
the work of art becomes automatically the image of a perfect
world wherein the essential principles balance one another
in harmonious proportion. But the strict application of the
spirit of the second and third laws of Si Ho must inevitably
lead the painter to the study of the essentials of the form ;
hence to an astonishing synthesis of them, which indeed we ,
find never to be lacking in the masterpieces of the Far East.

The fourth law now appears as an almost logical conse-
quence of the preceding ones. Distribute colour according
to the similitude of objects. The essence of structure being
disclosed, perfect form being defined, it remains to clothe
these essentials with the living and evanescent mantle of
tint ; and this tint should be meted out in accord with the
likeness of the beings and of the objects. Being in accord
with them, colour also must evoke, by choice and measure^ the
fundamental elements of all. It may appear curious that it
is now, and now only, that the Chinese aesthete begins to
consider the * ensemble ', the composition as we might in-
sufficiently say, for I think here is contained more than we
are usually inclined to include within the signification of the
term. True, the text of the fifth law runs : Arrange the lines
and attribute to them their hierarchic places. In other words
the artist is enjoined to carry out in the arrangement of the
lines, masses, and other pictorial elements through the space
where he is at work, the same suggestion of immanent natural
harmony which he has learnt to be omnipresent. Between the
shape of the surface and the distribution of the pictorial ele-
ments the harmonious principle of the universe finds renewed

SIE HO'S SIX LAWS 17

expression. When the Tao is thus realized throughout the
entire work the artist has of a truth created ; and legends
similar to that of Pygmalion are not lacking ; legends that
tell of the dragon or genie coming to sudden life beneath the
master's brush and quitting silk or paper to disappear in
swirling clouds. 1 By thus creating forms which contain within
them the essence itself of the universe the picture becomes
a real propagation of forms (6th Law) ; the difference
between the natural and the humanly created form disappears,
for in each case the form becomes, as it were, no more than
the external vesture of one and the same thing, the essential
principle, the Tao. Thus there is complete welding, complete
homogeneity between natural and artistic creation. There is
no longer an aesthetic ; the aesthetic is the same thing as, is
identical with, general philosophy, which itself is indistin-
guishable from the whole phenomenal universe, so interwoven
together are the comprehending and perceptive values.

During the history of the world two completed artistic
systems have been constructed, and two only. I speak of the
Chinese, and of the Greek and its descendants. 3 Doubtless
Egyptian Art was a great and enduring wonder ; doubtless
Assyrian Art reached a high point of excellence before it
passed away ; the various branches of the art of the Indian
peninsula have a character of their own ; still none of these
aesthetics has adequately covered the whole area of plastic
manifestation. As a rule they have remained stylises and
decorative, none of them has developed a naturalist school
and, as an almost inevitable concomitant of it, a school of
landscape art. That a certain voluntary stylization of
natural things may lead to a more or less decorative result,

1 See Chapter XI for ' participation ' in art.

* I am not for the moment concerned with the vast and debatable subject of
primitive ', ' prelogical ' art. See Chap. XI.
3109 D

1 8 GREEK AND CHINESE AESTHETIC

that this result may enable us to express more abstract
aesthetic intentions than those within the reach of a purely
natural school is without doubt true. It is not here that I can
discuss this delicate and complex point. None the less, arts
that aim too soon, too irremediably at stylization executed
by means of traditional formulae, condemn themselves to
final stagnation and to a narrow field of influence, however
great may have been their achievement.

The Greek aesthetic was free, it admitted the study of
nature, it has formed the base, it generated the immanent
spirit of European art in its entirety. It penetrated towards
the East, encountered the aplastic creed of Buddhism in
search of a formal aesthetic, and seems, in the sculptures of
Gandhara, to have influenced to some degree the develop-
ment of Indian Art. But Asiatic thought differs from
European, the generating axis of Hellas lay to the west and
not to the east, and while the magnificent schools of Italy
and France owe their being to Greek Ideals, the early
Grecian penetration of Asia waned and died away, leaving
no appreciable trace.

The most cogent reason for this failure was that, once on
the confines of Central Asia, Greece found herself in presence
of a most redoubtable adversary ; a great and even then
highly organized aesthetic barred her progress, an aesthetic
more openly abstract than her own, hence more fitted to the
metaphysical east where it had its birth. No more than the
Greek does the Chinese aesthetic close the door to nature
study, on the contrary, as we have seen above, it teaches
profound delving in search of the hidden secrets that govern
the natural world ; but, characteristically Asiatic, it leaves
aside the mediate logos of Greece, whence has sprung the
long theory of European science, and passes straightway to
an intuitive metaphysic that would at the cost of one sole
hypothesis eliminate the unravelling of the physical complex*

I

p

8,
*s

bo

WANT OF FIGURE-WORK AMONG CELTS 19

We cannot help but feel that the Chinese position is the more
essentially artistic, if indeed such a phrase have a meaning.

Both Greece and China have represented the human
figure, each in its own faultless way, though each is so
different from the other. The representation of ourselves
would seem to be a sine qua non of dominating art. The
Celtic, the Germanic, races were unable to produce a figure
art without the fecundating influence of Greece, though in our
comparative ignorance of Greek origins it would be safer to
say that the northern parts of Europe never produced ade-
quate figure presentation till they inherited the Mediter-
ranean and Greek tradition. Celt and Scandinavian were
skilful in pattern-weaving, but in the art of representing
objects they remained negligible. Indeed it would seem
necessary to institute rather a sharp boundary between draw-
ing as an art of representation, and the conception and execu-
tion of decorative design l ; after all, it obviously requires less
subtle observation to produce fairly well-balanced geometri-
cal inventions than it does to follow, with a view to subsequent
reproduction, the intricate rhythms and equilibria of living
forms. Egypt and Assyria were too special in their arts to
leave lineal descendants. Their- arts, intimately attached to
their religions, could hardly persist when the beliefs were dead.
Tens of centuries had frozen Egyptian Art to a hieratic
formula fitted to the valley of the Nile, and when it at last
expired it passed utterly away, for no living truths remained
to be handed on as a heritage to future generations, to future
peoples. Here and there in the history of Egyptian Art come
outbreaks of naturalistic tendency ; such had to be the case
in order to conserve the wonderful verity of the wilful
schematization, but such outbreaks would seem to have been
almost intentionally suppressed, and in the thousands of years
of its exercise this art scarcely deviated from its strict and

1 See Chapter XI on Primitive Art.

20 EGYPTIAN ART

decorative path. The annexed reproduction (Fig. i) may
almost be taken as an example of extreme Egyptian natural-
ism, at least in definite work ; though the plaster head
(Fig. 2) is still more natural. It is, however, one of a few
isolated fragments ; perhaps it was only destined to play the
part of a preliminary study to a work in which the variety
of nature was to be severely suppressed anew.

At this point it will perhaps be tedious to discuss in general
terms the exact ideals of various arts that will be examined
during the course of this work. Of the two main aesthetics
the Chinese,, a conscious aesthetic, has been roughly sketched
above ; a few words must be said about the more familiar
and less conscious Greek ideal, and about the growth of our
own from it.

Seemingly Greek Art reached its apogee before its prin-
ciples were discussed, and, were not the example of China
before us, we might be tempted to think of such discussion
as necessarily linked to sterile decadence. Greek Art, like the
Greek religion, may be termed non-metaphysical. It is the
offspring of a people intensely, instinctively alive to the out-
ward balance and beauty of things, of which they readily
found an agile transcript unhesitating in its reduction of
mystery to the measure of man. Abstractions were rare till
Platonic times ; the theogony, to the human scale, was
readily presented in the human image, and formed almost the
total sum of the artistic subjects. Such a clear-cut outlook
was favourable to the development of a perfected plastic art
fundamentally simplified in kind ; and, indeed, the rise
of Greek Art was extremely rapid. On the over-intense
simplicity of this stem was grafted the complexity first of
Christian, then of scientific thought, with the result that
to-day we have no definite aesthetic orientation* Irresistibly
the Greek basis of our civilization claims belief in its ideals ;
but to these ideals the complexity of modern thought was

FIG. 2. EGYPTIAN HEAD IN

ABOUT B.C. I37O

PLASTER

Found at El Amarna. Perhaps of Amenophis III.
Shows extraordinarily natural treatment leading to the
supposition that the use of the traditional formula was
quite voluntary

GREEK ART 21

unknown, for it there is no place in them. European Art
may almost be termed, at least in its higher efforts, one long
hesitation between Hellenism and Mysticism. But Europe is
essentially inartistic, especially its northern races, who, as we
have seen, when left to themselves, produced naught but
meaningless design. When later they learnt to reproduce the
aspect of things animate and inanimate, reproduction of out-
ward semblance, or at most of emotion, became almost their
single aim. It has been reserved for quite recent times to feel
vaguely the need of other and deeper artistic intent, and to
grope, in a blind and disorganized way, for some few of those
foundations of art that were catalogued two thousand years
ago in China. What will be the outcome of this new self-
consciousness of European Art ? it is impossible to say. Will
the Hellenic tradition amalgamate with an aesthetic which has
a transcendental origin, amalgamate to complete homo-
geneity ? I fear that it will be many a day before such an end
is fulfilled.

Now that this unquiet state is realized, now that an intense
interest is taken by many in the ideals of the Far East, it
becomes increasingly difficult to write such a book as this,
much more difficult than it would have been fifty or more
years ago. Then all was fairly plain sailing. A few embarrass-
ments cropped up, it is true, concerning the exact estimation
of the worth of * primitive * drawing, and a drawing by
Michael-Angelo would have had to be co-ordinated with one
by Brygos, the ideals of Ingres and of Delacroix would have
had to be reconciled. But now all such aims and ideals must
be brought into just relation with those which discard to a
greater or less degree the outward aspect of things and pro-
pose to exhibit inner and transcendental significance.

Recapitulation

Artistic anatomies fail to give the student a just idea of the relative con-
structional importance of the facts dealt with ; the combination of two or
more anatomic facts to make one aesthetic fact is hardly ever indicated. Figure-
drawing is the best method of study even for those not devoting themselves
finally to it. Ruskin's praise of nature study and condemnation of anatomy is
incoherent. Ignorance is not an asset of art, nor is knowledge baneful. Just
and ordered choice is at the base of artistic execution. Equilibrium should be
established among all the parts of a work of art. A great work is integral in
its nature. Finish is added fact. Knowledge is not a cause of decadence,
though it may be a concomitant of the end of ascendance. We are obliged to
help out by anatomical knowledge where the Greeks succeeded more intui-
tively ; art was then nearer daily life. Cezanne was an uncouth artist seer.
Modern pseudo-science in art is a cause of inefficiency. The present moment
is an important period of aesthetic change. The insidious influence of the
ideals of the Far East on modern European Art is more and more marked.
An explanation is given of the Chinese aesthetic doctrine of the Tao, or
universal moulding essence, the universal harmony which it is the aim of
Chinese Art to suggest through the external appearance of things. The Six
Painting Laws of Sie Ho are quoted. The draughtsman should strive to display
the sense of universal rhythm through the particular rhythm of the model.
An explanation of the Six Laws is given. The meeting of the Greek and
Chinese ideals. The want of figure art among the Celtic and Germanic
races is remarked. Greek Art, like Greek religion, may be termed non-meta-
physical art.

II

RELATIONS BETWEEN COMPOSITION AND

DRAWING

KT us define our terms as far as possible. Composition
is a poor and misleading word. It is, however, conse-
crated by long use, and to replace it would be confusing.
The word composition gives the impression of building up, of
assembling, and placing together of parts. Though this may
be true of the later steps of picture-making, it should not be
true of the principal structure of the arrangement. The main
facts of a composition should present themselves simul-
taneously, together with their relation to the surface to be
covered, as one single act of the painter's imagination. I have
little or no hesitation in saying that the more complete the
first idea is the less it is necessary to modify it afterwards and
the fewer the gaps that have to be filled up in it the more
valuable will be the final result. Though the taking of
infinite pains be a part and parcel of great art, the pains should
all be taken before and not during the execution. The great
picture is painted easily, but as the result of unceasing study.
A picture that demands repeated alteration and painful effort
on the part of the artist will hardly ever be a success. Art
should be a florescence of the spirit, a bright-tinted embellish-
ment of life ; it should pass light-footed over great pro-
fundities, yet should bear before it in outstretched hands a
fair symbol of their essence. The certainty with which the
early Chinese monochrome brush-drawings were executed is
no mean factor in the- fascination that, more than ever to-day,
they possess for us. That this certainty was the fruit of long
and categoric thought their authors themselves have told us.

24 THE ARTIST'S STATE OF MIND

Indeed such mastery of varied brush technique allied to, one
with, inward intention, as the work of say Mou-hsi (about
1250) or Liang K'ai (first half of thirteenth century) dis-
plays, can only result from long meditation aided by an
already secular tradition. Would it not be well to quote here,
in these early pages, a few of the notes that the son of Kwo
Hsi (probably died about 1080) made of the sayings and
painting methods of his father.

When Kwo Hsi intended to work, his first acts were to
open the windows, dust his desk, wash his hands, clean his
ink-slab. Meanwhile his spirit became calm, his thought
tranquil and creative. Then, and only then, did he begin to
work. I would draw particular attention to the importance
here attached to the state of mind which is necessary to happy
composition, to just and valuable inspiration. In England
especially, painting is too often looked on as a craft that may
be learnt, provided one has a certain gift that way. Tidiness
of workmanship is too often the measure of excellence ; even
the seeming carelessness of a water-colour sketch must be
deftly executed. Whether this deftness be empty, or applied
to the rendering of higher things, is a question seldom asked.
All that is thought to be necessary is that the deftness, or the
careful detailing, should be there, and should adequately
transcribe the outward semblance of things. Now and again
some count will be taken of the emotion of the artist ; but
truly emotional work is rare in the British school.

I have said above that a picture of worth should almost
execute itself without trouble to the painter. But 1 did not
say that it should be carried through in one uninterrupted
action* Kwo Hsi often left a painting aside for many days
before working on it anew. Art is not a mechanical trade, it
is a continued creation of the spirit. At one moment creation
is easy, ideas are generated one knows not how, the work
proceeds happily and without hitch, line and accent are

IMPORTANCE OF SPONTANEITY 25

placed justly, values fall into their places. Then comes a
sudden instant when the productive machinery halts and
stops ; the wise worker lays down his brush or his pencil
without striving to continue. Should he try to go on, the
creative act will turn into a conscious effort of the intelligence.
By applying his knowledge he can construct a result, he will
decide that an accent should be placed there, that here a mass
wants balancing according to the approved laws of aesthetics,
but this result will be cold, wanting in that convincing sem-
blance of life that stamps all valid work with its imprimatur.
It is in this way that the commercial artist works, the illus-
trator who has learnt his business and possesses his gift of
producing a workmanlike representation of objects, a gift
which may be helped out by a second, a skilful fancy in
designing or in inventing. To such men I would willingly
deny the name of artist ; yet they make up almost the whole
of the so-called artist community, especially in England.
These men can produce work to order at almost any moment,
unless they be incapacitated by some evident cause such as
fatigue ; to them the state of mind to which Kwo Hsi returns
unceasingly in his sayings is unknown, it is not needful for
them to * nourish in their souls gentleness, beauty, and
magnanimity ' ; nor need they be c capable of understanding
and of reconstructing within themselves the soul-states and
emotions of their fellow men \ $hen an artist has succeeded
in understanding his fellows, he will hold that comprehension
unconsciously at his brush-tip, Kwo Hsi assures us.

With a delight in imaged analogy natural to an Oriental,
Kwo Hsi tells us that water is the blood of the mountains,
grass and trees their hair, mists and clouds their divine
colouring. He tells us also that a mountain is powerful, and
that its form should be high and rugged with free movements
like those of a man at ease. Again he tells us that ^ water is
a living thing, its form is profound and tranquil, or sweet and

3109 E

26 ART A SYMBOLISM

unified, or vast as an ocean, or full with the fullness of flesh,
or circled like wings ; or, darting forth, it is elegant ; or,
rapid and violent, it is as an arrow. Sometimes it runs, rich,
from a fountain afar off making cascades, weaving mists over
the skies, casting itself upon the earth where those who fish
are calm and at ease. Grass and trees look upon it with joy,
and are even as sweet veiled women . . * veiled with mist.
Again as sunlight floods the valley it is radiant, sparkling
with delight. Such are the living aspects of water,

What lesson should we learn from the poetic vision of
Kwo Hsi ? We should learn to banish the commonplace from
art ; we should learn that art is essentially a symbolism, that
its end is in nowise mere reproduction, that our every line of
drawing, our every conception of arrangement should be
filled with intent, with suggestive power. It is the province
of the plastic arts to compress within the nature of a line, of
an arrangement of shapes, of a harmony of tint, an entire out-
look upon life and thought. If this outlook be not clear and
decided on the part of the artist, it will not find expression in
his work ; and skilful though this work may be, still it will
remain valueless and void. Would you learn to draw ? learn
first to think and feel intensely. Ah ! there is just the hitch, for
the poet is born and not only made. Yet the birthright alone
is not enough. As I said above, it must be cultivated with
untiring care, much of technique must be painfully learnt,
only a small proportion of it is intuitive, and even the greater
part of that intuition itself is due to prolonged habit of already
recognized technical means. In some arts, as for example the
Egyptian, individual technical innovation was almost com-
pletely suppressed. Though the whole of the craft of plastic
execution cannot be learnt, yet a very great part of it may be
taken and should be taken from the experience of our pre-
decessors. Of a truth originality is really confined to a slightly
novel arrangement of already known facts and methods.

DRAWING AND COMPOSITION 27

It is obvious why I have termed c composition ' a poor and
misleading word. It should evidently denote all the first steps
taken in producing a work of art. It is impossible to dis-
integrate the component acts of composing. Even though we
agree to set aside as a thing apart (and are we justified in so
doing?) all the processes of general culture of the artist's
mind, still in the particular act of composing a particular
drawing or picture, or rather, as I prefer to say, in the birth
of the conception of the arrangement of the lines, areas, and
so on that make it up, the intervention of the abstract meaning
of the arrangement cannot be overlooked ; for were the
arrangement carried out otherwise, the meaning of it would
be different. I take the word * composition ' to denote :
The arrangement of the elements of plastic expression with
a view to satisfying our sense of balance, and to expressing
certain abstractions natural to the artist's mind. In the case
of a picture or a drawing the edge or frame of the surface is
of course taken into consideration as one of the elements.
Sculpture and architecture are more or less free of this condi-
tion. I object to the suggestion of ' making up ' inherent in
the term ; the main arrangement should be simultaneously
conceived as a whole.

What then may Drawing be ? Can it be absolutely dis-
tinguished from Composition ? To the latter question I am
inclined to reply that I think not. On the other hand one
may be quite an excellent draughtsman and yet an inferior
composer. I myself draw with greater ease and certainty than
I compose ; others and I believe the case to be more usual
compose better, and with more ease than they draw. Yet
without a highly developed sense of rhythmic balance one
can neither draw nor compose ; the logical rationalist would
be inclined to say that the same sense which allows of rhythmic
balance being attained among the different volumes of a

28 PAINTING AND SCULPTURE

figure, from which balance comes truth of pose and movement,
or in other words, the major part (if not indeed the whole) of
excellent drawing, that this same sense should allow of similar
balanced arrangement being attained over the surface that is
to be pictorially decorated. However, this is not the case.
The sub-classifications of the creative artist's mind are ex-
tremely complicated. This matter I have treated somewhat
extensively in Relation in Art* I will only briefly touch upon
it here. In that book I have called attention to the fact that
the poses imagined by great painters are always sculpturally
satisfactory, that is, that if we make a clay model from the pose
it will always be found to be balanced in composition when
looked at from any point of view, and not only when looked
at from the normal view-point determined for the picture.
One might conclude from this that every painter of worth is
a potential sculptor ; to a certain extent this may be true, but
it is not so entirely. The complete expression of the sculptor's
mind is shut within the limits of his single figure, or at most
group of figures* Though a painter's conception of a pose
may make satisfactory sculpture it does not completely
express what he has to say ; part of his natural method of
expression consists in establishing relations between pose and
background, in developing certain arabesque relations which
have their place in the less strenuous art of painting, but
which would constitute feebleness in the male and architec-
tural art of sculpture. Hence we at once see a differentiation
between the two types of mind* I myself conceive more
naturally a free, self-contained pose fitted to sculptural
realization, than I do a pose imagined as an integrant part of
an accompanying background and extended decorative unit.
In short, I think we may safely say that the power of con-
ceiving balance in three dimensions (and not only in a
schematic way in two over the surface of the picture) is an

* Clarendon Press, 1925,

FIG. 3. Baigneuse. Detail of ' Le Bain Turc'. Ingres

Louvre

PRECISION AND FLUIDITY 29

essential of perfected art ; but that, this basic fact apart, there
is difference enough of type between the imagination of the
painter and that of the sculptor.

Many painters such as, for example, Ingres whose .' Bai-
gneuse ' might be translated without change into equally satis-
fying marble make use of a style of drawing which attaches
them closely to the confraternity of sculptors, but the greater
number grade off towards a more or less total elimination of
the precise formal element, and supply its lack by charm of
colouring, or mystery of light and shade. The more emotional
an artist is in a disordered way the less use will he have
for the precision of formal expression. Where in this descend-
ing scale of formal precision shall we say that drawing ceases
to be drawing ? It is obviously impossible to say ; though the
difference between the precise shapes of Ingres and the
fluidity of the * Mountain after a Summer Shower ' (Fig. 4),
attributed to Kao Jan Hai or Mi Fu, is more than patent.
Yet the eastern landscape in no way gives us the impression
of being the work of a poor draughtsman, as indeed it is
not. Why should this be ? A sense of balance of mass and
of rhythmic contour need not of necessity express itself with
the uncompromising exactitude of a Grecian vase drawing,
with the faultless precision of a Leonardo silver-point. Power
and knowledge need not always be pressed into the front
rank, they may be gracefully dissimulated, modestly veiled,
hidden behind a seeming indifference to their worth, and we
feel with ease what inspired Kwo Hsi to state that a mountain
deprived of clouds and mist would be even as springtime
bereft of her flowers. The danger lies in relying upon the
lack of precision of an enveloped technique (seep. 2 52 ^Relation
in Art)) to hide ignorance of constructional fact and rhythm.
An ill-armed critic may be led astray by this deceit, but fully
instructed scrutiny detects the fraud. The road to masterly
drawing is long and arduous even for the unusually gifted.

3 o MEANING OF DRAWING

indeed only by them may Its higher paths be trodden. But even
moderate success demands much long and tedious work, much
direct vanquishing of difficulties that the faint-hearted avoid
by some plausible technical trick ; few, very few have the
courage to pursue the struggle year after long year.

In the ' Mountain after a Summer Shower * it is not easy
to decide whence exactly comes our impression of the capable
draughtsmanship of the painter. Contour there is none. Mass
rhythms are suggested by exquisite gradings of tint. Drawing
does not consist in the establishment of an outline ; nor does
it consist in any form of technique. Drawing is a loose term
to which we must accord at least two meanings. It consists
first of all in a perfect comprehension of the structural nature
of objects ; and secondly (and here only begins the aesthetic
interest) in the power of expressing thought and emotion by
means of a writing down of such structural nature. As to the
method employed In such writing down. It comes far after-
wards in rank of importance. How many people place it
before all else ! In the ' Mountain after a Summer Shower >
a contourless method is chosen ; but this does not prevent
the gradings of value-variation (p. 192) from conjuring up
the exact modelling of the surfaces they seem to overlie.
Once the artist holds within his mind the conformation of
the object he would draw, what tool or what method of
drawing he employs Is matter of small importance. The
difficulty is in conception, not in execution. Faulty execution
is the result of faulty, of Incomplete conception. It Is no
* easier * to veil objects behind mist than it is to draw them
clearly and explicitly. The main secret of Turner's mystery
was an unflagging study of shapes and a remarkable gift of
innumerable Imagining of them. This modelling of the
shapes in our example Is probably not the only reason why
we feel that we are looking at the work of a master draughts-
man ; the perfection of the compositional balance would also

IMITATION OF NATURE 31

seem to play Its part in producing our impression ; but here
we enter upon the delicate marches that lie betwixt the realms
of drawing and composition where discussion is at fault. Art
invariably defies ultimate analysis ; one of the reasons of its
very being is to supplement the deficiencies of categoric
thought.

The most vexed question in connexion with drawing is
that of the degree to which accurate representation of the
appearance of objects should be practised. To this question
no reply can be made ; unless indeed the following discussion
be considered to afford a solution in part of the difficulty.
Neither open modification nor exact reproduction of appear-
ance can be taken alone as a criterion of drawing excellence.
One of the primal factors of personal artistic production is
the satisfactory balance between the unchanged appearance
of things and the particular modifications that the artist's
temperament obliges him to superpose on what we may term
the average man's perception. We have already sketched out
the Taoist position with regard to this point ; there is no
need to repeat. That such a view neither proscribes nor
prescribes modification is evident ; hence we find in China
highly detailed study of Nature encouraged to the same extent
as the hyper-stenographic notings of some of the great
monochrome draughtsmen. China early saw that the aim of
art is not reproduction ; reproduction should be a by-
product of more serious aims, visible shape should only be,
so to say, the material support of the invisible. So the question
of outward semblance is tacitly passed over. But this is a
dangerous doctrine to the unwary ; before casting away the
legitimate aspect of an object, before bringing some serious
modification to its appearance, we must be sure that the
change is worth making, that we are not making it in order
to follow a fashion, or for the sake of appearing original at small
cost. Such modifications, only too rife to-day, amount to

32 VAN GOGH AND CEZANNE

nothing more than technical trickery or servile imitation of
others. As a rule valid modifications are made unconsciously
by the artist, he cannot help them, they are a direct product
of his active personality.

As I have said, neither the copying of Nature nor the con-
verse can be chosen for praise or blame. The careful copying
seen in a ' Pre-Raphaelite Millais ' is almost aesthetically
valueless as drawing. The yet greater care of a Leonardo
silver-point is, on the contrary, of great suggestive value.
One of the probable reasons of this difference will be dealt
with later on p. 221. Without going so far as the Ultima
Thule of certain Cubistical tenets, we may throw into sharp
contrast with the cold methodical reproduction of detail in
an early Millais the ecstatic neglect of it in a drawing by
Van Gogh. Van Gogh's ignorance as a draughtsman was
remarkable, his all too short painting life did not allow of his
making the necessary studies to become ordinarily proficient
in drawing. Had he had the time to study, would the exalta-
tion of his temperament have consented to such drudgery ?
Probably not. Van Gogh belongs to the numerous class of
draughtsmen who supplement want of knowledge and of
capacity for what we may call workman-like execution, by
impassioned emotion, To this class belong painters like HI
Greco, like Delacroix. The Impressionists and Cezanne may
almost be assimilated to this group, though in reality the
naivetes of Cezanne can hardly be said to be based on violent
emotion ; on the contrary they are mostly due to a slow and
uncouth striving after architectural stability. The wilful
simplifyings of that very fully equipped artist, William Blake,
had a similar cause. Seeming ndiwt&s were to him a means
of detaching spiritual visions from the real, as well as being
a method of insisting on sculptural stability. But all these
men had weighty reasons for adopting a very personal
drawing-vision ; unfortunately of recent years it has become

MODIFICATIONS OF NATURAL FORM 33

the fashion to imitate the liberties that they took with form
without first being assured of either the possession of William
Blake's very complete information, or of Van Gogh's super-
intense contact with vitality, the super-acute sensitiveness of
a real madman. A deliberate imitation of the irregularities
of such men falls at once to the grade of a cold and painful
caricature. Before we try to reproduce one of the hurried
notes that Rodin used to make from the moving model, it
would be as well to assure ourselves that we could also repro-
duce the modelling of the * St. Jean ', and show as considerable
an acquaintance with the facts of construction. There is
suppression of fact on account of ignorance, and there is
another kind of suppression that may come from intention,
or from circumstance. The two types of suppression or
modification may seem alike to the uninstructed ; in reality
they are far apart. The liberties that great draughtsmen, at
different epochs and for different ends, have taken with
natural form will, of course, be noted throughout this book.
To say that exact copying of the model never has con-
stituted and never will great drawing is no exaggeration.
The precise reporting of facts, so necessary to worthy scientific
research, must be eschewed in art. At the same time I would
proclaim the need of study as exact on the part of the artist
as on the part of the scientist. The differentiation between
the two thinkers comes later ; even then is it as great as many
would have us think ? The scientist classes the results of his
observation, attaches word labels to his findings, and proceeds
to induce from his accumulated facts certain general laws
stated in verbal form. The artist also in his own way classifies
the results of his observations, realizes though not verbally
the compelling necessities of natural phenomenal appearance,
and then by the light of his understanding of great universal
laws, he modifies the complex aspect of nature, simplifies that
aspect in certain ways, so that the modification itself becomes

34 MODIFICATIONS OF NATURAL FORM

the means of expressing a single universal view. Without this
last step drawing, painting, or sculpture remains beyond the
pale of art, and only amounts to a statement concerning the
appearance of Nature, even though this statement be dressed
out In the disguise of unusual technique. Michael-Angelo
brings to his knowledge of the model modifications which
insist upon the powerful and splendid fatalism of natural laws
circling in planetary space not that this is all his message.
Botticelli will turn a similar knowledge to the chanting of
more gracious themes by a line less robust, less tormented
than that of the greater Florentine. Pheidias by wide and
reposeful plane and Olympian rhythm of shape tells us of
bright gleaming abstraction withdrawn from the various
struggle of terrestial life ; an abstraction that, smiling a sun-
lit smile, cuts clear, unhesitating, to the changeless perfection
of its own desire.

Although it Is Impossible to lay down absolute rules con-
cerning the kind and degree of the liberties that may be
justifiably taken in representing natural form, still we can
come to fairly accurate conclusions with regard to this matter
by carrying out a systematic study of work which has proved
more or less fully acceptable in the past. From such a basis
in the past it would seem to be admissible to speculate con-
cerning the future. This is the position I must be understood
to take up when I make definite statements concerning the
necessity of including such and such a fact in an artistic
transcription. It is at least Improbable that the future may
hold in store for us a totally new aesthetic quite divorced
from natural law ; though this natural law would seem to be
taking to itself a new shape and aspect before our eyes,

It should be quite clearly understood, then, that exact
copying of the model is an affair which bears little or no rela-
tion to the excellence of the work. But it must not be thought
that in so saying I am advancing a doctrine by which the

MODIFICATIONS OF NATURAL FORM 35

lazy and Inefficient may benefit. Quite otherwise ; it is much
rarer to meet with the qualities that allow the leaving aside
of imitation of the form, than it is to meet with those minor
gifts that permit of more or less exact reproduction of super-
ficial appearance. The path of literal inexactitude combined
with aesthetic worth is the more arduous of the two, and is
generally only followed with success after many years'
apprenticeship. Neither ignorance nor carelessness ever
yet produced valid art ; if we bring modifications to the
proportions, or to the evident detail of the model, these
modifications must be justified by an aesthetic reason. Such
modifications are of two kinds : The personal modification
brought to form and proportions more or less throughout the
artist's work ; such is the tendency of Michael-Angelo to
exaggerate muscular development, such is that of Clouet to
insist on a clear and sharp spirttuelle precision, that of Rem-
brandt to emphasize massive stability by means of strongly
marked verticals. The second type of modification, which is
not logically separable from the first but which I will treat
apart, because its precise nature is less often recognized is a
series of more subtle modifications which are closely allied to,
and which result from, the exigencies of composition. Of the
existence of this type of modification I have already spoken
briefly on p. 3 1 ; it remains to examine it more closely. Now
obviously the general nature of an artist's composition is
a direct result of his personality, just as direct a result as
the drawing modifications we named a moment ago. Also
both forms of modification, having the same origin, will be
intimately allied in kind ; consequently it is very artificial to
separate them, 1 shall, however, do so for the sake of clearness,
Henri Matisse upheld the doctrine that it is better to
modify proportions than to invalidate compositional balance.
Undoubtedly ; but I cannot help thinking that it is better
to conceive a composition which shall allow of correct repro-

36 MODIFICATIONS OF NATURAL FORM

duction of natural proportions, and which shall at the same time
conserve its balance. Yet, any one who will take the trouble
to experiment with the living model will find that Michael-
Angelo, on the Sistine vault, has taken strange liberties with
the possible proportions and arrangements of the human
figure. While controlling the British Academy in Rome I
profited by the occasion to carry out such a series of experi-
ments on models of the same types as those which figure in the
magnificent fresco, and was surprised to find how much at
variance with the possible many of the figures that appeared
strictly correct in drawing really were. This is evidently, I
think, the test of legitimacy in this direction : the modifica-
tion should add to the expressive quality of the whole ; and
its presence should only be apparent to searching technical
analysis. An obvious modification is a fault. While I was
occupied with the question I noted, amongst other deviations
from the strict proportional path, that one leg, the left, of
the Pugillatore in the Museo Nazionale (Rome) is about one
and a half inches shorter than the other. The composition
of the figure would be quite upset were the leg of its natural
proportional length. On the contrary, the backward out-
stretched leg of the Subiaco figure in the same museum is
about as much too long ; this modification aids greatly in
intensifying the movement of the statue. One leg in a J.-P.
Millet drawing of two peasants, a man and a woman, return-
ing from work in the evening, is much longer than the other.
The elongation greatly helps the forward sling of the tramp-
ing figure. But the casual observer would never notice these
intentional variations from mechanical truth, which are made
in the interest of a wider truth of suggestion ; they are so
cunningly fitted in with needs of movement and composition,
which are in turn modified in their relations with one another
and with the type of drawing. Having said so much 1 must
present the adverse side of the question. Intentional or

FIG. 5. PUGILLATORE

Museo Naszionale, Rome

TECHNIQUE AND EXPRESSION 37

unintentional grotesque must be accepted as an aesthetic
element. Many forms of primitive art unquestionably owe
a large part of their interest for us to their deformations. Of
recent years modern art has deliberately dealt in deformation,
and achieves thereby much that is unusual, much that arrests
us, much that engenders a strange atmosphere. Shall we say
that such an atmosphere is totally illegitimate, totally repre-
hensible ? I have slightly discussed the pros and cons of this
question in the chapter on modern art in Relation in Art ; it
is superfluous to repeat here, more especially as I have the
intention to go fully into the matter in a later volume con-
secrated to modern technique alone. It is evident that such
modifications are the affair of the artist ; they must be the
result of his own convictions ; they can scarcely form the
substance of didactic writing, though, once executed, they
may form that of critical examination.

However, all drawing worthy of the name is a deviation
from strict exactitude (if, indeed, exactitude were* possible).
It is rather difficult to treat in general terms of the variations
and exaggerations that may be generally looked on as per-
missible. On the whole it will be better either to mention
them each in its separate place, and at the same time to let
an understanding of them grow out of the general thesis of
the book.

Though we must not attach a singular importance to
technique, it and aesthetic expression are inextricably inter-
woven, as indeed are all branches of our subject. To one
form of composition a certain drawing technique is best
adapted. One feels instinctively how great would be the
incongruity of adapting a Greek vase technique to the
mise en page of Liang K'ai's Han-shan and Shih-te. In this
drawing the occasional sharp black accents, the fine lines
alternated with wide brush-marks of varying intensity all

38 DECORATIVE INTENT

play their parts in the compositional balance. Were such an
arrangement condemned to count only on the delicate and
constant line of a Greek vase it would prove eminently
unsatisfactory/ We are thus obliged to recognize the close-
ness of the conjunction between drawing and composition.
The two dark accents just above the feet of the foremost
figure are called for by the accents of the eyes and mouths.
The intervening space of drapery is bare of small accent
because the compositional balance does not need it. And
similar reasoning may be applied to every kind of brush-mark
and its placing in the drawing. Thus the way in which we
indicate form is determined not only by facts connected with
the form itself, but also by the position it takes up in the
decorative whole of our work of art. Sufficient attention is
not often drawn to this very important point. As a conse-
quence of it, every study that we make should be made with
a clearly conceived decorative intent. You have before you
a sheet of paper. You are about to make a drawing on it from
the living model. Let your first movement be to act as an
artist, to attack an artistic problem. You have before you a
rectangular shape, decorate it with the pose that the model is
giving. If, as is often unfortunately the case in an art school,
the pose be insipid, uninspiring, utilize only a part of it,
make a study of the torso, of a leg, and place that study
decoratively upon and into your paper. Any sheet of studies
by Leonardo or by Michael-Angelo may be framed as a
decorative whole. Not that I believe that they took into
conscious consideration the problem of decorative arrange-
ment of a mere study ; they were complete artists and
worked as artists on every occasion.

The sheet of studies by Michael-Angelo, that I had
originally chosen for the back and front studies of children
and for the graphic inscription of constructional leg-forms,
may serve as an example (it is the first page of drawings I

1

I

1

'.v.J

FIG. 6. HAN-SHAN AND SHIH-Tfi BY LIANG K'AI
ist half of XHIth century. ToHo

MICHAEL-ANGELO 39

take up) illustrating the truth of this observation. Three of
the drawings are in pen and ink, one is in chalk, yet notice
the excellent balance of the arrangement. One might use it
for a demonstration in composition. A main diagonal line
starts in the groin of the isolated leg, runs up under the
buttocks of the chalk figure, to finish in the groin of the
front-view child. The cut head of the back-view infant, the
ankle of the foot, the top of the chalk head lie on another
and parallel line. The top of the shoulders of the chalk
figure is prolonged upwards by the pen trials which lead to
the written word, and downwards by the child's left shoulder.
The essence of the composition, and one, which when it is
pointed out, cannot but be seen, is the opposition of these
three or four hidden diagonals (there is another slightly
curved one from the bottom of the right chalk figure scapula,
its left elbow, and the complication of the pen and ink knee)
with the four obvious verticals of the three studies. The curve
just parenthetically described is finely balanced by one in an
opposed direction from the cut child's head through the toes
to the top of the chalk head. The thing is a symphony in left-
to-right upward diagonals and verticals, Michael- An gelo
himself would without doubt have been astonished had one
pointed these things out to him. They come unconsciously
into the work of an artist ; this is precisely my thesis. But
such unconsciousness may be cultivated just as the uncon-
scious certainty of hand is cultivated by much practice. The
lesson to learn is never to work as a dry-as-dust grammarian,
but always, even when studying, as a poet. Notice too the
exquisite fitness of the shape and placing of the writing in the
decorative whole. Hide it and note how the composition
loses in unity when deprived of its upward lilt.

This is not the only lesson we may learn from this
masterly page. Let us specially consider the chalk figure,
probably drawn at an earlier date than the pen studies.

40 A SHEET OF STUDIES

The decorative data of the page were then established once
and for all. From a void rectangle capable of receiving an
infinite number of decorative schemes it at once became a
fixed ajad definite work of art, it became, at the bidding of
Michael-Angelo, the symphony of diagonal and vertical that
we have described ; the main decorative axis from the left
ham-string region to below the right buttock is established ;
round this line the whole mise en page swings decoratively. It
is easier to point out than to describe the highly satisfactory
arrangement of light and dark lines about this diagonal,
itself accentuated. But it is not accentuated alone ; the
vertical limiting the right buttock is also accentuated, for it
gives the key-note of verticality needed to complete the
harmony. And this key-note is discreetly repeated all up
and down the perpendicular right side of the figure. Al-
though the figure is passably contorted, the whole of one side
lies on the same straight line. This is what the contortional
followers and imitators of Michael-Angelo never realized.
It is just there that an element of restraint and measure pene-
trates his work. Twisted as the torso is, the basic aesthetic
idea is the opposition of two rectilinear directions. So basic
is this intention that he automatically continues to carry it
out when, later, he comes to add three detached pen draw-
ings to the page. But to modify the * diagonality * of the line
of the shoulders and the main compositional axis, note how
cleverly the horizontal rectangular shaped pelvic mass stabi-
lizes the whole ; just the right and left limiting lines that
curvingly enclose it are emphasized, and from it the sweeping
volume of the left thigh falls away. As c diagonality ' is the
theme, he slightly insists on the left calf, while the right leg
is almost effaced, as is also the upper part of the torso. How
much the drawing would lose, were the shoulders drawn in
as heavily as the axial ham region and buttocks ! The
diagonal would pass from a discrete theme to an exaggerated

>

v ;/

FIG. 7. DRAWINGS BY MICHAEL-ANGELO
Shows compositional arrangement of sheet. British Museum

BY MICHAEL-ANGELO " 4 i

obsession. If it be argued that in a finished work the shoulders
would be as definitely executed as the rest, I would reply :
Yes, but then an entirely new series of relations, of accents, of
harmonies, of passages into a background would be elabor-
ated ; the work of art would no longer be the same. In the
drawing as it stands a delicate
series of suggestions is slung
about the median diagonal, and
the thing is eminently satisfac-
tory. Drawn in another way
it might be equally satisfac-
tory, but it would be another
drawing ; the whole question
is begged.

It is time to leave off talking
of a median diagonal line, and
to call it by its right name :
a median diagonal plane ;
Michael-Angelo has carefully
marked this fact by empha-
sizing three diagonal lines of
shading below the right gluteus
maximus and below the mass
of the biceps cruris. This
plane harmonizes with the
plane lying over the shoulder-
blades and the back of the upper arm. They are parallel in
direction of extension and are very nearly at right angles to
one another (I trust my meaning is clear, I purposely avoid
a statement in strict mathematical language). We have here
another example of the underlying simple relations of great
work. It is already unnecessary to develop farther the
intimacy of the kinship between drawing and composition ;
the lightness or the darkness of the lines, the placing of the

3109 G

FIG. 8. Diagram of central figure
of Fig. 7 showing constructional and
compositional arrangement of masses
and planes.

42 ANALYSIS OF

accents in a drawings belong as much to the compositional
arrangement as they do to the exigencies of local form
rendering. All the same it will be perhaps more convincing
if I give a diagrammatic sketch showing the main facts made
evident by the foregoing analysis. The diagram will, I trust,
explain itself, will demonstrate sufficiently well the really geo-
metric and mechanical basis of what at first glance appears
to be only an emotionally contorted pose. I might point out,
as an extra indication of the truth of our examination, how
Michael-Angelo had first sketched in the profile of the right
calf at A. On second thoughts he brought it back to D, now
lying on BC, thereby gaining in simplicity of design and
reticence more than he lost in intensity of movement.

It will be as well before leaving this question of com-
positional analysis in relation to drawing one which I must
reserve for more detailed treatment in a subsequent volume
to examine a drawing very different from the Michael-
Angelo nude. Let us examine Wang Wei's (?) waterfall.
Again I give a diagram of its essential facts. As we are
now dealing with the Chinese aesthetic it is not surprising
that we find that the principal subject of our picture is made up
of curves, and not of straight lines or flat planes. The straight
lines and flat planes are reserved for secondary functions, just
as the walls of Chinese buildings are subsidiary to curved
roof development. Here the theme is the magnificent curve
of falling water A which, suddenly disappearing in a swirl of
minor curves B, skilfully renders notions of continuity and of
disrupture, of unity and of multiplicity, the * unity in multi-
plicity and multiplicity in unity ' (^^ ^ ^jS ^ ^S ^ ^^j>)
of Persian sufi philosophy. Hence the great principal factor,
the fall, is traced with powerful strokes imbued with the spirit
of speed, but parallel and of consummate simplicity, of extra-
ordinary oneness of arrangement. The confusion of small

o
"C

CL>

W)

I

Q
<

w
O
^

pq

WANG WEI'S WATERFALL 43

curves at the foot of the cascade is lightly treated in order not
to distract from the unity of the conception. It should be
noticed that each wave is completely conceived in modelling
and fully drawn out ; and also that the waves, especially the
lower waves, of the turmoil constitute so many small arches
which, so to say, arrest the downward shoot of the cataract,
which give it a firm basis ; for we are not dealing with real
movement, only with a stable plastic presentation of it. The

FIG, 10. Diagram of compositional elements of Fig. 9.

plastic laws of stability must not be violated in favour of
exaggerated rendering of motion. Again remark how all the
movement of this part of the picture is in a backward direc-
tion and opposed to that of the fall, which, thanks to this
ingenious stopping does not tend to carry the eye out of the
picture. Here again we see the very method of drawing
intimately bound up not only with the abstract ideas that it,
is the intention of the artist to suggest, but also with the facts
of the composition. One drawing method is used in one part
of the composition, another in another part. On each side,
and so to speak, framing the main motive, we find an arrange-
ment of rock masses treated again in quite a different way.

44 PLASTIC EXPRESSION OF ABSTRACT IDEAS

They are limited by the planes c, D, E, F, G, whose arrange-
ment is evident from the diagram. One might even liken
them to so many buttresses consolidating the central mobility,
which is also counteracted by the horizontal line HI, almost
exactly continued by the top edge of D. This line HI and
others, shorter in the rocks as at E, furnish the decorative
straight element which cuts the curved system MN. The rock
treatment is (see p. 1 06, The Way to Sketch] curiously analogous
to the modern handling of Cezanne and his followers ; but here
it forms only a part of the symphony ; the three handlings of
(i) the cascade, (2) the turbulent waves at its foot, and lastly
(3) the rocks, give the measure of the unusual inventive power
of Wang Wei. To use three different techniques in the same
picture is only too easy ; to render three distinct techniques
harmonious among themselves to such an extent that they
become parts of a single whole and essential to the aesthetic
intention is a rarely accomplished feat. These subtle adjust-
ments and a hundred others like them, this variation in unity
carried out so discreetly, this perfect expression of abstract
ideas by purely plastic means are some of the causes which make
of this painting a seldom equalled masterpiece. Here again
it is impossible to separate drawing from composition. One
may perhaps go so far as to say that one never should be able
to separate them.

A last example, this curious drawing by Luca Cambiaso.
The thing is far from being a masterpiece, and for this
reason I have comparatively little to say concerning it.
I am reproducing it as an example of obvious drawing by
means of plane and volume executed in the middle of the
sixteenth century (Luca Cambiaso was born in 1527 at
Moneglia near Genoa, and died at the Escurial in 1585). I
shall reserve a complete discussion of the composition of this
drawing for subsequent writing on the subject. For the

FIG. 11. Composition by Luca Cambiaso, 15271585
Shows use of geometrical construction

A DRAWING BY LUCA CAMBIASO 45

moment I will merely draw attention to the fact that we have
here an example of an artist who deals with incompletely
grasped ideas. He has made a valiant attempt to split the
child figure in the foreground to rectangularly constituted
volumes and planes, but the splitting is done by no sure hand.
From this attempt, carried out more or less through the pic-
ture, a sense of solidity springs. But solidity is not all in all.
Here indeed lies the principal lesson that we can learn from
such a drawing, for failure may sometimes vie in instructive
value with success. It is not sufficient to split form into
simple masses in order to produce good work ; it still remains
not only to organize these masses amongst themselves, but
also to organize them in a way analogous to the convention
adopted in the splitting. Now in this drawing one feels a
want of unity between the attempted simplicity of the con-
structional simplification and the species of composition
employed. The composition is of a type that I may perhaps
be allowed to term florid, the front of the crowd that presses
forward is broken up by a smallness of light-and-shadow-
complexity due to arms, knees, and so on. Complexity may
be taken as a departure point for an aesthetic, though I think
I am right in saying that the results of such a convention are
never so satisfactory as those of a simply posed aesthetic
hypothesis. For the moment let us accept a complex conven-
tion as worthy. Why, then, has Cambiaso used a type of
drawing fitted to simply conceived architectural conceptions ?
That he is not quite sure of what he is doing may also be
seen from the varying way in which the different figures are
drawn ; the advancing principal figure just behind the child
is almost a ' romantic ' piece of pen drawing in quite a
* flowing ' and calligraphic style which makes an uncomfort-
able contrast with the rigid geometry of the child. This is
indeed a different sort of technical variation from that we have
just seen ordered by the masterly brain of Wang Wei. There

46 HETEROGENEOUS VARIATION

we had homogeneous variation, here it is heterogeneous. A
first-class artist would not have used this c cubical ' method
of drawing in conjunction with such an unstable composition.
Or it would be even better to say that he would not have
employed such a composition at alL Into the details of its
confusion I cannot now go, I must content myself with calling
attention first to the incongruity of the conceptions of the
composition and of the drawing ; and secondly to the incon-
gruity of the different parts of the drawing among themselves.
We can conclude, what is after all obvious, that all the parts
of an aesthetic conception must be harmoniously co-ordinated,
and consequently that there must be a close relation between
the type of drawing employed and the nature of the com-
position. A complete discussion of the relation between the
different classes of drawing and the corresponding concep-
tions of composition would necessitate a long examination of
the divers forms of composition and would find better place in
a work on the latter subject.

'Recapitulation

Composition is a bad term ; it implies a building up, an assembling. Com-
position should be as integral as the other parts of art. The more complete the
composition is in the first conception of the artist, the better it is likely to be.
Kwo Hsi's method of attuning himself to work before starting is described.
We must not confuse tidiness with finish. Kwo Hsi tell us that we must
nourish in our souls gentleness, beauty, and magnanimity ; and must be
capable of understanding and of reconstructing within ourselves the soul-
states of other men. Kwo Hsi assures us that this power and knowledge will
show itself at the brush's tip. The commonplace must be banished from art.
Art is essentially a symbolism. Before drawing one must learn to feel and think
intensely. In different schools tradition and individuality are variously en-
couraged. In ancient Egypt tradition was almost all ; nowadays individuality
is encouraged. Originality is in reality only a slightly novel arrangement of
known facts and methods. Drawing cannot be distinguished absolutely from
composition. Method of drawing is both decided by nature of composition,
and varies over the different parts of the composition (see also p. 236). The
poses of great painters are always sculpturally satisfactory. A painter should

RECAPITULATION 47

conceive his pose contemporaneously with his background ; for the picture is
but one thing. The sculptural precision of Ingres is compared with the
fluidity of expression in the decorative value painting of a * Mountain after
a Summer Shower ', attributed to Mi Fu. Knowledge should exist, but may be,
should be, suppressed and concealed. Faulty execution is the result of faulty or
incomplete conception. One of the reasons for the existence of the plastic
arts is to supplement the inefficiency of categoric thought. The exact degree
to which imitation of Nature is to be carried is discussed. Modifications of
normal natural appearance are generally (or should be) the unconscious result
of the artist's producing personality. iThe emotional modifications that Van
Gogh brought to form are mentioned. The modifications of Cezanne are often
due to a striving after stability. It is useless to copy the modifications brought to
form by Van Gogh, by^ Cezanne,, by William Blake ; all modification that
we bring must be the direct product of our own personality. Exact copying
of the model cannot constitute great drawing. The scientist classifies the results
of his observations and induces from them a natural law. The artist uncon-
sciously classifies his observations and imagines a conditioning of form to suggest
the result of his classification. Painting or drawing which does not suggest
in this manner may belong to craft, but not to art. We cannot state exactly
what modifications can be lawfully made in natural form. The original artist
invents his novel modification. In that lies his originality. Matisse stated that
it is better to modify proportions than to destroy compositional balance. Is
it not better to fulfil both desiderata ? The left leg of the Pugillatore is one
and a half inches shorter than the right for compositional reasons. The back-
stretched leg of the * Subiaco * figure is as much too long. Primitive arts often
owe interest to deformation. It is dangerous to attach too much importance
to technique. Technique is allied to species of composition. Michael-Angelo
composes even when dealing with a sheet of studies. Lines and values vary
in intensity according to the needs of the composition. The Waterfall by
Wang "Wei is examined and found to fulfil similar conditions with regard to
intensity of line and type of line in relation to compositional data. The plastic
expression of abstract ideas is discussed. A curious drawing by Luca Cambiaso
in which rigid geometrical volumes are used is examined to a slight degree.
The suitability of such geometric rigidity in combination -with that type of
composition is questioned. Method of drawing must be in harmony with
method of composition

Ill

TECHNICAL METHODS

IN these pages I shall recommend no brush, pencil, or char-
coal technique, but I have exercised considerable care in
choosing the reproductions in order that they should afford
a wide range of examples of technical methods ; a thoughtful
examination of them should be enough for the serious
student. From time to time, in an unclassified way, I shall
call attention to special technical excellences. On the other
hand I shall at once speak of right and wrong methods of
employing the tools.

Each tool is adapted to a particular use, just as each
material employed by the artist is fitted to rendering certain
services well and others badly. The pencil, the silver and
gold point, the etching-needle, the graver exist, why strive
to make a drawing in line with a piece of charcoal, unless
indeed the drawing be of unusual size ? Charcoal is excel-
lently fitted to the making of light and shade studies in correct
value (p. 1 80). Let it be reserved to that end. Charcoal has,
however, one quality which is useful in practice ; it may be
easily dusted off. On account of this it is often convenient to
use it before definite drawing is attempted, for a rough and
tentative placing on canvas of some difficult problem in
composition. Charcoal may be easily graded with the thumb
or finger, and effaced with wash-leather, or with bread,
or again with one of the modern forms of malleable india-
rubber. I have a particular hatred of stump and chalk
drawing, at least as a method for the use of students, for the
following reasons. It is exceedingly tedious, and invites the

SHUN TIDINESS - 49

student to concentrate his attention on the single fragment of
his drawing on which he happens at the moment to be work-
ing. Now there is no question that the most difficult problem
with which the artist has to deal is the continual management
of the relations over the whole of his picture. An accent on
the right hand of a canvas is called for by, and takes its value
from, say, a line on the left. During the execution of a work
of art an artist must continually keep before his mind his
total intention, which is made up of the relations of all the
parts among themselves. He cannot exercise himself too soon
in this difficult matter. There must always be a certain homo-
geneity about a work of art ; the right way to obtain it is the
way just stated. How is homogeneity in the finished chalk
drawing of a beginner obtained ? By tidiness, with which art
has nothing whatever to do. By dint of unthinking, stupid
application during a sufficient number of hours and days,
a tidy stippled surface is obtained in which the gradations
are so prettily executed that one is inclined to forget to ask
if they have any relation to truth of modelling. Far from
being an exercise, in drawing such work is an exercise in
automatic somnolence, and is as opposed to the keen, ever-
alive observing of the true artist as it can be. No beginner
should finish a drawing. Finish in art should result from :
first a complete comprehension of main facts, then an under-
standing and knowledge of the secondary facts, and so on
through comprehensions of less and less important facts down
to the ultimate details. How can a beginner be possessed of
this vast store of knowledge ? He cannot be. He can only
achieve a pseudo-finish by putting tidiness in the place of
knowledge ; and every time he does that he closes to himself,
to one further degree, the door to future progress. Why
study when we can do without real knowledge by adopting
meretricious methods ?

The stump is a detestable instrument ; it is the only

3109 H

50, POINT INSTRUMENTS

Instrument with which it is practically impossible to follow
the form with feeling and intelligence. It is stupidly rubbed

on the paper in any direction
with next to no reference to
movements of mass or of shadow
effect. I know of no method
of drawing that can more surely

FIG. 12. Ancient Egyptian method put^a student on a wrong road.
of holding brush. Italian c^alk knd its analogues

belong to the category of point instruments. A word con-
cerning their use. -^ '

The invention and use of the pen has militated gravely
against the tradition of plastic formal representation. The
slanting way in which it must be held is hostile to the true
method of point drawing, or indeed of any kind of drawing.
In The Way to Sketch 1 1 have recommended its use combined
with wash. Modern European draughtsmanship is largely
based on the sloping method of holding the tool. The

method has in a way become
an inherent part of our tech-
niques. I thus accept its use
on account of the moulding
action which it has had on all
our plastic aesthetic ideal. A
pen can only be used with
perfect freedom in drawing a
line from the upper left corner
to the lower right corner of the
paper. It is almost impossible
to use it in the contrary direction. Other directions are
more or less difficult to follow. A drawing instrument should
be capable of equal freedom of use in any direction. The
Egyptians, the Greeks, the Chinese, the Japanese, all the

1 Clarendon Press, 1925.

FIG. 13. Greek vase painter's method
of holding brush.

METHODS OF BRUSH-HOLDING S i

peoples who have shown themselves to be past masters of
plastic rendering, have drawn with the brush, and this brush
has been held by all of them vertically to the surface on which
the drawing is made. Thus, and thus only, can unbiased
freedom of movement be ob-
tained in every direction. The
accompanying figures show the
different ways of holding the
brush adopted by the different
peoples just named. If we hold
a pencil as we do a pen and
then trace a circle with it we
are not in reality using it as a
pointed instrument, we are
using the side of the point all
the time, and moreover, accord-
ing as the pencil is moving
laterally to its length or more
or less endwise, it necessarily traces a line more or less wide.
Now width of line should not depend on the hazard of an
instrument, it should be a part of the compositional constitu-
tion of the work ; a line should here be thick, there be thin,
according to the needs of the drawing. By holding a pencil
slantwise to the surface of the paper we are deliberately
depriving ourselves of a whole part of plastic expression.
Unfortunately amongst modern Europeans, peoples not
imbued with an unconscious love of form, the way of holding
the habitual pen for writing has dictated the way of holding
pencil and brush for drawing and painting. Shall I advise
a draughtsman to adopt one of the unusual methods just
described of holding his drawing instrument ? He will evi-
dently find great difficulty in acquiring so new a habit. One
would be, perhaps, adding unnecessarily to the already large
number of difficulties. It is a matter for personal judgement

FIG. 14. Chinese method of holding
brush.

52 METHODS OF BRUSH-HOLDING

and choice. A way of drawing with the pencil that I adopt
myself most frequently is to cut a new pencil in half, and
then hold it of course vertically to the paper between the
thumb and assembled finger-tips, and completely within the
hand ; its shortness allows it to be directed towards the middle
of the palm. In this way the pencil is rigidly imprisoned, and
the fingers rendered immobile among themselves; an im-
portant point, for no drawing should be done by finger-move-
ment, all movement should come from the shoulder and elbow,
even wrist-flexion should be suppressed. Do not fear that such
a method of drawing will render fine detail work impossible,
on the contrary you will find that in this way you have
remarkable power over precise pencil-movement. I am
inclined to recommend you to hold a brush in any way you
like except as one holds a pen. You will find that useful variety
in technique goes hand in hand with a changing method of
holding the brush, always supposing that it be held as nearly
perpendicular to the surface as possible. The amazing variety
of handling displayed in the best Chinese and Japanese work
comes from agile freedom in the method of employing the
brush ; sometimes it is squashed point down on the paper,
then partly picked up again and hurried off to trace a line
of diminishing width which returns, perhaps, on itself, finish-
ing in a suggestive swirl. In our countries one is taught
to pay attention to the drawing, and not to the movement
of the instrument which is producing it. It is hardly an
exaggeration to say that one should be able to make a
drawing without once glancing at the paper. A large part
of my own drawings is always executed in this way, I look
down from the model hardly more than is necessary to make
sure that I am replacing the pencil on the paper at the right
place. Rodin also drew in this way. He often completed
an entire drawing without once taking his eyes from the
model ; that is why some of his drawings appear so

UNSEEN' DRAWING 53

grotesque, with arms or legs not always joined to the trunk.
Though such a drawing may contain that kind of obvious
fault, it also contains less evident but not less valuable positive
qualities, obtained through the fact that the artist's attention
has never been distracted from its concentration on the feeling
and movement of the pose, on the rhythmic harmony of the
mass arrangement. Such a drawing is always more living and
suggestive than one more carefully made ; it is, so to speak,
an unadulterated transcription of the artist's emotion un-
fettered by soucis of technique. It is an invaluable touchstone
of suggestive freedom, a record of first enthusiastic impres-
sion : it is of inestimable worth to keep by one during the
long subsequent hours of elaboration of statue or of picture
from first studies ; hours during which keenness of attention,
of creative power, inevitably flags and wanes, enfeebled by
the worries of practical work and by sheer lasting of the
application. I cannot too highly recommend at least occa-
sional practice in making * unseen * drawings from the model.
They have nothing whatever to do with drawing a pig with
one's eyes shut. The aim is not to see what one can produce
on paper under those conditions, the aim is to carry out
a point-by-point, a mass-by-mass study of the pose in the most
uninterrupted way possible ; and thus to get a sense of the
rhythmic interconnexion of the various parts of the whole
without losing the current of impression-reception, as one
necessarily does when one takes one's eyes off the model.
What one does on the paper matters not two pins. Yet at
the same time one cannot do without the drawing, otherwise
one would have no fixed and definite reason for studying
each portion of the model in turn and in order, nor would one
produce in one's mind an artistic reproduction of the rhythm
(which one does, or should do, however badly and inade-
quately it may be written down on the paper). I cannot too
strongly combat the ingrained idea that it is the picture or

54 THE DRAWING DOES NOT MATTER

the drawing that matters ; it does not. What matters is the
constructive mental act of the artist, this it is that must be
exercised and carefully trained. A properly trained mind
gifted with the capacity of thinking into plastic terms will
produce good work. To this training come many extraneous
factors, extraneous, I mean, to the subject of plastic art. Some
twenty-five years ago a friend of mine denied this truth.
Of what use to a painter ', said he, * is general instruction ?
Look at Millais, he began working in an art school before
he was out of his pinafores/ I still submit, to-day, that
Millais's work lacks greatly in interest ; that his reputation
diminishes steadily and surely ; that in course of time he will
be almost forgotten. Kwo Hsi's humanity of brush-tip may
be understood to originate from an unlimited extent of
knowledge. The drawing of a cultured man will always differ
from that of his uncultured brother, and, ceterls parilus, will
be of greater value. Do we not all feel something slightly
inadequate in the work of Turner, who also started early on his
career of painter ? Does one not regret the want of a greater
significance in the multitudinous creations of Rodin ? Pheidias
frequented the highest intellectual society of his time. Why
speak of Leonardo ? Le Poussin was a cultured man. A work
of art is the expression of a man's mental position. The
completeness of that mental position should be his first care.
In another way it is not the drawing that matters, what
matters is the way in which the producing tool is employed.
How often does one see industrious people leading a water-
colour wash over the paper, and concentrating their entire
attention on the wash, its doings, its tidiness. To them the
brush is nothing, or at most a means of running a wash or
making a brush-mark. To the true artist the very handling
of the tool is a joy, the commanding of its movement is the
fact itself of his artistic creation. Here lies the need of direct
cutting in stone by the sculptor himself. Every movement

ACADEMIC PRESCRIPTIONS ARE BAD 55

of the chisel is dictated directly by the inventing mind. This
cannot happen when a workman * pointer * copies a plaster
cast from a clay original. A painter should take pleasure in
varied fencing 3 with his brush, in its slow or rapid move-
ments from side to side, or up and down, the inventions of
greater or less pressure on it, of rapid twists of it, of a sudden
leaning over of it, should be so many sources of new and
unexpected pleasure to him. There should be a living
excitement in the use of the brush, just as to the fencer there
is in the agile and variable use of the rapier. In short, let
invention be rather directed towards brush-movement than
towards doing and combining things on paper. When paint-
ing, caress the imaginary surfaces and volumes with the brush,
to the extent of forgetting the very existence of the paper's
surface behind which you can create them.

*
The curse of artistic instruction is the academic system
which obliges drawings to be done in a certain way, on paper
of certain dimensions, perhaps already bearing the school
stamp. To leave out some part of the model in order to
realize some superior arrangement would of course not be
allowed. Liang K'ai's cutting of both figures by the edge of
the paper would certainly be forbidden (Fig. 6) ; his utiliza-
tion of only the lower part of the paper would be considered as
a method of escaping the necessity to make a drawing of the
size that the all-important person, the examiner, had in mind.
The very facts that made of Liang K'ai a great master would
debar him even from competing in such an examination.
* But \ it will often be argued, c