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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