[Works. Popular edition.] 2 series

Preface

It may perhaps be thought, that in prefacing a Manual of Drawing, I ought to expatiate on the reasons why drawing Bhould be learned ; but those reasons appear to me so many and so weighty, that I cannot quickly state or enforce them. With the reader's permission, as this volume is too large already, I will waive all discussion respecting the importance of the subject, and touch only on those points which may appeal questionable in the method of its treatment. In the first place, the book is not calculated for the use of children under the age of twelve or fourteen. I do not think it advisable to engage a child in any bat the most voluntary practice of art. If it has talent for drawing, it will be con tinually scrawling on what paper it can get ; and should be allowed to scrawl at its own free will, due praise being given for every appearance of care, or truth, in its efforts. «It should be allowed to amuse itself with cheap colours almost as soon as it has sense enough to wish for them. If it merely daubs the paper with shapeless stains, the colour-box may be taken away till it knows better : but as soon aa it begins painting red i

PREFACE.

. VIII coats on soldiers, striped flags to ships, etc., it should have colours at command ; and, without restraining its choice of subject in that imaginative and historical art, of a military tendency, which children delight in, (generally quite as valu able, by the way, as any historical art delighted in by their elders,) it should be gently led by the parents to try to draw, in such childish fashion as may be, the things it can see and likes, — birds, or butterflies, or flowers, or frnit. In later years, the indulgence of using the colour should only be granted as a reward, after it has shown care and progress in its drawings with pencil. A limited number of good and amusing prints should always be within a boy's reach : in these days of cheap illustration he can hardly possess a volume of nursery tales without good woodcuts in it, and should be encouraged to copy what he likes best of this kind ; but should be firmly restricted to a few prints and to a few books.

If a child has many toys, it will get tired of them and break them ; if a boy has many prints he will merely dawdle and scrawl over them ; it is by the limitation of the number of his possessions that his pleasure in them is perfected, and his attention concentrated. The parents need give themselves no trouble in instructing him, as far as drawing is concerned, beyond insisting upon economical and neat habits with his colours and paper, showing him the best way of holding pencil and rule, and, so far as they take notice of his work, pointing out where a line is too short or too long, or too crooked, when compared with the copy ; accuracy being the first and last thing they look for. If the child shows talent for inventing or grouping figures, the parents should

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. IX neither check, nor praise it. They may laugh with it frankly, or show pleasure in what it has done, just as they show pleasure in seeing it well, or cheerful ; but they must not praise it for being clever, auy more than they would praise it for being Btout. They should praise it only for what costs it self-denial, namely attention and hard work ; otherwise they will make it work for vanity's sake, and always badly. The best books to put ii to its hands are those illustrated by George Crnikshank or by Richter. (See Appendix.) At about the age of twelve or fourteen, it is quite time enough to set youth or girl to serious work ; and then this book will, I think, be useful to them ; and I have good hope it may be so, likewise, to persons of more advanced age wishing to know something of the first principles of art.

Yet observe, that the method of study recommended is nrt brought forward as absolutely the best, but only as the best which I can at present devise for an isolated student. It is very likely that farther experience in teaching may enable me to modify it with advantage in several important respects; but [ am sure the main principles of it are sound, and most of the exercises as useful as they can be rendered without a master's superintendence. The method differs, however, so materially from that generally adopted by drawing-masters, that a word ar two of explanation may be needed to justify what migh^ otherwise be thought wilful eccentricity. The manuals at present published on the subject of drawing are all directed, as far as I know, to one or other of two objects. Either they propose to give the student a power of X

PREFACE.

. dexterous sketching with pencil or water-colour, so as to emu late (at considerable distance) the slighter work of our second rate artists ; or they propose to give him such accurate com mand of mathematical forms as may afterwards enable him to design rapidly and cheaply for manufactures When drawing is taught as an accomplishment, the first is the aim usually proposed ; while the second is the object kept chiefly in view at Marlborough House, and in the branch Government Schools of Design. Of the fitness of the modes of study adopted in those schools, to the end specially intended, judgment is hardly yet possible ; only, it seems to me, that we are all too much in the habit of confusing art as applied to manufacture, with manufac ture itself. For instance, the skill by which an inventive work man designs and moulds a beautiful cup, is skill of true art; but the skill by which that cup is copied and afterwards multiplied a thousandfold, is skill of manufacture : and the faculties which enable one workman to design and elaborate his original piece, are not to be developed by the same system of instruction as those which enable another to produce a maximum number of approximate copies of it in a given time.

Farther : it is surely inexpedient that any reference to purposes of manufacture should interfere with the education of the artist him self. Try first to manufacture a Raphael ; then let Raphael direct your manufacture. He will design you a plate, or cup, or a house, or a palace, whenever you want it, and design them in the most convenient and rational way ; but do not let youi anxiety to reach the platter and the cup interfere with your

PREFACE.

. education of the Raphael. Obtain first the best woik yoc can, and the ablest hands, irrespective of any consideration of economy or facility of production. Then leave your trained artist to determine how far art can be popularised, or manu facture ennobled. Now, I believe that (irrespective of differences in individual temper and character) the excellence of an artist, as such, depends wholly on refinement of perception, and that it is this, mainly, which a master or a school can teach ; so that while powers of invention distinguish man from man, powers of perception distinguish school from school. All great schools enforce delicacy of drawing and subtlety of sight : and the only rnle which I have, as yet, found to be without exception respecting art, is that all great art is delicate. Therefore, the chief aim and bent of the following system is to obtain, first, a perfectly patient, and, to the utmost of the pupil's power, a delicate method of work, such as may ensure his seeing truly.

For I am nearly convinced, that when once we see keenly enough, there is very little difficulty in drawing what we see ; but, even supposing that this difficulty be sti 1 great, I believe that the sight is a more important thing than the drawing ; and I would rather teach drawing that my pupils may learn to love Nature, than teach the looking at Nature that they may learn to draw. It is surely also a more important thing for young people and unprofessional students, to know how to appreciate the art of others, than to gain much power in art themselves. Now the modes of sketching ordinarily taught are inconsistent with this power of judgment

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. No person trained to the superficial execution of modern water colour painting, can understand the work of Titian oi Leonardo ; they must for ever remain blind to the refinement of such men's pencilling, and the precision of their thinking But, however slight a degree of manipulative power the student may reach by pursuing the mode recommended to him in these letters, I will answer for it that he cannot go once through the advised exercises without beginning to understand what masterly work means ; and, by the time he has gained some proficiency in them, he will have a pleasure in looking at the painting of the great schools, and a new perception of the exquisiteness of natural scenery, such as would repay him for much more labour than I have asked him to undergo. That labour is, nevertheless, sufficiently irksome, nor is it possible that it should be otherwise, so long as the pupil works unassisted by a master.

For the smooth and straight road which admits unembarrassed progress must, I fear, be dull as well as smooth ; and the hedges need to be close and trim when there is no guide to warn or bring back the erring traveller. The system followed in this work will, therefore, at first, surprise somewhat sorrowfully those who are familiar with the practice of our class at the Working Men's College ; for here, the pupil, having the master at his side to extricate him from such embarrassments as his first efforts may lead into is at once set to draw from a solid object, and soon finds enter tainment in his efforts and interest in his difficulties. Of course the simplest object which it is possible teset before the eye is a sphere ; and practically, I find a child's toy, a white

PREFACE.

. XIII leather ball, better than anything else ; as tne gradations or, balls of plaster of Paris, which I use sometimes to try the strength of pupils who have had previous practice, are a little too delicate for a beginner to perceive. It has been objected that a circle, or the outline of a sphere, is one of the most difficult of all lines to draw. It is so ; but I do not want it to be drawn. All that his study of the ball is to teach the pupil, is the way in which shade gives the appearance of projection. This he learns most satisfactorily from a sphere ; because any solid form, terminated by straight lines or flat surfaces, owes some of its appearance of projection to its perspective ; but in the sphere, what, without shade, was a flat circle, becomes, merely by the added shade, the image of a golid ball ; and this fact is just as striking to the learner, whether his circular outline be true or false.

He is, therefore, never allowed to trouble himself about it ; if he makes the ball look as oval as an egg, the degree of error is simply pointed out to him, and he does better next time, and better still the next. But his mind is always fixed on the gradation of shade, and the outline left to take, in due time, care of itself. I call it outline, for the sake of immediate intelligibility,^ — strictly speaking, it is merely the edge of the shade ; no pupil in my class being ever allowed to draw an outline, in the ordinary sense. It is pointed out .o him, from the first, that Nature relieves one mass, or one tint, against another ; but outlines none. The outline exercise, the second suggested in this letter, is recommended, not to enable the pupil to draw outlines, but as the only means by which onassisted, he can test his accuracy of eye, and discipline his

PREFACE.

. hand When the master is by, errors in the form aud extent of shadows can be pointed out as easily as in outline, and the handling can be gradually corrected in details of the work. But the solitary student can only find oui his own mistakes by belp of the traced limit, and can only test the firmness of his tand by au exercise in which nothing but firmness is required ; and during which all other considerations (as of softness, com pbxity, &c.) are entirely excluded. Both the system adopted at the Working Men's College, and that recommended here, agree, however, in one principle, which I consider the most important and special of all that are in volved in my teaching : namely, the attaching its full importance, from the first, to local colour. I believe that the endeavour to separate, in the course of instruction, the observation of light and shade from that of local colour, has always been, and must always be, destructive of the student's power of accurate sight, aud that it corrupts his taste as much as it retards his progress.

I will not occupy the reader's time by any discussion of the principle here, but I wish him to note it as the only distinctive one in my system, so far as it is a system. For the recommen dation to the pupil to copy faithfully, and without alteration. whatever natural object he chooses to study, is serviceable. among other reasons, just because it gets rid of systematic rules altogether, and teaches people to draw, as country lads learn to ride, without saddle or stirrups ; my main object being, at first, not to get my pupils to hold theil reins prettily, but to y sit like a jackanapes, never off." In these written instructions, therefore, it has always beer

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. XV with regret that I hate seen myself forced to advise anything like monotonous or formal discipline. But, to the unassisted tudeut, such formalities are indispensable, and I am not with out hope that the sense of secure advancement, and the pleasure of independent effort, may render the following out of even the more tedious exercises here proposed, possible to the solitary learner, without weariness. But if it should be otherwise, and he finds the first steps painfully irksome, I can only desire him to consider whether the acquirement of so great a power as that of pictorial expression of thought be not worth some toil ; or whether it is likely, in the natural order of matters in this working world, that so great a gift should be attainable by those who will give no price for it. One task, however, of some difficulty, the student will find I have not imposed upon him : namely, learning the laws of per spective.

It would be worth while to learn them, if he could do so easily : but without a master's help, and in the way per spective is at present explained in treatises, the difficulty is greater than the gain. For perspective is not of the slightest use, except in rudimentary work. You can draw the rounding hue of a table iu perspective, but you cannot draw the sweep of a sea bay ; you can foreshorten a log of wood by it, but jon cannot foreshorten an arm. Its laws are too gross and few to be applied to any subtle form ; therefore, as you must learn to draw the subtle forms by the eye, certainly you may draw the (simple ones. No great painters ever trouble themselves about perspective, and very few of them know its laws ; they draw everything by the eye, and, naturally enough, disdain iu thi

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. easy parts of their work rules which cannot help them iu iiffi cult ones. It would take about a month's labour to draw im perfectly, by laws of perspective, what any great Venetian wil! draw perfectly in five minutes, when he is throwing a wreath of leaves round a head, or bending the curves of a pattern in and out among the folds of drapery. It is true that when per spective was first discovered, everybody amused themselves with it ; aud all the great painters put fine saloons and arcades behind their madonnas, merely to show that they could draw in perspective : but even this was generally done by them only to catch the public eye, and they disdained the perspective so much, that though they took the greatest pains with the circlet of a crown, or the rim of a crystal cup, in the heart of their picture, they would twist their capitals of columns and towers of churches about in the background in the most wanton way, wherever they liked the lines to go, provided only they left just perspective enough to please the public.

In modern days, I doubt if any artist among us, except David Roberts, knows so much perspective as would enable him to draw a Gothic arch to scale, at a given angle and distance. Turner, though he was professor of perspective to the Royal Academy, did not know what he professed, and never, as far as I remember, drew a 6iugle building in true perspective in his life ; he drew them only with as much perspective as suited him. Prout also knew nothing of perspective, aud twisted his buildings, as Turner did, into whatever shapes he liked. I do not justify this ; and would recommend the studeut at least to treat perspective with common civility, but to pay no court to it. The best way he

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. XVII can learu it, by himself, is by taking a pane of glass, fixed in a trame, so that it can be set upright before the eye, at the distance at which the proposed sketch is intended to be seen Let tbe eye be placed at some fixed point, opposite the middlci of the pane of glass, but as high or as low as the student likes ; ther with a brush at the end of a stick, and a little body-colour that will adhere to the glass, the lines of the landscape may be traced on the glass, as you see them through it. When so traced they are all in true perspective. If the glass be sloped in any direction, the lines are still in true perspective, only it is perspective calculated for a sloping plane, while com mon perspective always supposes the plane of the picture to be vertical. It is good, in early practice, to accustom yourself to enclose your subject, before sketching it, with a tight frame of wood held upright before you ; it will show you what you may legitimately take into your picture, and what choice there is between a narrow foreground near you, and a wide one farther off ; also, what height of tree or building you can properly take in, &c.' Of figure drawing, nothing is said in the following pages, because I do not think figures, as chief subjects, can be drawn to any good purpose by an amateur.

As accessaries in laud scape, they are just to be drawn on the same principles as any thing else. 1 If the student is fond of architecture, and wishes to know more of perspective than he can learn in this rough way, Mr. Runciman (of 49 Accacia Road, St. John's Wood), who was my first drawing-master, and to whom 1 owe many happy hours, can teach it him quickly, easily, aud rightly. KVU1

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. Lastly : If any of the directions given subsequently to the student should be found obscure by him, or if at any stage of the recommended practice he find himself in difficulties which 1 have not provided enough against, he may apply by letter to Mr Ward, who is my under drawing-master at the Working Men's College (45 Great Ormond Street), and who will give any re quired assistance, on the lowest terms that can remunerate him for the occupation of his time. I have not leisure myself in general to answer letters of inquiry, however much I may desire to do so ; but Mr. Ward has always the power of referring any question to me when he thinks it necessary. I have good hope, however, that enough guidance is given in this work to prevent the occurrence of any serious embarrassment ; and I believe that the student who obeys its directions will find, on the whole, that the best answer of questions is perseverance ; and the best drawing-masters are the woods and hills. THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING.

LETTER L ON FIRST PRACTICE.

MT DEAR READER : Whether this book is to be of use to you or not, depends wholly on your reason for wishing to learn to draw. If you desire only to possess a graceful accomplishment, to be able to converse in a fluent manner about drawing, or to amuse yourself listlessly in listless hours, I cannot help you : but if you wish to learn drawing that you may be able to 6et down clearly, and usefully, records of such things as cannot bo described in words, either to assist your own memory of them, or to convey distinct ideas of them to other people; if you wish to obtain quicker perceptions of the beauty of the natural world, and to preserve something like a true image of Deautiful things that pass away, or whicli you must your self leave ; if, also, you wish to understand the minds of gre»t painters, and to be able to appreciate their work sincerely, seeing it for yourself, aud loving it, not merely taking up the TO [LET.

I. THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. thoughts of other people about it ; then I can help you, or, which is better, show you how to help yourself. Only you must understand, first of all, that these powen which indeed are noble and desirable, cannot be got without work. It is much easier to learn to draw well, than it if to learn to play well on a^y musical instrument ; but you know that it takes three or four years of practice, giving three cr soar hours a day, to acquire even ordinary command over the keys of a piano ; and you must not think that a masterly command of your pencil, and the knowledge of what may be done with it, can be acquired without painstaking, or in a very short time. The kind of drawing which is taught, or supposed to be taught, in our schools, in a term or two, perhaps at the rate of an hour's practice a week, is not drawing at all.

It is only the performance of a few dexterous (not always even that) evolutions on paper with a black lead pencil ; profitless alike to performer and beholder, unless as a matter of vanity, aud that the smallest possible vanity. If any young person, after being taught what is, iu polite circles, called "drawing," will try to copy the commonest piece of real work — suppose a lithograph on the titlepage of a new opera air, or a woodcut in the cheapest illustrated newspaper of the day — they will find themselves entirely beaten. And yet that common lithograph was drawn with coarse chalk, much more difficult to manage than the pencil of which an accomplished young lady is supposed to have command ; and that woodcut was drawn in urgent haste, and half spoiled in the cutting afterwards ; and both were done by people whom nobody thinks of as artists, or praises for their power ; both were done for daily bread, with no more artist's pride than any simple handicraftsmen feel in the work the-/ hve by.

LET. I. J 21 ON FIRST PRACTICE. Do nos, therefore, think that you can learn drawing, any more than a new language, without some hard and disagree able labour. But do not, on the other hand, if you are ready and willing to pay this price, fear that you may be unable to get on for want of special talent. It is indeed true that the persons who have peculiar talent for art, draw instinctively and get on almost without teaching ; though never withou toil, it is true, also, that of inferior talent for drawing there are many degrees ; it will take one person a much longer time than another to attain the same results, and the results thus painfully attained are never quite so satisfactory as those got with greater ease when the faculties are naturally adapted to the study. But I have never yet, in the experiments I have made, met with a person who could not learn to draw at all ; and, in general, there is a satisfactory and available power in every one to learn drawing if he wishes, just as nearly all persons have the power of learning French, Latin, or arithmetic, in a decent and useful degree, if their lot in life requires them to possess such knowledge.

Supposing then that you are ready to take a certain amount of pains, and to bear a little irksomeness and a few disappoint ments bravely, I can promise you that an hour's practice a day for six months, or an hour's practice every other day for twelve months, or, disposed in whatever way you find convenient, some hundred aud fifty hours' practice, will give you sufficient power of drawing faithfully whatever you want to draw, and a good judgment, up to a certain point, of other people's work : of which hours, if you have one to spare at present, we may as well begin at once. | LKT. I. 22 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. EXERCISE I. Everything that you can see, in tho world around you, presents itself to your eyes only as an arrangement of patches ef different colours variously shaded.' Some of these patches of 1 (N. B This note is only for the satisfaction of Incredulous or cuilous readers.

Tou may miss it if you arc in a hurry, or are willing to take the statement iu the text on trust ) The perception of solid Form is entirely a matter of experience. We see nothing but flat colours; and it is only by a series of experiments that we find out that a stain of black or grey indicates the dark side of a Bolid substance, or that a faint hue indicates that the object in which it appears is far away. The whole technical power of painting depends on our recovery of what may be called the innocence of the eye; that is to say, a sort of childish perception of theso flat stains of colour, merely as such, without consciousness of what they signify, as a blind man would see them if suddenly gifted with sight. For instance; when grass is lighted strongly by the sun in certain directions, it is turned from green into a peculiar and somewhat dusty looking yellow.

If we had been born blind, and were suddenly endowed with sight on a piece of grass thus lighted in some parts by the sun, it would appear to us that part of the grass was green, and part a dusty yellow (very nearly of the colour of primroses); and, if there were prim roses near, we should think that the sunlighted grass was another mass of plants of the same sulphur-yellow colour. We should try to gather some of them, and then find that the colour went away from the grass when we stood between it and the sun, but not from the primroses; and by a s^-ies of experiments we should find out that the sun was really the cause of the colour in the one, — not in the other. We go through such processes of experiment unconsciously in childhood ; and having once come to conclusions touching the signification of certain colours we always suppose that we see what we only know, and have hardly any consciousness of the real aspect of the signs we have learned to inter pret.

Very few people have any idea that sunlighted grass is yellow. LET. I.] 23 ON FIRST PRACTICE. colour have an appearance of lines or texture within them, as a piece of cloth or silk has of threads, or an animal's skin shows texture of hairs ; but whether this be the case or not, the first broad aspect of the thing is that of a patch of some definite colour ; and the first thing to be learned is, how to produet extents of smooth colour, without texture. This can only be done properly with a brush ; but a brush, beiug soft at the point, causes so much uncertainty in the tcuch of an unpractised hand, that it is hardly possible to learn to draw first with it, and it is better to take, in early practice, some instrument with a hard and fine point, both that we may give some support to the hand, and that by working over the subject with so delicate a point, the attention may be properly directed to all the most minute parts of it.

Even tne best artists need occasionally to study subjects with a pointed instrument, in order thus to discipline their attention : and Now, a highly accomplished artist has always reduced himself as nearly as possible to this condition of infantine sight. He sees the colours of nature exactly as they are, and therefore perceives at once in the sun lighted grass the precise relation between the two colours that form its shade and light. To him it does not seem shade and light, but bluish green barred with gold. Strive, therefore, first of all, to convince yourself of this great fact about sight. This, in your hand, which you know by experience ana touch to be a book, is to your eye nothing but a patch of white, variously gradated and spotted ; this other thing near you, which by experience you know to be a table, is to your eye only a patch of brown, variously darkened and veined ; and so on : and the whole art of Painting consists merely in perceiving the shape and depth of these patches of colour, and putting patches of the same size, depth, and shape on canvass.