Children's Ways: Being selections from the author's "Studies of childhood," with some additional matterSully, James
Science
Children's Ways: Being selections from the author's "Studies of childhood," with some additional matter
Sully, James
Child development; Child psychology
Much the same kind of thing shows itself in a child's manner of treating
the forms of animals, which his pencil is wont to attack soon after that
of man. Here the desire to exhibit what is characteristic and worthy
naturally leads at the outset to a representation of the body in
profile. A horse is rather a poor affair looked at from the front. A
child must show his four legs, as well as his neck and his tail. But
though the profile seems to be the aspect selected, the little penciller
by no means confines himself to a strict record of this. The four legs
have to be shown not half hidden by overlappings but standing quite
clear one of another. The head, too, must be turned towards the
spectator, or at least given in a mixed scheme--half front view, half
side view (see Fig. 22 (_a_) and (_b_)).
[Illustration: Fig. 21 (_a_) (from General Pitt Rivers' collection of
drawings).]
[Illustration: Fig. 21 (_b_) (reproduced from a drawing published by Mr.
H. T. Lukens).]
A like tendency to get behind the momentary appearance of an object and
to present to view what the child _knows_ to be there is seen in early
drawings of men on horseback, in boats, railway carriages, houses, and
so forth. Here the interest in the human form sets at defiance the
limitations of perspective, and shows us the rider's second leg through
the horse's body, the rower's body through the boat, and so forth.
The widespread appearance of these tendencies among children of
different European countries, of half-civilised peoples, like the
Jamaica blacks, as well as among adult savages, shows how deeply rooted
in the natural mind is this quaint notion of drawing.
[Illustration: Fig. 22 (_a_).--A horse.]
[Illustration: Fig. 22 (_b_).--A quadruped.]
At the same time there are, as I have allowed, important differences in
children's drawings. A few have the eye and the artistic impulse needed
for picturing, roughly at least, the _look_ of an object. I have lately
looked through the drawings of a little girl in a cultured home where
every precaution was taken to shut out the influences of example and
educational guidance. When at the age of four years eight months she
first drew the profile of the human face she quite correctly put in only
one eye, and added a shaded projection for nose (see Fig. 23). In like
manner she was from the first careful to show only one leg of the rider,
one rein over the horse's neck, and so forth; and would sometimes, with
a child's sweet thoughtfulness, explain to her mother why she proceeded
in this way. Yet even in the case of this child one could observe now
and again a rudiment of the tendency to bring in what is hidden. Thus in
one drawing she shows the rider's near leg through the trouser; in
another she introduces the front view of a horse's nostrils (if not also
of the ears) in what is otherwise a drawing of the profile (see Fig. 24
(_a_) and (_b_)).
[Illustration: Fig. 23.]
[Illustration: Fig. 24 (_a_).]
[Illustration: Fig. 24 (_b_).]
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