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
Yet while children's drawings are thus so far away from those
reproductions of the look of a thing which we call pictures, they are
after all a kind of rude art. Even the amusing errors which they
contain, though a shock to our notions of pictorial semblance, have at
least this point of analogy to art, that they aim at selecting and
presenting what is characteristic and valuable. In many of the rude
drawings with which we have here been occupied we may detect faint
traces of individual originality, especially in the endeavour to give
life and expression to the form. To this it is right to add that some
drawings of young children from two to six which I have seen are
striking proofs of the early development now and again of the artist's
feeling for what is characteristic in line, and for the economic
suggestiveness of a bare stroke (see Fig. 25 (_a_) and (_b_)). When once
a child's eye is focussed for the prettiness of things the dawn of
æsthetic perception is pretty sure to bring with it a more serious
effort to reproduce their look. Among children, as among adults, it is
love which makes the artist.
[Illustration: Fig. 25 (_a_) (drawn by a boy aged two years one month).]
[Illustration: Fig. 25 (_b_) (drawn by a girl of five and a half years).]
[Illustration]
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