Men of the Old Stone Age: Their Environment, Life and ArtOsborn, Henry Fairfield
History
Men of the Old Stone Age: Their Environment, Life and Art
Osborn, Henry Fairfield
Art, Primitive; Prehistoric peoples; Stone age
The art of engraving and drawing was almost certainly autochthonous,
because we trace it from its most rudimentary beginnings. This northern
art developed from the beginning of Upper Palæolithic times over the whole
of southwestern France and in the northwest of Spain, being
contemporaneous with the descent of the alpine fauna from the Pyrenees and
the Alps and the presence all over western Europe of the tundra fauna. It
was, by preference, an animal art, begun by the Aurignacians but largely
suspended in Solutrean times.
[Illustration: FIG. 161. Superposed engravings of various mammals on a
slab of slate found in the _Grotte du Trilobite_, Yonne, France. In detail
are seen the profiles of two woolly rhinoceroses superposed on the rump of
a mammoth with tail upturned. After Breuil.]
Painting(38) also had its birth in the Aurignacian, in the simple contours
of the hand pressed against a wall surface or outlined with color,
accompanied by primitive attempts at linear drawing in color and painted
groupings; for example, the crude outlines of the bison in the grotto of
Castillo are of Aurignacian age, also the black linear designs of the
deer and of the ibex in the cavern of Font-de-Gaume, Dordogne, the
striking red linear design of the mammoth in the grotto of Pindal, in
northern Spain, representing the animal as with two limbs, and the red
outlines of wild cattle in Castillo. Breuil also attributes to Aurignacian
times the spirited figure of the woolly rhinoceros in red ochre in the
cave of Font-de-Gaume, as well as the outline of the stag in red color.
[Illustration: FIG. 162. Silhouettes of complete and of partly mutilated
hands from the walls of the grotto of Gargas in the Pyrenees. After
Breuil.]
We are impressed throughout with three qualities in this Aurignacian
design: first, the very close observation of the animal form; second, the
attempt at realistic effect produced with very few lines; third, the
element of motion or movement in these animals. For example, the two
heads of the woolly rhinoceros in the slab engravings of the Trilobite
grotto (Fig. 161) are remarkably correct in proportion; there is an
attempt with fine lines to indicate the wool hanging along the lower
surface of the head; behind these two figures is the rump of an elephant
with the tail upturned, an adaptation of the artist to the form of the
slate fragment; the outlines of the feet both of the rhinoceros and the
mammoth are remarkably accurate representations of these pachyderms.
In the more advanced development of draftsmanship in late Aurignacian
times the engravings of these animals not merely approach the truth, but
characteristic features are strikingly represented; and with a few sure
lines the proportions of the body as a whole are better preserved, while
the complicated curves of the hoofs and of the head show very close
observation.
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