The same tendency to show the whole man where the circumstances hide a
part appears in children’s drawings of a man in a boat, a railway
carriage and so forth. Ricci has shown that the different ways in which
the child-artist puts a human figure in a boat are as numerous as those
in which he sets it on a horse. The figure may stand out above the boat
or overlap, in which last case it may be cut across by the deck-line and
its lower part shown, or be clapped wholly below the deck, or again be
half immersed in the water below the boat, or, lastly, where an attempt
to respect fact is made, be truncated, the trunk appearing through the
side of the boat, though the legs are wanting.[281] A man set in a
house, train, or tram car, is seen in his totality (Fig. 49 (_a_) and
(_b_)). It is much the same thing when a child flattens out a house or
other object so as to show us its three sides, that is to say one which
in reality is hidden (Fig. 49 (_c_) and (_d_)). With these habits of the
child may be compared those of the savage. The impulse to show
everything, even what is covered, is illustrated in a drawing of a
singer in his wigwam by an Indian (Fig. 49 (_e_)).[282] Even where
colour comes in and one thing has to be hidden by a part of another
thing the savage artist, like the child insists on drawing the whole.
This is illustrated in a curious custom, the drawing of two serpents (in
dry, coloured powder) by North American fire-dancers. They are drawn
across one another, and the artist has first to draw completely the one
partly covered, and then the second over the first.[283]
-----
Footnote 281:
See Ricci, _op. cit._, pp. 17-23.
Footnote 282:
Andree observes that in Australian drawings objects behind one another
are put above one another as in a certain stage of Egyptian art (_op.
cit._, p. 172).
Footnote 283:
_Annual Report of Bureau of Ethnology_, 1883-84, p. 444 ff.
-----
[Illustration: Fig. 50.]
The child’s drawing of the house, though less remarkable than that of
the man and the quadruped, has a certain interest. It illustrates, as we
have just seen, not merely his determination to render visible what is
hidden, but also his curious feeling for position and proportion. In one
case I found that in the desire to display the contents of a house a
girl of six had actually set a table between the chimneys. The
accompanying drawing done by the boy C. at the age of five years five
months illustrates the fine childish contempt for proportion (Fig. 50).
A curious feature in these drawings of the house is the care bestowed on
certain details, pre-eminently the window. This is even a more important
characteristic feature than the chimney with its loops of smoke. Some
children give a quite loving care to the window, drawing the lace
curtains, the flowers, and so forth.
_Résumé of Facts._
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