DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.18975#0386
342
THE LAWS OF FESOLE
not to teach them at ah; or worse than that, to prevent
the possibility of their ever being taught. The ordinary
methods of water-colour sketching, chalk drawing, and the
like, now so widely taught by second-rate masters, simply
prevent the pupil from ever understanding the qualities of
great art, through the whole of his after-life.
3. It will be found also that the system of practice
here proposed differs in many points, and in some is
directly adverse, to that which has been for some years
instituted in our public schools of art. It might be sup-
posed that this contrariety was capricious or presumptuous,
unless I gave my reasons for it, by specifying the errors of
the existing popular system.
The hrst error in that system is the forbidding accuracy
of measurement/ and enforcing the practice of guessing at
the size of objects. Now it is indeed often well to out-
line at hrst by the eye, and afterwards to correct the draw-
ing by measurement; but under the present method, the
student finishes his inaccurate drawing to the end, and his
mind is thus, during the whole progress of his work, ac-
customed to falseness in every contour. Such a practice
is not to be characterized as merely harmful,—it is ruinous.
No student who has sustained the injury of being thus
accustomed to false contours, can ever recover precision
of sight. Nor is this all: he cannot so much as attain to
the hrst conditions of art-judgment. For a hne work of
art differs from a vulgar one by subtleties of line which
the most perfect measurement is not, alone, delicate enough
to detect; but to which precision of attempted measure-
ment directs the attention; while the security of boundaries,
within which maximum error be restrained, enables
the hand gradually to approach the perfectness which
instruments cannot. Gradually, the mind then becomes
conscious of the beauty which, even after this honest effort,
remains inimitable; and the faculty of discrimination in-
creases alike through failure and success. But when the
* [Compare on this subject, CecfMrc.y § 142, and Leonardo's TreaC'.S'e, § 1-]
THE LAWS OF FESOLE
not to teach them at ah; or worse than that, to prevent
the possibility of their ever being taught. The ordinary
methods of water-colour sketching, chalk drawing, and the
like, now so widely taught by second-rate masters, simply
prevent the pupil from ever understanding the qualities of
great art, through the whole of his after-life.
3. It will be found also that the system of practice
here proposed differs in many points, and in some is
directly adverse, to that which has been for some years
instituted in our public schools of art. It might be sup-
posed that this contrariety was capricious or presumptuous,
unless I gave my reasons for it, by specifying the errors of
the existing popular system.
The hrst error in that system is the forbidding accuracy
of measurement/ and enforcing the practice of guessing at
the size of objects. Now it is indeed often well to out-
line at hrst by the eye, and afterwards to correct the draw-
ing by measurement; but under the present method, the
student finishes his inaccurate drawing to the end, and his
mind is thus, during the whole progress of his work, ac-
customed to falseness in every contour. Such a practice
is not to be characterized as merely harmful,—it is ruinous.
No student who has sustained the injury of being thus
accustomed to false contours, can ever recover precision
of sight. Nor is this all: he cannot so much as attain to
the hrst conditions of art-judgment. For a hne work of
art differs from a vulgar one by subtleties of line which
the most perfect measurement is not, alone, delicate enough
to detect; but to which precision of attempted measure-
ment directs the attention; while the security of boundaries,
within which maximum error be restrained, enables
the hand gradually to approach the perfectness which
instruments cannot. Gradually, the mind then becomes
conscious of the beauty which, even after this honest effort,
remains inimitable; and the faculty of discrimination in-
creases alike through failure and success. But when the
* [Compare on this subject, CecfMrc.y § 142, and Leonardo's TreaC'.S'e, § 1-]