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THE CONGRESS OE WOMEN.

However slow or tiresome, or, to many minds difficult they may be, methods for the study of linear perspective do exist, and can be learned by almost every one who goes to work properly to learn it; but with organic form this is not the case. Let me give a practical illustration by comparing drawing with sculpture. Say a sculptor is going to copy exactly a plaster head. Long before he thinks of giving it a laughing or a serene expression, the delicate modeling of each feature, or the smooth or the hairy surface, he must realize and put down in the clay the accurate dimensions of the whole mass of the head, the proper relative position and size, height or depth of each part or feature. He does this by help of his eye, and his already acquired knowledge (you will say). Yes, but that is not all; he uses a simple enough help, though one he would be sorry to be forced to do without, at least until he has had a great deal of experi­ence. This instrument, called “ calipers,” or compass of thickness, is not only toler­ated, but you will find that the very best French sculptors recommend and insist upon its constant use by students for the sake of cultivating their eye and judgment of form. But how is it with drawing? How do we expect to gain certainty here? You make an accurate drawing of this head* from one position, but if you move one inch to the right or to the left and look at it from that altered point of view, your drawing will be no longer accurate, all the relative spaces and distances will appear different and must be drawn so. The sculptor can walk around what he does, can measure it from front to back, from side to side, or diagonally, but you can do nothing of the sort, and according to what many people say, if you know a way of measuring you ought not to use it; you ought to depend solely upon your eye, even though it means, as it so frequently does, building up a complete work on an incorrect or uncertain foundation.

By means of these helps every ordinarily intelligent person can do in a measure for his own eye what photography does for the glass eye of the camera; not, indeed, produce a complete, effortless picture of all he sees, but accurately record the facts of proportion and form, of perspective alterations, etc., as seen by the eye. Granted that what I say be true, and we make it a first condition with all growing students that they start with learning how and why the instruments maybe relied on so far, it is easy to see that quite a new element of certainty is introduced into the study of drawing. We are enabled to judge of the work of our own eyes and of our neighbor’s by applying the inexorable test of optical and geometrical facts to what hitherto had depended entirely on our own and on our fellow-man’s right seeing and judging.

A few words as to the actual use of the philographic helps in studying according to the method. We act on the belief that just as sounding a note in music covertly repeated, even though you be at first guided to the true sound by some instrument, will soon lead to your being able to sound it correctly without helps; so correctly and repeat­edly reproducing graphically the appearance of a given form, even though you are helped to see it, is the shortest and best way of learning to see it without helps. It does not in any way encourage carelessness or scamping, but on the contrary cultivates to the full intelligent judgment and self-criticism on the part of the student, based on the understanding of the chief instrument he must employ, namely, his own eye, and on the laws according to which it works, to enable him to see the difficulties and to cope with them, one by one. By so much simplification, and the practical turning of small means to good account, to render it feasible for all sorts of people, and even solitary students, to master the elements of drawing thoroughly. I leave it to you whether this suggested strengthening of the foundations should imply any harm or any lessening of beauty and completeness in the superstructure. Should it not rather, as we strongly incline to think, have the contrary effect, by making it much harder to pass off bad drawing for good, and much more possible to correct the bad work and do away with bad workmanship.

»Displaying a Marble Bust.