Fig. 21 (b) (reproduced from a drawing published by Mr. H. T. Lukens).
Much the same kind of thing shows itself in a child's manner of treating the forms of animals, which his pencil is wont to attack soon after that of man. Here the desire to exhibit what is characteristic and worthy naturally leads at the outset to a representation of the body in profile. A horse is rather a poor affair looked at from the front. A child must show his four legs, as well as his neck and his tail. But though the profile seems to be the aspect selected, the little penciller by no means confines himself to a strict record of this. The four legs have to be shown not half hidden by overlappings but standing quite clear one of another. The head, too, must be turned towards the spectator, or at least given in a mixed scheme—half front view, half side view (see Fig. 22 (a) and (b)).
Fig. 22 (a).—A horse.
Fig. 22 (b).—A quadruped.
A like tendency to get behind the momentary appearance of an object and to present to view what the child knows to be there is seen in early drawings of men on horseback, in boats, railway carriages, houses, and so forth. Here the interest in the human form sets at defiance the limitations of perspective, and shows us the rider's second leg through the horse's body, the rower's body through the boat, and so forth.
The widespread appearance of these tendencies among children of different European countries, of half-civilised peoples, like the Jamaica blacks, as well as among adult savages, shows how deeply rooted in the natural mind is this quaint notion of drawing.
At the same time there are, as I have allowed, important differences in children's drawings. A few have the eye and the artistic impulse needed for picturing, roughly at least, the look of an object. I have lately looked through the drawings of a little girl in a cultured home where every precaution was taken to shut out the influences of example and educational guidance. When at the age of four years eight months she first drew the profile of the human face she quite correctly put in only one eye, and added a shaded projection for nose (see Fig. 23). In like manner she was from the first careful to show only one leg of the rider, one rein over the horse's neck, and so forth; and would sometimes, with a child's sweet thoughtfulness, explain to her mother why she proceeded in this way. Yet even in the case of this child one could observe now and again a rudiment of the tendency to bring in what is hidden. Thus in one drawing she shows the rider's near leg through the trouser; in another she introduces the front view of a horse's nostrils (if not also of the ears) in what is otherwise a drawing of the profile (see Fig. 24 (a) and (b)).