Fig. 23.
Yet while children's drawings are thus so far away from those reproductions of the look of a thing which we call pictures, they are after all a kind of rude art. Even the amusing errors which they contain, though a shock to our notions of pictorial semblance, have at least this point of analogy to art, that they aim at selecting and presenting what is characteristic and valuable. In many of the rude drawings with which we have here been occupied we may detect faint traces of individual originality, especially in the endeavour to give life and expression to the form. To this it is right to add that some drawings of young children from two to six which I have seen are striking proofs of the early development now and again of the artist's feeling for what is characteristic in line, and for the economic suggestiveness of a bare stroke (see Fig. 25 (a) and (b)). When once a child's eye is focussed for the prettiness of things the dawn of æsthetic perception is pretty sure to bring with it a more serious effort to reproduce their look. Among children, as among adults, it is love which makes the artist.
Fig. 24 (a).
Fig. 24 (b).
