Yet the artificial culture which children in the better classes of a civilised community are wont to receive is apt to develop a precocious respect for raiment, and this respect is reflected in their drawings. The early introduction of buttons has been illustrated above. One boy of six was so much in love with these that he covered the bust with them (Fig. 42 [(a)]). Girls are wont to lay great emphasis on the lady’s feathered hat and parasol, as in the accompanying drawing by a maiden of six (Fig. 42 [(b)]). Throughout this use of apparel in the crude stage of child-art we see the desire to characterise sex, rank, and office, as when the man is given his hat, the soldier his military cap, and so forth. This applies, too, of course, to such frequent accessories as the walking-stick (or less frequently the whip, as in Fig. 35 [(b)], p. 363) and the pipe, each of which is made the most of in giving manliness of look. The pipe, it may be added, figures bravely in a drawing of a European by one of Von den Steinen’s Brazilians.
First Drawings of Animals.
Many of the characteristics observable in the child’s treatment of the human figure reappear in his mode of representing animal forms. This domain of child-art follows quickly on the first. Children’s interest in animals, especially quadrupeds, leads them to draw them at an early stage. In prescribed exercises, moreover, the cat and the duck appear to figure amongst the earliest models. An example of this early attempt to draw animals has been given above (p. 334, Fig. [1]).
Fig. 43 (a).—A duck.
The first crude attempts about the age of three or four to draw animal forms exhibit great incompleteness of conception and want of a sense of position and proportion. In one case the head seems to be drawn, but no body—if, indeed, head and body are not confused; and in others where a differentiation of head and trunk is attempted there is no clear local separation, or if this is attempted there is no clear indication of the mode of connexion (see, for example, Fig. 43 [(a)]). In the case of animals the side view is for obvious reasons hit on from the first. But, needless to say, there is no clear representation of the profile head. As a rule we have the front view, or at least the insertion of the two eyes. Both eyes appear in Mr. Cooke’s illustrations of drawings of the cat by children between three and four (Fig. 43 [(b)]), as also commonly in drawings of horses. The position of the eyes is often odd enough, these organs being in one drawing by a boy of five pushed up into the ears (Fig. 43 [(c)]).[[273]] The front view of the animal head along with profile body appears occasionally in savage drawings also.[[274]] In some of children’s drawings we see traces of a mixed scheme. Thus I have a drawing by a boy of five in which a front view is reached by a kind of doubling of the profile (Fig. 43 [(d)]).
Fig. 43 (b).—Two cats.
Fig. 43 (d).—A horse.