Fig. 49 (c).
Fig. 49 (e).
The same tendency to show the whole man where the circumstances hide a part appears in children’s drawings of a man in a boat, a railway carriage and so forth. Ricci has shown that the different ways in which the child-artist puts a human figure in a boat are as numerous as those in which he sets it on a horse. The figure may stand out above the boat or overlap, in which last case it may be cut across by the deck-line and its lower part shown, or be clapped wholly below the deck, or again be half immersed in the water below the boat, or, lastly, where an attempt to respect fact is made, be truncated, the trunk appearing through the side of the boat, though the legs are wanting.[[281]] A man set in a house, train, or tram car, is seen in his totality (Fig. 49 [(a)] and [(b)]). It is much the same thing when a child flattens out a house or other object so as to show us its three sides, that is to say one which in reality is hidden (Fig. 49 [(c]) and [(d)]). With these habits of the child may be compared those of the savage. The impulse to show everything, even what is covered, is illustrated in a drawing of a singer in his wigwam by an Indian (Fig. 49 [(e)]).[[282]] Even where colour comes in and one thing has to be hidden by a part of another thing the savage artist, like the child insists on drawing the whole. This is illustrated in a curious custom, the drawing of two serpents (in dry, coloured powder) by North American fire-dancers. They are drawn across one another, and the artist has first to draw completely the one partly covered, and then the second over the first.[[283]]
Fig. 50.
The child’s drawing of the house, though less remarkable than that of the man and the quadruped, has a certain interest. It illustrates, as we have just seen, not merely his determination to render visible what is hidden, but also his curious feeling for position and proportion. In one case I found that in the desire to display the contents of a house a girl of six had actually set a table between the chimneys. The accompanying drawing done by the boy C. at the age of five years five months illustrates the fine childish contempt for proportion (Fig. [50]). A curious feature in these drawings of the house is the care bestowed on certain details, pre-eminently the window. This is even a more important characteristic feature than the chimney with its loops of smoke. Some children give a quite loving care to the window, drawing the lace curtains, the flowers, and so forth.
Résumé of Facts.
We may now sum up the main results of our study. We find in the drawings of untrained children from about the age of three to that of eight or ten a curious mode of dealing with the most familiar forms. At no stage of this child-art can we find what we should regard as elements of artistic value: yet it has its quaint and its suggestive side.