INDICATIONS OF ARTISTIC TEMPERAMENT
In general, we may say that an appreciation of form, color, proportion, size, and distance is indicated by well-developed brows, broad and full at the outer angles, and by eyes set rather widely apart. But size, form, color, and proportion are but the mediums through which the artist's soul conveys its message. Whether or not one has the soul which can conceive a worthy message is indicated by the expression of the eyes, an expression which cannot be described but which, once seen and recognized, can never afterward be mistaken.
Inherent capacity for music is indicated by a forehead wide at the brows. Going over the portraits of all the famous composers and performers, you will find that while they differ in most other particulars, they are all alike in the proportionate width of the forehead at the brows. The kind and quality of music one may create depends partially upon training and partially upon the kind and quality of his soul, which, again, expresses itself in the eyes.
Capacity for literature and expression is indicated by fulness of the eye, by heighth and width of the forehead, and, perhaps, especially by the development of the head and forehead at the sides just above the temples and back of the hair line. Any portrait gallery of great authors will show this development in nine out of ten (see figures).
The artistic, musical, or literary man with fine, silken hair, fine, delicate skin, small and finely chiselled features, and a general daintiness of build will express refinement, beauty, tender sentiments, and sensitiveness in his work, while the man with coarse, bushy or wavy hair, coarse, thick skin, large, rugged features, and a general ruggedness and clumsiness of build, even when his size is small, will express vigor, virility, ruggedness, and even gruesomeness and horror, in his work. There may be in his productions a wild, virile type of beauty, as in the music of Wagner and the sculpture of Rodin, but the keynote of his work is elemental force.
The dilettante has conical hands, with small, tapering fingers; this is the hand which is popularly supposed to accompany
artistic temperament. He loves art. He appreciates art. He may even win fame and fortune as a competent critic of art, but he cannot create it. Your true artist has square, competent hands, with blunt, square-tipped fingers. The hands shown in figure 57 page 317 are those of a music lover who can neither play nor sing. Those in figure 58 are the hands of a true artist on the piano and pipe organ. The true producing artist nearly always has square hands, with large thumbs set near the wrist, thus giving a wide reach between tip of thumb and tip of forefinger, as shown in figure 58. Actors and operatic singers sometimes have conical hands, with tapering fingers. They express emotion and beauty with voice, gesture, and facial expression rather than with their hands.
In the world of art and literature many are called but few are chosen. The pathway to the heights is steep and rugged and there are many pitfalls. There are many by-paths. Furthermore, it is cold and lonesome on the mountain-top. Before anyone sets out on the perilous journey he should read Jack London's "Martin Eden," Louis M. Alcott's autobiography, the story of Holman Hunt, the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, and the biographies of others who have attained fame in these fields.