Are we not led to these triumphs through the winsome defiles of freehand and shaded drawing from the cast, perhaps accompanied by cheerful model drawing, perspective puzzles, and anatomical dissections, and drawings of the human skeleton seen through antique figures, which seem to anticipate the Röntgen rays?
“The proper study of mankind is man,” but according to the Academic system it is practically the only study—study of the human frame and form isolated from everything else.
No doubt such isolation, theoretically at least, concentrates the attention upon the most difficult and subtle of all living organisms; but the practical question is, do these elaborate and more or less artificial studies really give the student a true grasp of form and construction? Are they not too much practically taken as still-life studies, and approached rather in the imitative spirit?
Royal College of Art:
Design School Craft Classes, Wood-Carving, under Mr. G. Jack
Wood-Carving by J. R. Shea
Then, again, such studies are set and pursued rather with the view to equipping the student with the necessary knowledge of a figure painter. They are intended to prepare him for painting anything or everything (and generally, now, anything but something classical) that can be comprehended or classified as “an easel picture”—that is to say, a work of art not necessarily related to anything else. It is something to be exhibited (while fresh) in the open market with others of a like (or dis-like) nature, and, if possible, to be purchased and hung in a gallery, or in the more or less darkness of the private dwelling—“to give light unto them that are in the house.”
Royal College of Art: Design School Craft Classes, Stained Glass, under Mr. C. W. Whall
Panel designed and executed by A. Kidd