Granting the wish, how is an ambitious girl to set
about learning to draw ? She may do a great deal by
herself ; but in the initial stage, help is very desirable — not
in childhood, but after seventeen. Much waste of time
and energy is prevented by a few timely lessons, even
though solitary effort with the aid of books, especially
such a book as Euskin's ' Elements of Drawing,' might
in the end conquer the difficulties. The old accusation
against amateur work, of showiness and superficiality, was
certainly well deserved in the days when the one idea
was to send for a fashionable drawing-master, who taught
his pupils to make feeble copies of his own drawings —
which copies he most unfairly touched up, to make the
results more satisfactory to parents or guardians. Of
course, this system was deplorable ; but those evils have
disappeared, to give place to their exact contraries in
modern art teaching. The dryness of the grounding, the
difficulties of getting through the earlier stages of an art
school, often discourage the student who cannot give up
all her time and energies to conquering these initial
3i2 POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN
difficulties, which are made so great. The modern girl
who works in a studio now spends months, even years,
drawing rough charcoal studies of the nude. This, of
course, is essential for a genius who is seriously going in
for figure-painting. But to the ordinary amateur it brings
about the desired results no more than the knowledge of
the alphabet would give the mental development to be
derived from literature. The upshot of all this serious
study is that, as the girl's life gets fuller, her drawing can
no longer be the accompaniment to her life, and she gives
it up in despair.
It may be thought well that these half-hearted workers
should be turned back at the outset. This would be right,
if the drawing of amateurs were to be measured only by
its results. But the least of its many advantages to them
is the production of a mere drawing, especially as this is
always so inferior to what they hoped to produce. The
really important ends in view are the influence on
character, the employment of time, and the attainment
of innocent happiness, which are all of much greater
importance than mere technical skill. I do not deny the
usefulness of schools, nor the impetus they may have
given to our national art. But their system has its
faults, even as regards the training of professionals or of
those amateurs whose great talent may carry them quickly
through the drudgery these schools impose. It seems to
me that there is room now for well-qualified teachers of
water-colour sketching, without any revival of the old-
fashioned and very superficial system of years gone by.
A teacher should himself have been grounded in freehand,
design, and perspective. He should be able to guide the
pupil through these early stages into the happier plains
of still-life or landscape painting from Nature more
quickly and with less tedium than could be done in the
school or the studio. I know that with patient work a
AMATEUR ARTISTS 313
Page 184
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Granting the wish, how is an ambitious girl to set
about learning to draw ? She may do a great deal by
herself ; but in the initial stage, help is very desirable — not
in childhood, but after seventeen. Much waste of time
and energy is prevented by a few timely lessons, even
though solitary effort with the aid of books, especially
such a book as Euskin's ' Elements of Drawing,' might
in the end conquer the difficulties. The old accusation
against amateur work, of showiness and superficiality, was
certainly well deserved in the days when the one idea
was to send for a fashionable drawing-master, who taught
his pupils to make feeble copies of his own drawings —
which copies he most unfairly touched up, to make the
results more satisfactory to parents or guardians. Of
course, this system was deplorable ; but those evils have
disappeared, to give place to their exact contraries in
modern art teaching. The dryness of the grounding, the
difficulties of getting through the earlier stages of an art
school, often discourage the student who cannot give up
all her time and energies to conquering these initial
3i2 POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN
difficulties, which are made so great. The modern girl
who works in a studio now spends months, even years,
drawing rough charcoal studies of the nude. This, of
course, is essential for a genius who is seriously going in
for figure-painting. But to the ordinary amateur it brings
about the desired results no more than the knowledge of
the alphabet would give the mental development to be
derived from literature. The upshot of all this serious
study is that, as the girl's life gets fuller, her drawing can
no longer be the accompaniment to her life, and she gives
it up in despair.
It may be thought well that these half-hearted workers
should be turned back at the outset. This would be right,
if the drawing of amateurs were to be measured only by
its results. But the least of its many advantages to them
is the production of a mere drawing, especially as this is
always so inferior to what they hoped to produce. The
really important ends in view are the influence on
character, the employment of time, and the attainment
of innocent happiness, which are all of much greater
importance than mere technical skill. I do not deny the
usefulness of schools, nor the impetus they may have
given to our national art. But their system has its
faults, even as regards the training of professionals or of
those amateurs whose great talent may carry them quickly
through the drudgery these schools impose. It seems to
me that there is room now for well-qualified teachers of
water-colour sketching, without any revival of the old-
fashioned and very superficial system of years gone by.
A teacher should himself have been grounded in freehand,
design, and perspective. He should be able to guide the
pupil through these early stages into the happier plains
of still-life or landscape painting from Nature more
quickly and with less tedium than could be done in the
school or the studio. I know that with patient work a
AMATEUR ARTISTS 313