REVIEW.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume 4, Issue 342, 28 October 1879, Page 2

REVIEW.

Wβ have banded to up for notice a handy little book of sixteen pages, entitled " Synthetical Drawing Lessons," accompanied by a companion book of Illustrations by the headmaster of the Akaroa School, (Mr Nichalls)'. MirNicholPs intro- , ' duces hia work to his felloy-teaehers, for whom.it is primarily intended, in a modest , preface, in which he eeta out the success that has attended his system in his own, school, in the hope,that it be of equal use to others. _■ , , : The importance and the' usefulness of the art of drawing, even in its simplest form, are unquestionable,' and Mr Nicholla holds the notion, in which we quite agree, that every child, unless those .having come special physical defect, can learn to draw. We are not quite Bure,whether MrNicholls' system'is altogether new. It strikes us we must : have met with the idea before of teaching drawing from the simplest forms of line and curve,, but the waj' in which Mr jfichols puts the lessons is quite nove.l to us. Throughout the whole 22 lessons, of which the book 'of illustrations."gives examples, "the capital letters of the English •alphabet are used iin various arid' clever combinations to serve as examples to imitate. In the earlier stages, the simpler letters anch.as L arid T are, used, and rises gradua!ly{,working up to B and S. Indeed, the system' suggested iri the little brochure before us reverts back to the most elementary systems of; the dawn-of art in the human mind. The' first efforts of every child in drawing are of the same description as we finer in the primitive, art of ancient nations. The early human mind,

like that of a child, seized upon facts, no appearances, and, as in the mind of a child the ideas are few and simple, so the art of the old-world races partook of this aim* .plicity. But even in the earliest etages of the simplest line drawing we find ourselves face to face with peculiarities of , art, known as fine, which are quite distinct from those known as mechanical. On the Assyrian slab the rude outlines suggest at once the modelling of the human form within the enclosed blank spaces. Thus we have the infancy of suggestive art, the complete knowledge of which is a sign of the highest civilization. The subject is & highly interesting one, but beyond the province of our present purpose. All early writing was drawing of a rude and simple kind. So much was this the case that even the aesthetic Greek mind regarded them as one and the same process, and in their language, which, above all others of spoken tongues, abounds in delicate and multifarious shades of expression, they had but one and the same word " grapho " to convey the same meaning. The same method of communicating thought or perpetuating ideas is found in the; hieroglyphic writing of the Egyptians. Dr Wilson remarks in his book on PreHistoric Man—" That the origin of the. hieroglyphics is" clearly traceable to the •simplest form of picture-writing, the literal figuring of the objects designed to be expressed. Through a natural series of. progressive stages "this infantile art developed jtself into a phonetic alphabet, the arbitrary symbols.of sounds of the human voice." And strange to say, after all, as has been pointed out by the High Priest of modern art criticism, John Ruskin, that although drawing always begins with a line, there is no such thing in nature. The line is purely conventional, and has been transmitted traditionally from the earliest dawn of art until it culminated in the schools of Venice, and as it is repeated week by week in the pages of Punch by the master pencil of Tenniel. Broadly speaking, different ages and different peoples have treated the line differenfy, but the conventional . idea has ever been the same. The Chinese and Japanese see it twisted grotesqued and curved. The old ; Assyrian saw it free of energy, stiff and void of beauty. The Egyptian saw it angular and straight with a calm repose. But it was reserved fdr.the Greek mind to see it full of that inexpressible beauty, which has been the wonder and admiration_of succeeding ages, so simple that a child oan draw, and yet excite the envy of the highest cultivated artistic skill for its perfect form. We had almost forgotten Mr Nichols' book, which, as we have said, proceeds upon right principles, and .is calculated to assist his fellow laborers in their important work. An important matter which we almost omitted to mention ia the making of children acquainted with the meaning of geometrical terms, which are in" every day use, and which pupils in the primary schools of the Colony would otherwise not have the opportunity of having explained or illustrated to theift. Wβ think we cannot do better than close by' quoting a passage from a recent work by Mr Hamerton, an eminent Art educator, who has remarked, ',' That the right, progress of Art educatioq in modern times could npt bo better assured thin by following in the case of each individual student that epurse of development which humanity itself has followed. True an.d careful liDes in combination with thecaloring of spaces in a few flat tints are , the, natural beginning. What a child does With infantile unsuccess for its amusement the beginner in serious art should be taught to do carefully and well for his instruction. The accurate use of line is the first thing to be learned with, the the equal laying of a flat tint is the first thing to be learned with the brush.'- •-.;