I Have Nothing, Therefore, But Praise
Both For The Pupil And The Teacher; But About The System Which
Makes Such Teachers And Such Pupils Commendable, I Am More
Sceptical.
That system trains boys to study other people's works
rather than nature, and, as Leonardo da Vinci so well says, it
makes them nature's grandchildren and not her children.
The boy
who did the drawing given above is not likely to produce good work
in later life. He has been taught to see nature with an old man's
eyes at once, without going through the embryonic stages. He has
never said his "mans is all alike," and by twenty will be painting
like my old friend's long academic sentence. All his individuality
has been crushed out of him.
I will now give a reproduction of the frontispiece to Avogadro's
work on the sanctuary of S. Michele, from which I have already
quoted; it is a very pretty and effective piece of work, but those
who are good enough to turn back to p. 93, and to believe that I
have drawn carefully, will see how disappointing Avogadro's
frontispiece must be to those who hold, as most of us will, that a
draughtsman's first business is to put down what he sees, and to
let prettiness take care of itself. The main features, indeed, can
still be traced, but they have become as transformed and lifeless
as rudimentary organs. Such a frontispiece, however, is the almost
inevitable consequence of the system of training that will make
boys of twelve do drawings like the one given on p. 147.
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