With a keen-edged splinter of flint in the daylight he incised the
outlines of the mammoth upon a smooth portion of its tusk - its image was
associated with his thoughts of a future life, and thus Art in its
earliest inception represented the highest aspirations of man.
But could the ignorant savage of that long-lost day have been capable of
such work? The lowest race of savages in Southern Africa - the Bushmen - go
about with festoons of entrails wound around their loins. After a
successful hunt - with the pit or poisoned arrows - they remove the
entrails of the slain animal and wear them like coronals for present
ornament and future regalement. These creatures are nevertheless artists.
On the walls of caves they have painted the antelope and the lion in
bright colours; they have not only caught the shape and hue of the
animals about them, but their action and movement. The figures are in
motion, skilfully drawn and full of spirit.
If any one asks, is the application of Art to the chase really so old, so
very very old, as this? I refer them to the stars. How long ago is it
since the constellations received their names? At what date were they
first arranged in groups? Upon the most ancient monuments and in the most
ancient writings they have the same forms assigned to them as at this
day, and that too in countries remote from each other. The signs of the
Zodiac are almost as old as the stars themselves; that is, as old as the
time when the stars were first beheld of human eyes. Amongst them there
is the Archer - Sagittarius - the chase in the shape of man; greatest and
grandest of all the constellations is Orion, the mighty hunter, the giant
who slew the wild beasts by strength. There is no assemblage of stars so
brilliant as those which compose the outline of Orion; the Hunter takes
the first place in the heavens. Art exists in the imagination - imagination
drew lines from star to star, and repeated its life on earth in the sky.
So it is true that the first picture - whether drawn by the imagination
alone in the constellations, on the walls of the cave with ochre and
similar materials, or engraved with keen splinters of flint on the
mammoth's tusk - the first picture was of the chase. Animals are earliest,
the human form next, flowers and designs and stories in drawings next,
and landscape last of all. Landscape is peculiarly the art of the
moderns - it is the art of - our - civilisation; no other civilisation seems
to have cared for it. Towers and castles are indeed seen on the
bas-reliefs of Assyria, and waving lines indicate rivers, but these are
merely subsidiary, and to give place and locality to the victories the
king is achieving.
