Page:1902 Encyclopædia Britannica - Volume 25 - A-AUS.pdf/744

 688

ART

TEACHING

regard to the syllabus issued to the art schools of the without retracing his steps, thus escaping the depression country, and act as referees in regard to purchases for of going over old ground. the museum. New buildings for the Royal College of The general movement of revival of interest in the arts of Art will be added to the new museum building now in decorative design and the allied handicrafts, with the desire to course of erection. There will be a lower and a higher re-establish their influence in art-teaching, has been due to many school in the college, and provision will be made for the causes, among which the work of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition may count as important. From the leading members of practice of the artistic handicrafts. An etching and en- Society this body the London County Council Technical Education Board, graving class has existed since 1864. A stained-glass when it was face to face with the problem of organizing its class was instituted in 1899, and these will be followed new schools and its technical classes, sought advice aiid°aid. by classes for stone and marble carving, for metal work, Success has attended their schools, especially the Central School of Arts and Crafts at Morley Hall, Regent Street. The object of and for pottery, while others will be added as space and the school is to provide the craftsman in the various branches of organization admit. decorative design with such means of improving his taste and skill Of other institutions for the teaching of art, outside as the workshop does not afford. It does not concern itself with the Science and Art Department, the following may be the amateur or with theoretic drawing. The main difference in principle adopted in this school in the teaching of design is the named: The Royal Drawing Society of Great Britain absence of teaching design apart from handicraft. It is considered and Ireland, which was formed principally to promote the that a craftsman thoroughly acquainted with the natural capacities teaching of drawing in schools as a means of education. of his material and strictly understanding the conditions of his The system therein adopted differs from the ordinary work, would be able, if he had any feeling or invention, to design drawing courses, and favours the use of the brush. Brush- appropriately in that material, and no designing can be good apart from a knowledge of the material in which it is intended to be work has generally been adopted for elementary work, too, carried out. It should be remembered too that graphic skill in by London school-board teachers, drawing being now a representing the appearances of natural objects is one sort of skill, compulsory subject. Remarkable results have been obtained and the executive skill of the craftsman in working out his design” by the Alma Road board schools in the teaching of boys say, in wood or metal, is quite another. It follows that the works drawing or design made by the draftsman would be of quite a from eight to twelve by giving them spaces to fill with of different character from a pictorial drawing, and might be quite given forms—leaf shapes—from which patterns are con- simple and abstract, while clear and accurate. The training for structed to fill the spaces, brush and water-colour being the pictorial artist and for the craftsman would, therefore the means employed. At the Female School of Art in naturally be different. character of the art-teaching adopted in any country must Queen Square, London, classes in drawing and painting of The course depend upon the dominant conception of art and its from life are held, and decorative design is also studied. function and purpose. If we regard it as an idle accomplishment At the Herkomer Incorporated School at Bushey, directed for the leisured lew, its methods will be amateurish and superficial. by Prof. H. von Herkomer, R.A., according to his own If we regard art as an important factor in education, as a language of the intelligence, as an indispensable companion to literature, we methods, students are instructed in drawing, painting, shall favour systematic study and a training in the power of direct and engraving. The school is limited to 100 students. expression by means of line. We shall value the symbolic drawing The City and Guilds of London Institute has two depart- of early civilizations like the Egyptian, and symbolic art generally, ments for what is termed “ applied ” art, one at the South and in the history of decorative art we shall find the true accompaniment and illustration of human history itself. From this London School of Technical Art, and the other at the Art point of view we shall value the acquisition of the power of drawDepartment in the Technical College, Finsbury. There ing for the purpose of presenting and explaining the facts and are also the Royal School of Art Needlework; the School forms of nature. Drawing will be the most direct means at the of Art Wood-carving; and the School of Art at the command of the teacher to explain, to expound, to demonstrate Crystal Palace. The Slade School of Drawing, Painting, where mere words are not sufficiently definite or explicit. Drawing this sense is taking a more important place in our education” and Sculpture, University College, Gower Street, confines in especially in primary education, though there is no need for it to itself to drawing and painting from the antique and life, stop there, and one feels it may be destined to take a more imand exercise in pictorial composition. There are also portant position both as a training for the eye and hand and an lectures on anatomy and perspective. The Slade Pro- aid to the teacher. Then, again, we may regard art more from its aspect as an essential accompaniment of human life, not fessorships at Oxford and Cambridge Universities are social only for its illustrative and depicting powers, but also and no less concerned with the teaching and literature of art, but they for its pleasure-giving properties, its power of awakening and stimudo not concern themselves with the practice. There are lating the observation and sympathy with the moods of nature, also, in addition to the schools of art named and those in its power of touching the emotions, and above all of appealing to our sense of beauty. We shall regard the study of art from connexion with the Board of Education in the various this point of view as the greatest civilizer, the most permeating of districts of London and the country, many and various social and human forces. Such ideas as these, shared no doubt private schools and clubs, such as the Langham and by all who take pleasure and interest in art, or feel it to be an “ Heatherley’s,” chiefly concerned in encouraging drawing important element in their lives,'are crossed and often obscured and painting from the life, and for the study of art by a multitude of mundane considerations, and it is probably out of the struggle for ascendency between these that our systems of from the pictorial point of view, or for the preparation of art teaching are evolved. There is the demand of the right to candidates for admission into the Royal Academy or other live on the part of the artist, and the teacher of art. There is the demand on the part of the manufacturer and salesman for such art schools. A general survey, therefore, of the various institutions as will help him to dispose of his goods. In the present commercial rivalry between nations this latter demand is brought into prowhich are established for the teaching of art in Great minent relief, and art is apt to be made a minister, or perhaps a Britain gives the impression that the study of art is not slave to the market. These are but accidental relationships with neglected, although, perhaps, further inquiry might show art. All who care for art value it as a means of expression and that, compared to the great educational establishments, for the pleasure and beauty it infuses into all it touches, or as and inseparable from life itself. Seeing then the imthe proportion is not excessive. With the board schools essential portance of art from any point of view, individual, social, comteaching art, as well as the municipal art schools and mercial, intellectual, emotional, economic, it should be important schools in connexion with the Board of Education, the to us in our systems of art-teaching not to lose sight of the end in danger is of waste of energy and of overlapping in’ the arranging the means—not to allow our teaching to be dominated either dilettantism or commercialism, neither to be feeble for various courses. This danger suggests that a well-defined by want of technical skill, nor to sacrifice everything to technique. progressive system might be arranged so that a school- The true object of art-teaching is very much like that of all educaboard scholar who shows artistic ability might be enabled tion—to inform the mind, while you give skill to the hand—not to pass on from the elementary classes in one school to the to impose certain rigid rules, or fixed recipes and methods of work, but while giving instruction in definite methods and the use of higher art and technical schools, secondary and advanced, materials, to allow for the individual development of the student