METHODS OF ART EDUCATION. 481 
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orofession. So of Blake, with all his sublimity. An impressionist artist, 
iike the tone-painter Cazin, who deals in vague and rapid color effects, 
must still know how to draw, how to use his pencil and brush, before he 
can be a true artist. Monets, Renoirs, and Cazins are not made in a day, 
or by accident. The mastery of the tools of trade is the object of art 
instruction, for hereby the student is equipped for work. If he knows 
how to draw he will soon know how to paint, by a realizing act of the 
imagination in employing color as a means of more truthful representation 
in drawing ; but the value of technical skill cannot be overestimated, and 
without it all is vain. It is true that the means are simple, but, once 
acquired, the applications are varied. Art, like nature, has few laws, but 
chese must be understood in order that art may become creative as nature 
8. At present especially, when there is so strong a tendency to minimize 
she worth of careful technique, and to trust almost wholly to rapid meth- 
ads of effect (although I gladly recognize in this a new power and a new 
apoch in art), it becomes highly important to emphasize the absolute need 
of thorough technique and to resist the temptation of wishing to be great 
without labor. Good artists are good draughtsmen. The great bulk, 
-ndeed, of Leonardo da Vinci’s works consisted of drawings. This is true, 
;00, of Albrecht Diirer. Burne-Jones’s exquisite drawings, which are 
almost more lovely than his paintings, and which, like Raphael’s crayon 
sketches, form the schemes of his pictures, are said to have cost him infinite 
toil ; and every artist has been an indescribable toiler. For the execution 
of the Titanic paintings of the Sistine Chapel, Michael Angelo was reported 
oy his contemporaries to have ‘“ ground his own colors, prepared his own 
plaster, and completed with his own hand the whole work, after having 
conquered the obstacles of scaffolding and vault-painting by machines 
of his own invention, and that only twenty months were devoted to this 
vast labor of making these paintings, which were composed not only 
on a vast scale, but are of wonderful delicacy and finish of execution.” * 
Now while this tradition is somewhat disproved by recent evidence that has 
come to light, which leads us to believe that he labored at intervals for 
nearly four years upon this gigantic work, and was helped more or less by 
sther workmen, yet, in the main, the story is true that he conceived and 
executed the whole himself with his own hand. He was master of the 
whole technique of art, and could do this. 
Drawing has been called the alphabet of art, but it may almost be called 
‘ts literature. The principles of drawing have reference not merely to 
scientific accuracy but to real life. They comprehend the law of perspec- 
ive entering into all actual objects viewed in space. They have regard 
also to chiaroscuro, by which the round is represented on a flat surface, so 
that the light is seen behind and beyond the object, as in nature, and to 
* Symonds’'s ** Renaissance.”