MARY GAY'S WORK IN AUTUMN.
CHAPTER VI.
THE PICTURE-GALLERY.
THE little drawing and painting schools which Mary had in the play-room, on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons, awakened a great interest among all the children round about, in learning to paint and to draw. A great many children petitioned to be admitted to her school, when she had a school, many more than she could take. In fact, after having had three schools, she discontinued that plan, but yet whenever any of the children came to her she gave them such advice as she could, and the necessary directions to enable them to practise at home by themselves.
These directions are very few and simple, and any child who chooses can follow them, and can learn a great deal without any regular teacher.
You may make a teacher in fact of every picture you see in a book or a pictorial paper. Drawing is only representing natural objects by means of black lines made upon paper, and any picture that you see will teach you how to do this if you will only examine it attentively and imitate it carefully. I ought not therefore to say that any child can learn without any teacher whatever, but without any living or personal teacher.
If there were a child that had never seen a picture of any kind, as for instance the daughter of a savage, and she were to be told that there was a way practised by civilized people of representing objects by black lines drawn upon white paper, and were to be given a sheet of paper and pencil and asked to try to learn how to do it, when she had never seen it done, that would be having really to teach herself.
But then, if any one were to come and bring her an engraving cut from a pictorial paper, or one printed on the page of a spelling-book, the child might very well say,-
" Ah, now I can find out how it is done, for this paper will teach me."
Then if she was careful and attentive she would examine very closely all the lines, and see how they were made, so as to give a good representation of a house, or a gate, or a tree,-and in that way she might learn how to do it herself. She would have, as it were, the picture for her teacher.
Now any child can learn a great deal about drawing in the same way, that is by carefully and closely observing exactly how the lines are drawn in a picture, and then imitating them. But children generally do not do this. They only look at the model to see what they are to draw, not to learn how they are to draw it, by carefully observing what kinds of lines are drawn, in what places, and in what directions, and how near together, and then endeavoring to do exactly the same thing in their own work.
Mary explained to her scholars, and to all who came to ask her about drawing, that they must examine the picture which they were going to copy very minutely and carefully, in order to see just what kind of lines the artist made in drawing it.
" In drawing it ? " said one of the girls one day after Mary had said this; " but my picture is not drawn. It is printed."
" Yes," said Mary. " But it is printed upon a block that had a drawing made on it at first, and it is printed exactly like the drawing,-only the ink that it is printed with is blacker than the marks made by a lead-pencil. Bat you can see by the printed picture exactly how the drawing was made on the block, and so can learn how to draw properly yourself."
There were about a dozen children living in the different houses in the neighborhood that became very much interested in drawing and painting, in consequence of Mary's schools. They used to draw and paint at home, and then from time to time they would come and show their work to Mary.
Some of them became so much interested that they drew more or less every day, and they saved all their spending-money to buy drawing-pencils and paintboxes and paint-brushes. Sometimes two or three would meet together at their several houses, and draw or paint all the afternoon, and often several of them would come together to Mary, to show her the work that they had done.
At last one day Mary conceived the idea of having an exhibition. She proposed the plan to some of the girls.
" We will take a week, or two weeks if you. please," said she, " to prepare. We will each draw and paint a picture for the exhibition. Then we will have them all arranged in the play-room at our house, and go in and see them."
The girls liked the plan very much.
" Those that are too young to draw their pictures themselves," continued Mary, " may trace the outlines by putting the picture which they are going to copy, with a paper over it, up to the glass."
Perhaps some of my readers may think that to trace their pictures in this way, by holding them up to the window, would not do any good, and the children would not learn anything by drawing in that way. But this is a mistake. Such little things as they would learn a great deal in that way. Children learn a great deal by drawing with a transparent slate, so called. They learn the exact forms of the different objects which they draw, and the mode of representing them in drawing, and they train their hands and fingers to some degree of dexterity and freedom of motion, that will help them very much in all other things depending upon the use of the hand and fingers, which they will afterward have to learn.
They are not learning the same things, it is true, that the older children are learning who are far enough advanced to draw, themselves, by observation and estimate of distances and dimensions; but they are learning something, and something too which is just as important to them in their early stage of progress as that which the older girls learn is to them, in their more advanced stage.
Mary made a rule, however, that all the drawings which were traced in this way should be acknowledged as tracings, in the inscription placed below. Under each picture was to be Written, in the centre, the name of the subject; and in the corner, on one side, the name of the person who drew it, and on the other a memorandum denoting whether it was a tracing or a drawing from some engraving, or an original design.
Some of the girls made original designs, as they called them ; though these designs were made up of elements selected from different engravings, - as a little cottage or hut from one, a group of trees from another, and a fence with a gate from a third; and then by combining these objects in a new way, they would make a new picture.
But in whichever way the children made their picture, they were to write upon the corner what it was, whether a tracing, a drawing, or a design. If they were not old enough to write it themselves, they were to ask some older child to write it for them.
The children were all to keep their drawings out of sight from each other, as much as possible, until the exhibition. The day before the exhibition they were to bring them all to Mary, and she was to arrange them on the table in the play-room, and at the appointed time they were all to come in and walk around the table and see them.
Then, after they had seen them as much as they chose, they could all take their own, and if they wished they could exchange them among each other,
The children were so much pleased with this exhibition that they determined to have another one on a larger scale. Mary assigned three weeks as the time for preparing for the grand exhibition, and each person was allowed to bring in three pictures, and they might be of any kind. They might be drawings or tracings, either colored or not colored, or engravings colored, either large or small. By this plan she thought there would be a great variety of works of art to be exhibited, and as there were now nearly a dozen children interested in the work, if each offered three specimens there would be thirty or forty in all, which would make quite a large collection.
Of course the work of preparing for this exhibition made a great deal of conversation in all the houses where the children lived who were engaged in it, and this called the attention of some older children there to the subject, and they began to feel inclined to paint pictures too, and some of them went to the stationery store to buy back numbers of the pictorial papers, in order to obtain pictures to paint.
In fact the keeper of the little bookstore was quite surprised to find what a demand had sprung up for his old back numbers. He was very much pleased.
These older girls found that they could make very pretty pictures indeed by coloring some of the engravings. They of course had better judgment than the younger ones in selecting the pictures to paint, and more still in choosing and laying on the colors, and some of them made very large and beautiful pictures. These were all sent in for the exhibition, with the rest, and a very fine collection it made.
When the time for the exhibition came, the pictures were put up all about the playroom, on the walls, by means of pins in the corners, and the children all came to look at them. They spent nearly an hour in walking about the room and examining the pictures. They were bung so low that even the youngest children could see them.
They all were extremely interested in walking about the room and looking at the drawings and paintings, and they spent more than an hour in examining and looking at them. Then they began to exchange them among each other. Some however preferred keeping their own. Of course every one could do just as she pleased.
On to chapters 7-8
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