How to Show Pictures to Children/Chapter 1
HOW TO SHOW PICTURES
TO CHILDREN
I
INTRODUCTION
In preparing the Riverside Art Series for publication some years ago, I first came to a full realization of what a picture may mean in a child’s life. It is like a magic carpet transporting him to distant realms, or like Aladdin’s lamp bringing him for the time being his heart’s desire. No figure is too fanciful to express the wondrous capacity it has for quickening the imagination and giving joy. We can hardly overstate its influence upon the mind and character. It is sometimes said that this is a mechanical age and ours is a mercenary, not an art-loving, people. But this is not the testimony which comes from the home and school. The children all love pictures, love to look at them, love to hear about them, love to possess them. And we, who have the shaping of their youthful tastes, are eager to guide them aright. We want to consider what pictures our children like best, and why; what pictures we want them to like, and why; how we can cultivate their taste for the best art, and where we can find the material. Such questions concern the deep issues of life. If the child’s single moment of pleasure were all that was to be considered, the matter would be simple enough. The very fact that the imagination needs so little to set it going, and supplies so many deficiencies, makes his elders a bit careless about the pictures they give him. If a poor thing affords him as much enjoyment as a masterpiece, why bother to get anything better? As well give him a comic supplement as a Raphael’s Madonna, and trouble no more about it. But the faithful educator is concerned with the child’s future, and the object of all culture is rounded development. Everything in the child’s environment is chosen for this end, and the pictures should be among the most carefully selected of all his surrounding influences.
It is an almost cruel fact of psychology that a lack of youthful training can never be fully made up in after years. We see the inexorable law illustrated in the lives of hundreds of people about us, in manners, speech, and taste. So if children are surrounded by sentimental or meretricious pictures, they are seriously handicapped in after life in their susceptibility to noble art. On the other hand, the young mind fed only on the best pictures will by and by turn naturally to the good and reject the inferior. If the taste is cultivated in the impressionable years, it will become as sensitive to æsthetie impressions as a delicately adjusted instrument to atmospheric conditions. The theory is clear enough, but there have been many difficulties in its practical application. For obvious reasons graphic art is not nearly so widely understood or appreciated as literature. It is over four centuries since the printing press brought books into general circulation, but it is less than half a century since photography brought good pictures within general reach. It is no wonder, then, that many who are well versed in reading are still more or less ignorant of art. Some of us whose childhood fell in the seventies were brought up among well-filled bookshelves, while the home pictures were few in number and crude in quality.
The last twenty-five years have seen a complete revolution in this matter. The home and the school may now be decorated with the same art treasures that millionaires enjoy, and all through the magic of process reproduction. The photographer has carried his camera into every corner of the earth and has photographed all the wonders of nature and architecture. Without setting foot out of doors we may travel all around the world in imagination by covering our walls with photographic views. Even more remarkable is the photographic work done in all the great galleries of painting and sculpture, reproducing for us the world’s masterpieces. The Greek marbles of the Vatican and the British Museum, and the works of Michelangelo, may now be as familiar to the children of America as they once were to the children of Athens and of Florence. The paintings of Raphael and Titian, of Holbein and Dürer, of Rembrandt and Frans Hals, of Rubens and Van Dyck, of Velasquez and Murillo, of Reynolds and Gainsborough, of Corot and Millet, of a multitude of contemporary painters, French, German, Dutch, Italian, Scandinavian, English, and American, are all within our reach, if we will put forth our hands to take them. Besides photographic prints, there are all sorts of so-called process pictures, photogravures, half-tones, and so on, ranging in price from several dollars to one cent each. The reproductions are in delicately shaded grays and browns, some even in facsimile colors, interpreting the original beauty of the pictures with wonderful accuracy. With such treasures at our command, the coming generation ought to become as familiar with good pictures as with good books, and should be able to discriminate as correctly in artistic as in literary matters. Educators and parents are striving towards this end.
A child’s pleasure in a picture is greatly increased by the sympathetic companionship of an older person. Though his imagination is keener than his elder’s, his powers of observation are presumably less developed. His natural impatience to turn the page of a book, or hurry on to the next room of a gallery, can be restrained by pointing out the details of the composition. In forming habits of observation, the memory is trained to retain distinct images of the pictures worth knowing. It is surprising how vague our ideas are of many supposedly familiar things. The Sistine Madonna, for instance, is probably one of the best known pictures in the world, but if one were called upon to describe it fully, how many recall the foreshortened hand of the Pope, the crossed legs of the Child, the Virgin’s bare feet, and other similar details? A clear memory image of a masterpiece is a sort of touchstone to carry about as a test for other pictures.The first rule in all our dealings with children is not to talk down to them, and this is especially true in selecting their pictures. Nothing is too good for them. Some pictures may treat subjects beyond a child’s comprehension, but none are beyond him in artistic excellence. The best children’s pictures were not made for children at all. Only the illustrators of children’s books have consciously addressed a juvenile audience. The great masters worked in obedience to their own heavenly vision, and it is one of the tests of success when a picture appeals equally to all ages and all sorts and conditions.
Pictures are primarily intended for pure æsthetic joy, and it is a thousand pities to assume a didactic tone in showing them to children. Let them be, like the stories we tell, among their dearest delights. Above all things else we must avoid mechanical methods of instruction as the most deadly blight to the imagination. We cannot be too careful lest the child’s perception be dulled by prosaic influences, or his taste vitiated by unworthy material. For the imagination is the key by which we unlock the doors of beauty. While the divine gift is still unspoiled, the child is most keenly alive to the joys of life.