forms upon a flat surface that the art has to show. During this
period, however, and to a more partial extent even in the earlier
classical epoch, efforts were being made to widen the horizon of
the art and to embrace within the scope of its representations
not only solid objects in themselves, but such objects as a whole
in space, in due relation to each other and to the universe at
large. It was reserved, however, for the masters of the 17th
century perfectly to realize this ideal of the art, and in their hands
painting as an art of representation is widened out to its fullest
possible limits, and the whole of nature in all its aspects becomes
for the first time the subject of the picture.
§ 5. The Place of Classical Painting in the Development of the Art.—This limitation of classical painting to the representation of form may be challenged, for some hold that Greek artists not only attempted but succeeded in the task of portraying objects in space in due relation to each other and to the system of things as a whole, and that the scope of their work was as extended as that of the Italian painter of the 16th century. The view taken in this article will presently be justified, but a word may be said here as to Greek painting in general and its relation to sculpture. The main arguments in favour of the more exalted view of this phase of the art are partly based on general considerations, and partly on the existence of some examples which seem to show the artist grappling with the problems of space. The general argument, that because Greek sculptors achieved so much we must assume that the painters brought their art to the same level, is of no weight, because it has been already pointed out that painting and music are not in their development parallel to sculpture and architecture. Nothing, moreover, is really proved by the facts that painting was held by the ancients in higher estimation than its sister art, and that the painters gained great wealth and fame. Painting is a more attractive, more popular art than sculpture. It represents nature by a sort of trick or illusion, whereas sculpture with its three dimensions is more a matter of course. It is a puzzle how the object or scene, with its colours as well as its forms, can be made to appear on a few square inches of flat surface, and the artist who has the secret of the illusion is at once a man of mark. In Greece this was specially the case, because painting there made its appearance rather later than sculpture and so was from the first more conspicuous. Hence literary writers, when they refer to the arts generally, quote a painter rather than a sculptor. The people observed the painters, and these naturally made the most of themselves and of their art. The stories of the wealth and ostentation of some of these show that there was an atmosphere of reclame about the painters that must have affected the popular estimate, in an aesthetic sense, of their work. Then, too, popular criticism of painting has no standard. To the passer-by who watches the pavement artist, the result of his operations seems nature itself. “Better than I saw not who saw the truth,” writes Dante (Purg. xii. 68) of incised outlines on a pavement, that cannot go very far in natural similitude. Vasari, though a trained artist, writes as if they “vied with nature” of certain works that, though excellent for their day, do not approach the modern type. We think ourselves that Raphael’s babies are like nature till we see Correggio’s, and that Venetian Venuses are “real flesh and blood” till that of Velazquez comes to prove them paint. The fact is that the expression “true to nature” is a relative one, and very little weight should be given to a merely popular or literary judgment on a question of the kind. Hence we must not assume that because ancient painting was extravagantly praised by those who knew no other, it therefore covered all the field of the art.
§ 6. The Earliest Representative Art.—Naturalistic design of a very effective kind appears at a very early stage of human development, and is practised among the most primitive races of the actual world, such as the Australians, the Bushmen of South Africa and the Eskimo. Of the existence of such art different explanations have been offered, some finding for the representations of natural objects motives of a religious or magical kind, while others are content to see in them the expression of a simple artistic delight in the imitation of objects of interest. The extraordinary merit, within certain limits, of this early naturalistic work can be accounted for on sociological lines. As Grosse has put it (The Beginnings of Art, p. 198), “Power of observation and skill with the hand are the qualities demanded for primitive naturalistic pictorial art, and the faculty of observation and handiness of execution are at the same time the two indispensable requisites for the primitive hunter life. Primitive pictorial art, with its peculiar characteristics, thus appears fully comprehensible to us as an aesthetic exercise of two faculties which the struggle for existence has developed and improved among the primitive peoples.” So far as concerns the power of seizing and rendering the characteristics of natural objects, some of the earliest examples of representative art in the world are among the best. The objects are animals, because these were the only ones that interested the early hunter, but tens of thousands of years ago the Palaeolithic cave-dwellers of western France drew and carved the mammoth, the reindeer, the antelope, and the horse, with astonishing skill and spirit.
Fig. 6, Plate III., shows the famous sketch of a mammoth made by a prehistoric hunter and artist of western France. The tusks, the trunk, the little eye, the forehead, and especially the shaggy fell of the long-haired elephant, are all effectively rendered.
Figs. 1, 2 and 3, Plate I., show three examples of the marvellous series of prehistoric carvings and incised drawings, from the caves of southern France, published by the late Edouard Piette. We note especially the remarkable effort to portray a stag turning its head, and the close observation displayed in the representation of the action of a running buck.
Even more striking are the Palaeolithic paintings discovered in the cave of Altamira at Santillane, near Santander in Spain. These are less ancient than the carvings and sketches mentioned above, but they date from a time when what is now Great Britain was not yet divided from the continent by the Channel, when the climate of southern Europe was still cold, and when animals now extinct—such as the European bison—were still common. These paintings, boldly sketched in three colours, may be reckoned as some 50,000 years old. They display the same power of correct observation and artistic skill as the earlier carvings. Notice in the remarkable examples given on Plate II. the black patches on the bison’s winter coat and the red colour of the hide where, with the progress of the spring, he has got rid of the long hair from the more prominent parts of his body by rubbing himself against the rocks. The impressionist character of some of these sketches is doubtless partly due to the action of time; but note how, in the case of the great boar, the artist has represented the action of the legs in running as well as standing in much the same way as might be done in a rapid sketch by a modern painter. The mystery of these astounding paintings is increased by the fact that they are found in a cave to which no daylight has ever penetrated, sometimes in places almost inaccessible to sight or reach, and that they are surrounded by symbols of which none can read the meaning (see the two lozenges in fig. 3, Plate I.).
Palaeolithic art is, however, a phenomenon remote and isolated, and in the history of painting its main interest is to show how ancient is the striving of man after the accurate and spirited representation of nature. Modern savages on about the same plane of civilization do the same work, though not with equal artistic deftness, and Grosse reproduces (loc. cit., ch. vii.) some characteristic designs of Australians and Bushmen. Some of these are of single figures, but there are also “large associated groups of men and animals with the landscapes around them.” The pictures consist in outlines engraved or scratched on stone or wood or on previously blackened surfaces of hide, generally, though not always, giving profile views, and are sometimes filled in with flat tints of colour. There is no perspective, except to this extent, that objects intended to appear distant are sometimes made smaller than near ones. In the extended scenes the figures and objects are dispersed over the field, without any arrangement on planes or artistic composition, but each is delineated with spirit and in essential features with accuracy.
It is a remarkable fact, but one easily explained, that when man advances from the hunter stage to a more settled agricultural life
