at would make for illusion of reality is not the
first aim of draughtsmanship, nor have the best draughtsmen employed it
save by exception. Michelangelo, Ingres, Holbein and Rembrandt have
shown us that it is possible to give sufficient relief with a mere
outline drawing. Again, the desire for salience often blunts the
student's sense of the real character of the forms he is rounding out.
So his elaborately modelled portrait may look very "life-like," but when
compared with the original it will generally be seen that the whole and
each of the individual forms of the drawing lack the peculiar character
of those of the original. It is by carefully watching for the character
of each fresh variety in figure and feature that great draughtsmen have
excelled, and not by "life-like" relief, or even a sophisticated
exposition of anatomical details at the expense of character. Can it be
seriously maintained that a masterly sudden grasp of true formal
character can be developed in a student by a system in which he
patiently spends many days and weeks in stippling into plastic
appearance one drawing which has originally been "laid in" by a
mechanical process?

It has been shown that to attempt to make an illusion of nature is
neither within the power of monochrome nor has been the chief aim of
draughtsmen, but that the art of drawing consists in giving a plain
statement of one's ideas, be they slight or studied, of the solid forms
of nature. But the question may still be asked: Why is it that a
rigorously accurate and finished drawing by a student or artist with
_no_ such ideas or conception is not good drawing, containing as it must
do all that can be seen in the original, missing only its complete
illusion? Why, in a word, is not a photograph a work of art?

The common explanation of the above important question is that the
artist "selects and eliminates from the forms of nature." But surely
this is the principle of the caricaturist and virtuoso? A beautiful
drawing, however slight, is but the precipitate of the whole in the
artist's mind. And a highly finished drawing by a master does not show
even any apparent selection or elimination. The adoption of the
principle of selection to differentiate art from mechanical reproduction
is fundamentally vicious, and could be shown to be wholly inapplicable
to the so-called formative arts. Nor could the theory of "selection" be
used as a principle of teaching, for if to the first questio