artistic instinct is one of the earliest developed in man; the
love of representation is evolved at the earliest period; we see it in
the child, we see it in the savage, we find traces of it among
primitive men. The child in his earliest years loves to trace the
forms of objects familiar to his eyes. The savage takes a pleasure in
depicting and rudely giving shape to objects which constantly meet his
view. The artistic instinct is of all ages and of all climes; it
springs up naturally in all countries, and takes its origin alike
everywhere in the imitative faculty of man. Evidences of this instinct
at the earliest period have been discovered among the relics of
primitive men; rough sketches on slate and on stone of the mammoth,
the deer, and of man, have been found in the caves of France; the
American savage traces rude hunting scenes, or the forms of animals on
the covering of his tents, and on his buffalo robes; the savage
Australian covers the side of caverns, and the faces of rocks with
coarse drawings of animals. We thus find an independent evolution of
the art of design, and distinct and separate cycles of its development
through the stages of rise, progress, maturity, decline and decay, in
many countries the most remote and unconnected with one another. The
earliest mode of representing men, animals and objects was in outline
and in profile. It is evidently the most primitive style, and
characteristic of the commencement of the art, as the first attempts
made by children and uncivilized people are solely confined to it;
the most inexperienced perceive the object intended to be represented,
and no effort is required to comprehend it. Outline figures were thus
in all countries the earliest style of painting, and we find this mode
practiced at a remote period in Egypt and in Greece. In Egypt we meet
paintings in this earliest stage of the art of design in the tombs of
Beni Hassan, dating from over 2000 B.C. They are illustrative of the
manners and customs of that age. Tradition tells us that the origin of
the art of design in Greece was in tracing in outline and in profile
the shadow of a human head on the wall and afterwards filling it in so
as to present the appearance of a kind of silhouette. The Greek
painted vases of the earliest epoch exhibit examples of this style.
From this humble beginning the art of design in Greece rose in
gradually successive stages, until it reached its highest degree of
perfection under