There are schools where the most artistic qualities are encouraged, but they generally neglect the academic side; and the student leaves them poorly equipped for fine work.  Surely it would be possible to make a distinction, giving prizes for academic drawings which should be as thoroughly accurate in a mechanical way as industry and application can make them, and also for artistic drawings, in which the student should be encouraged to follow his bent, striving for the expression of any qualities that delight him, and troubling less about mechanical accuracy.  The use of drawing as an expression of something felt is so often left until after the school training is done that many students fail to achieve it altogether.  And rows of lifeless pictures, made up of models copied in different attitudes, with studio properties around them, are the result, and pass for art in many quarters.  Such pictures often display considerable ability, for as Burne-Jones says in one of his letters, “It is very difficult to paint even a bad picture.”  But had the ability been differently directed, the pictures might have been good.

[Illustration:  Plate XIV.

DRAWING IN RED CHALK BY ERNEST COLE

Example of unacademic drawing made in the author’s class at the Goldsmiths College School of Art.]

It is difficult to explain what is wrong with an academic drawing, and what is the difference between it and fa fine drawing.  But perhaps this difference can be brought home a little more clearly if you will pardon a rather fanciful simile.  I am told that if you construct a perfectly fitted engine—­the piston fitting the cylinder with absolute accuracy and the axles their sockets with no space between, &c.—­it #will not work#, but be a lifeless mass of iron.  There must be enough play between the vital parts to allow of some movement; “dither” is, I believe, the Scotch word for it.  The piston must be allowed some play in the opening of the cylinder through which it passes, or it will not be able to move and show any life.  And the axles of the wheels in their sockets, and, in fact, all parts of the machine where life and movement are to occur, must have this play, this “dither.”  It has always seemed to me that the accurately fitting engine was like a good academic drawing, in a way a perfect piece of workmanship, but lifeless.  Imperfectly perfect, because there was no room left for the play of life.  And to carry the simile further, if you allow too great a play between the parts, so that they fit one over the other too loosely, the engine will lose power and become a poor rickety thing.  There must be the smallest amount of play that will allow of its working.  And the more perfectly made the engine, the less will the amount of this “dither” be.

The word “dither” will be a useful name to give that elusive quality, that play on mechanical accuracy, existing in all vital art. #It is this vital quality that has not yet received much attention in art training.#