The Training of the Memory in Art and the Education of the Artist

Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran

Description

The Training of the Memory in Art and the Education of the Artist aims to teach the reader how to memorise things like form and colour composition so that they may draw and paint from memory alone.

This fantastic guide is highly recommended for all artists, and it would make for a worthy addition to allied collections.

The contents include:

- The Training of the Memory in Art

- Memory of Form

- Memory for Colour

- Advanced Study – Practical

- Applications

- A Survey of Art Teaching

- Epilogue

- Letters to a Young Professor

- Drawing and Painting

- Notes on Illustrations

Many vintage books such as this are increasingly scarce and expensive. It is with this in mind that we are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially-commissioned new biography of the author.

Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran

Translator's Preface

Preface to Second Edition

Note on the Author's Life

Introduction

The Training og the Memory in Art

- Preface to the Edition of 1862

- Memory of Form

- Memory for Colour

- Advanced Study - Practical

- Applications

- Appendix I

- Appendix II

- Appendix III

- Appendix IV

A Survey of Art Teaching

- Epilogue

- Notes to the Edition of 1879

- Appendix

Letters to a Young Professor

Summary of a Method of Teaching Drawing and Painting

- Introduction

- First Letter

- Second Letter

- Third Letter

- Fourth Letter

- Fifth Letter

- Epilogue

- Supplementary Notes

Note on the Illustrations, 1923

Note on the Illustrations

Sujets

• Santé et bien-être
• Développement personnel
• Art Plastique
• Arts plastiques
• Art
• Study
• Teaching

Informations

• Publié par: Read Books Ltd.
• Date de parution: 26 janvier 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781447494331
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

THE TRAINING
OF
THE MEMORY IN ART
AND THE
EDUCATION OF THE ARTIST
BY
LECOQ DE BOISBAUDRAN
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY
L. D. LUARD
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
SELWYN IMAGE, M.A.
SLADE PROFESSOR OF FINE ART IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
1914
TRANSLATOR S PREFACE
I T seems astonishing that the teaching and the name of Lecoq de Boisbaudran should be so little known, even in his own country, considering how many of the famous French artists of the generation that has almost passed away were among his pupils. For the names of Cazin, Fantin-Latour, Legros, Lhermitte, Guillaume R gamey, Tissot, among painters-and of Whistler also, who by his association with Fantin, Legros, and other of his students fell under his influence; of Rodin and Dalou among sculptors; of Gaillard, engraver; Roty, medallist; Solon, designer of pottery; form a very remarkable list, which contains more than one name of genius. It suggests, moreover, by its variety, that he achieved his aim as a teacher, which was to develop each student in the direction of his natural bent.
While education cannot create genius or talent, or even supply their deficiencies, it must help or thwart their full development. Indeed, the importance of early education is universally admitted, for it is one of the ineffaceable influences upon a man s work up to the very end of his career. And it is because this book seems to me to lay down the fundamental principles of a thorough and absolutely liberal artistic education, that I have taken the trouble to translate it. I have further been at some pains to follow up the subject by interviewing such of his pupils as are still living, to get all the information I could upon the author and his teaching.
If I have not gathered very much beyond what is to be found in these pamphlets, it is perhaps because, as M. Solon wrote to me, Lecoq was very chary of his words in his intercourse with his students.
This statement is confirmed by some MSS. notes of her husband s early reminiscences, kindly lent me by Mme Fantin-Latour. They describe Lecoq s teaching as d ailleurs tr s simple, and show how careful he was to take into account each student s individual temperament, and give him the particular counsel that he felt was best suited to his needs at the moment: . . . l un des traits les plus frappants de ses conseils, c est pr cis ment le tact avec lequel, ce propos, il garde la mesure toujours. He very rarely took up brush or charcoal when criticising his pupils studies; and never allowed them to see his own work, for fear lest they should be led into imitation.
Fantin-Latour tells of the expeditions into the country which he and his fellows made upon Sundays-often to the pond at Villebon, where they bathed and made memory studies of each other in the open air; and of how they discovered on the outskirts of Paris an inn which had a high-walled garden, where Lecoq organised classes for working from the model out of doors, a great innovation in those days.
Here is an account by one of his pupils of the first lesson he had from him: Lecoq set me down to copy an engraving. When I showed him the result, confident that I had done it rather well and expecting him to praise me, he took out his pen-knife and with its point showed me where I had failed in really giving the line of the back, of the foot, and other parts. I set to work again, determined this time to win the approval which had been withheld. Better, was his comment, but still not exact enough, and again the pen-knife relentlessly pointed out the inaccuracies. Five times I had to make the drawing before he was satisfied.
While revising the translation I have had the opportunity of seeing M. Rodin, who in telling me of his early days with Lecoq de Boisbaudran paid him the following tribute: We did not fully appreciate at the time, Legros, and I, and the other youngsters, what luck we had in falling in with such a teacher. Most of what he taught me is assuredly in me still.
In fact, the enthusiasm with which his pupils, one and all, speak of the value and stimulus of his teaching is only equalled by the affection with which they speak of the man himself.
The three pamphlets which make up this book were written at intervals of some years. Thus The Training of the Memory in Art ( L ducation de la m moire pittoresque ) was published originally in 1847, and again in 1862; A Survey of Art Teaching ( Un Coup d il sur l enseignement des beaux-arts ) in 1872 and 1879; and Letters to a Young Professor-Summary of a Method of teaching Drawing and Painting ( Lettres un jeune professeur-sommaire d une m thode pour l enseignement du dessin et de la peinture ) in 1877.
In consequence, as the French editors point out in a note to the collected edition of 1879, the three pamphlets do not follow each other like the chapters of a book, but overlap upon some of the more essential points. They are, however, very closely connected through their unity of aim and principle, and amplify and explain each other, thus forming a complete statement of their author s doctrines.
In translating the book the original order has been preserved, while it seemed best to retain intact the pamphlet called A Survey of Art Teaching, despite a few parts that are merely topical. For it treats the subject invariably from general principles, and is far more than a criticism upon the teaching of the time at which it was written.
The photographs of memory-drawings, which will be found at the end of the volume, are reproduced by the kind permission of Dr. Pierre Rondeau, late chef-adjoint honoraire des travaux physiologiques la Facult de M decine Paris, a nephew of Lecoq de Boisbaudran, who has in his possession portfolios full of the pupils drawings. I take this opportunity to thank him for the readiness with which he has put at my disposal his rights over the drawings and the writings left him by his uncle; and to acknowledge the kindness and help which he has invariably shown me.
I wish also to thank Mme Cazin, Mme Fantin-Latour, and Lecoq s old pupils, MM. Rodin, Lhermitte, Legros, Bellenger, Bouteli , Ferrier, Solon, Ottin, and Fr d ric R gamey for the readiness with which they gave me information upon the author and his methods. And further, I must acknowledge the help which I received from Mr. G. D. Luard in revising the translation.
L. D. L.
P ARIS , 1911.
PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION
T HE demand for a second edition of this book shows that Lecoq de Boisbaudran s principles of teaching are rousing real interest, and are recognised to be of serious value. They have naturally enough also roused a certain amount of criticism, which, upon two points at least, appears to me not to be justified. The one concerns the question of visualisation, to which I refer in the Note on the Illustrations on p. 182; the other the use of copies.
There exists in many minds such a strong prejudice against copies, owing to the way in which they have been abused, that Lecoq has hardly had a fair hearing, I think, upon his view of their educational value.
In his opinion, real progress in art, for the student and mature artist alike, consists in continually educating the eye to greater refinement of perception, and the hand to greater control and subtlety of execution; while the most frequent obstacle to progress is the forming of set habits of eye and hand, generally borrowed from others, for they necessarily interfere with the development of personal observation and self-expression.
Consequently, he declares the student must never be allowed to learn how to do it, either from his professors or through imitation of his more advanced fellow-students, but must from the very first learn to train his faculties, by making his own discoveries through his own failures and successes. And this can best be effected by setting him to a graduated series of simple exercises, in each of which a particular difficulty is so plainly put before him that he knows exactly what he has to try for, can see how far he is successful, and is in consequence working to satisfy himself.
The merit of copies as elementary practice for this purpose depends, he reminds us, upon the fact that what is drawn upon a piece of paper can be truly copied upon a piece of paper, whereas an object in three dimensions can never be copied , but only interpreted upon a flat surface, with the result that a looseness and inaccuracy of observation and execution may pass undetected in drawing from real objects, which even the beginner himself could not fail to notice in work from simple copies.
Out of such looseness spring the habits of form and colour, and tricks of hand, which Lecoq believes might be destroyed in their origin by the wise use of copies as correctives.
Consequently he sets the beginner to simple exercises in proportion, tone, and colour. The geometrical figures in Letters to a Young Professor are only the most primitive type of exercises in judging length and proportion.
Except for an extra illustration, and a note here and there, no changes have been introduced into this edition. The text of the translation remains the same.
L. D. L.
P ARIS , 1913.
NOTE ON THE AUTHOR S LIFE
H ORACE L ECOQ DE B OISBAUDRAN , who came of an old family of Poitou, was born at Paris in 1802.
He entered the cole des Beaux-Arts in 1819, and exhibited from 1831 to 1844, at which date his own work gave way to his teaching.
His painting was cold and hard, showing unmistakable signs of a very bad education. One feels that he recognised this for himself, and that it was an incentive to him in his search for sound principles for teaching others.
What he might have done as a painter if he had not devoted all his time to teaching is an interesting speculation, for his later productions show a breadth, a looseness, and a modernity in striking contrast to his early pictures; and such was his enthusiasm that he continued working until the very last, even when too ill to leave h