Notice also the increased attention to individual character in the Degas, observe the pathos of those underfed little arms, and the hand holding the tired ankle—­how individual it all is.  What a different tale this little figure tells from that given before the footlights!  See with what sympathy the contours have been searched for those accents expressive of all this.

[Illustration:  Plate XII.

STUDY ATTRIBUTED TO MICHAEL ANGELO (BRITISH MUSEUM)

Note the desire to express form as a felt solid thing, the contours resulting from the overlapping forms.  The visual appearance is arrived at as a result of giving expression to the mental idea of a solid object.]

[Illustration:  Plate XIII.

STUDY BY DEGAS (LUXEMBOURG)

In contrast with Michael Angelo’s drawing, note the preoccupation with the silhouette the spaces occupied by the different masses in the field of vision; how the appearance solid forms is the result of accurately portraying this visual appearance.

Photo Levi]

How remote from individual character is the Michael Angelo in contrast with this!  Instead of an individual he gives us the expression of a glowing mental conception of man as a type of physical strength and power.

The rhythm is different also, in the one case being a line rhythm, and in the other a consideration of the flat pattern of shapes or masses with a play of lost-and-foundness on the edges (see later, pages 192 [Transcribers Note:  Sidenote “Variety of Edges.”] et seq., variety of edges).  It is this feeling for rhythm and the sympathetic searching for and emphasis of those points expressive of character, that keep this drawing from being the mechanical performance which so much concern with scientific visual accuracy might well have made it, and which has made mechanical many of the drawings of Degas’s followers who unintelligently copy his method.

VI

THE ACADEMIC AND CONVENTIONAL

The terms Academic and Conventional are much used in criticism and greatly feared by the criticised, often without either party appearing to have much idea of what is meant.  New so-called schools of painting seem to arrive annually with the spring fashions, and sooner or later the one of last year gets called out of date, if not conventional and academic.  And as students, for fear of having their work called by one or other of these dread terms, are inclined to rush into any new extravagance that comes along, some inquiry as to their meaning will not be out of place before we pass into the chapters dealing with academic study.

It has been the cry for some time that Schools of Art turned out only academic students.  And one certainly associates a dead level of respectable mediocrity with much school work.  We can call to mind a lot of dull, lifeless, highly-finished work, imperfectly perfect, that has won the prize in many a school competition.  Flaubert says “a form deadens,” and it does seem as if the necessary formality of a school course had some deadening influence on students; and that there was some important part of the artist’s development which it has failed to recognise and encourage.