Excerpt from Report on Technical Education, 1887

From this it may be seen that geometrical drawing, properly So called, Should not be placed before the study of freehand drawing, which is so often the case, but, that it ought, on the contrary, to be Studied after the student has acquired a certain amount of facility in free-hand drawing, at least sufficient to enable him to judge with a practised eye, so as to employ geometrical drawing as an auxiliary method, to enable him to execute certain work where it is possible and necessary, or at least where useful for mathematical exactness. These principles have been considered by the Superior Council of Public Instruction, and also by a Commission appointed specially to make an Official programme for the teaching of drawing; and geometrical drawing has been abandoned as the base of general instruction in the art of drawing.

It may, however, be asked that if the study of drawing is not to be com menced by geometrical instruction, and by the means of instruments, whether it ought not to commence by imitating, or drawing at once from the round. In a system erected upon such a foundation as this, after drawing from geometrical figures they may he succeeded by ornamental figures of simple combinations, after wards by others borrowed from the vegetable kingdom, not far, however, away from geometrical regularity, and by little and little arriving at the human form. Thus the three degrees of teaching would be maintained, ordinarily called linear drawing, ornamental drawing, and figure drawing. These denominations have faults which bring about a confusion of ideas in order to explain them. Why give the name of linear drawing What is the meaning of drawing by lines, in only tracing the out lines of geometrical figures? Cannot the features of a living being be represented as well as a simple geometrical figure? In designing ornaments, if the vegetable kingdom is to be admitted, why exclude the animal kingdom? The antique ornaments of the renaissance which we so much admire, are full of representations of animals and even of man, as well as by the lovely combinations of plants.

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