Identifier: criticismmo00chil (find matches)
Title: Art and criticism : monographs and studies
Year: 1892 (1890s)
Authors: Child, Theodore
Subjects: Art criticism
Publisher: Harper
Contributing Library: Whitney Museum of American Art, Frances Mulhall Achilles Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Metropolitan New York Library Council - METRO

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that he was able to drawit immediately from memory. Thus, thanks to the extraordi-nary sensitiveness of his eye, aided by this little card - boardtube and a patient pencil, he discovered nearly the whole the-ory of the horses movements while he was still a boy. Duringhis stay at Rome, as a student in the Villa Medicis, he alwaysmanaged to have a horse to ride, and continued his observa-tions with his card-board shutter. However, none of the stu-dents would believe what he said about the decomposition ofthe horses movements, until finally he made a complete set oftheoretical drawings, arranged them inside a card-board cylin-der, set it spinning, and so gave a counter-proof of his theory.All these observations were again confirmed when in 1879 Mr.Muybridge brought his photographs to Paris and exhibitedthem in M. Meissoniers studio, to the masters great astonish-ment. But, as has frequently been pointed out, these analyt-ical photographs are of little practical use as artistic docu- ■
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AIME MOROT. SOME MODERN FRENCH PAINTERS. 63 ments, because in reality the eye does not see the movementsin their instantaneous phases. In painting horses in movementsome compromise has to be made between scientific accuracyand the error of popular vision, which is satisfied with a sport-ing print where a galloping horse is represented without a sin-gle foot touching the ground. Now, a horse, except when hehas his legs tucked under him in the act of jumping, alwayshas at least one foot on the ground, with the leg as straightand stiff as possible. The French have an expression for gal-loping, ■ventre a tcrrc meaning the swiftest and most tearingpace, as if the belly of the horse came nearer to the ground atthis pace. The Gascons even talk about galloping so quicklythat they scrape the ground with their spurs. This is absurd.In galloping, a horse does not sink more than an inch and a halfat the utmost, owing to the bending and play of the pastern andshoulder. Nevertheless, Gericault pa

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