THE ORIGIN OF PAINTING. loi 



OTIS designs found in the caves of France are of this animal.* The 

 second of these drawings, found in La Loz^re, represents a mam- 

 raoth's head sculptured on a staff of command. The images of the 

 chamois, bear, and ox are found more frequently ; hut figures of 

 the reindeer are most numerous. Some are engraved on plates of 

 bone^ and others serve to ornament various objects. Sometimes 

 groups of animals are represented, or, on the other hand, the ani- 

 mals are only partly drawn, and merely the head or head and chest 

 are visible. 



The larger part of these drawings do not excel in execution the 

 figures which our school-boys make on walls ; but the figures of 

 the reindeer are generally superior on account of the remarkable 

 care with which the characteristic lines of the animal are traced, 

 and also, in examples that are otherwise very rare, by the addition 

 of a few shadows. We conclude that the artist of the caves was 

 particularly interested in the reindeer, which furnished his con- 

 temporaries with their principal food, as well as with clothing 

 materials, arms for hunting, and household implements. We 

 know, in fact, that the cave-dwellers lived on reindeer-meat, 

 dressed themselves in its skin, made thread of its tendons, and cut 

 their arrow-points from its bones. In other words, as the reindeer 

 had not yet been domesticated, it stood to those primitive men as 

 a valuable game, and the hunting of it occupied the larger part 

 of their existence. We thus explain why that animal haunted the 

 imagination of the artist of those times. The drawings of the 

 chamois, the bear, and the ox were also often surprisingly exact 

 and really valuable. 



Besides these designs of mammals, there have been found in 

 the caves of France a number of drawings of fishes, tolerably cor- 

 rect, but very uniform. According to Broca, they can all be re- 

 ferred to the salmon. 



All these relics of the primitive arts of design prove abun- 

 dantly that the men of that prehistoric age observed carefully the 

 forms and attitudes of animals and were capable of representing 

 them in an exact and elegant style, attesting, according to Broca, 

 a real artistic sense. 



Nothing like this has been observed in the reproduction of the 

 human figure, and drawings of that kind are extremely rare. 

 There are two such deserving mention, one of which represents a 

 naked man, armed with a club and surrounded by animals ; the 

 second, a fishing scene, a man lancing a harpoon upon a marine 

 animal — a fish according to Broca, a whale according to other 

 authors. The whole of the design is puerile and out of shape, and 



* Similar linear ornaments have been found in the caves in Belgium, and are referred 

 by Dupont to the age of the mammoth. 



