188S.] on the Influence of Athletic Games upon Greek Art. 293 



minor arts, such as mural and vase painting. Thus the common error 

 is widespread that Greek painting was comparatively on a quite dif- 

 ferent scale of excellence to Greek sculpture. I have reason to hold 

 that this is not so, and that, with the exception of landscape painting, 

 the standard of Greek painting was comparatively as high as was that 

 of their sculpture. However this may be, one fact remains, that they 

 are the first to have established the fundamental principle of pictorial 

 art, and that this was first done in athletic art. 



This fundamental principle of pictorial art is expressed by the 

 word composition. What constitutes a picture a work of art is the 

 artistic organisation which the artist gives to the elements which he 

 copies from nature. It is not merely a tree and a house and a man 

 that make up a picture, but it is the combination of these elements 

 into unity and harmony suggested and demanded by the feelin<:' for 

 and need of design inherent in the human mind. In our most com- 

 plicated pictures we can distinguish the following elements of com- 

 position. First, linear composition, in which this unity is given by 

 means of an outline to the whole drawing which meets in some 

 central point ; second, perspective composition, in which the repre- 

 sentation of distance from the point of vision enables the artist to 

 indicate the foreground and background with regard to the centre of 

 interest ; and in the third place composition is given to a picture by 

 light and shade, the gradation of values of colours and of tone which 

 give the same artistic unity within variety. But all these forms have 

 this in common, that they impress upon the eye of the spectator a 

 centi-al point of design and interest, and that the other parts of the 

 work lead up to it. making of the whole an artistic organisation with 

 unity or harmony of design. 



In the paintings of the East and of Egypt we have long successions 

 of figures tier above tier relating in an imperfect languacre a scene 

 as we should relate it in a succession of sounds called words. In fact 

 it is pictui'e-writing which must be translated into a form of thought 

 corresponding to words before it brings a real picture before the 

 mind's eye. This is symbolical art in which the artistic representation 

 is a mere sign appealing to and stimulating the constructive imagina- 

 tion of the spectator to fashion an inner picture of his own makinf^. 

 It is not yet a work of real art which has its life and unity in itself, 

 and attracts and holds the eye of the spectator at its most livinc^ 

 point of interest. 



This principle of composition was first carried out by the 

 Greeks, when they left the sphere of symbolical picture-writing, and 

 presented scenes with a real centre of interest and design. In the 

 earliest works of Greek art, such as the Chest of Kypselos and the 

 Francois vase, we have the oriental arrangement of tier upon tier of 

 successive figures. It is in athletic vase-paintings like this black- 

 Sgured archaic one that we have the first instances of composition. 

 [n the centre are the two boxers engaged, to the right and left are 

 :he Ephedros and the Paidotribes, facing the centre. By their 



