364 The Evolution of Painting. 



history of painting back to remote ages, and to discuss its 

 progress among semi-barbarous peoples. 



An exploration of caves in western Europe has brought 

 to light many interesting remains of early art. These re- 

 mains belong to the Pleistocene period, and prove beyond 

 question that the so-called cave-men had great natural apti- 

 tude for art. In speaking of the cave-men, John Fiske 

 says : " Many details of their life are preserved to us through 

 their extraordinary taste for engraving and carving. Sketches 

 of reindeer, mammoths, horses, cave-bears, pike, and seals, 

 and hunting scenes, have been found by the hundred, in- 

 cised upon antlers or bones, or sometimes upon stone ; and 

 the artistic skill which they show is really astonishing. 

 Their drawings are remarkable not only for their accuracy, 

 but often equally so for the taste and vigor with which the 

 subject is treated." 



Sir John Lubbock, in describing these remarkable draw- 

 ings, states that " in some cases there is even an attempt at 

 shading." 



Coming down to historic times, the earliest art is to be 

 found in Egypt. Pliny tells us that the Egyptians boasted 

 of having been masters of painting more than six thousand 

 years before it was acquired by the Greeks. We would 

 doubtless agree with Pliny that this was a " vain boast," be- 

 cause while many of their paintings date back several 

 thousand years, they were never masters of the art. 



The remains of Egyptian paintings are found mostly on 

 walls of tombs and temples, on cases and cloths of mummies, 

 and on papyrus rolls. Their pictures are not works of art 

 in the ordinary sense; they are merely symbolic writings 

 which record the social, religious, and political life of the 

 people. The pictures consist merely of outline diagrams 

 arbitrarily colored 



The Egyptians knew nothing of perspective, or the sci- 

 ence of composition, and very little about the use of colors. 

 They were conventional in their treatment of the human 

 face. Woltmann, in his History of Painting, says : " One 

 face wears almost always the same fixed expression as an- 

 other. A king, whether we see him engaged in prayer, or 

 sacrifice, or confronting the enemy in the onset of battle, or 

 marching in triumph after his victory, or sitting upon the 

 seat of judgment in the character of an avenging deity, inva- 

 riably bears upon his countenance the character of inexpress- 

 ive and conventional rigidity, beneath which our modern 



