64 Artists Errors, 



There are certainly many minutice in which 

 the artist can learn from the photograph. To 

 give an instance : before reaching the ground, the 

 leg in every gait must be stiffened, and the bot- 

 tom of the foot brought parallel to the surface 

 traveled over, or a stumble will ensue. This, at 

 first blush, may look awkward ; but it is not 

 really so. The artist often forgets that a horse 

 must sustain his weight on stiff legs, and that 

 these straighten from their graceful curves to 

 the supporting position in regular gradation, and 

 reach this position just before the foot comes 

 down. Some in other respects most attractive 

 sketches fail in this. Often one sees the picture 

 of an otherwise handsomely moving horse whose 

 fetlock joint of the foot just being planted is so 

 bent forward as to make a drop inevitable. This 

 is certainly without the domain of true art. 



The origin of such drawing lies probably in 

 the fact that the eye catches the bent rather than 

 the straight position of the fetlock, because the 

 former occurs when the foot is higher above the 

 ground, while the latter position is not so notice- 

 able as being more out of the line of sight. But 

 such stumbling pictures are as much a worry to 

 the horseman's eye as the ugliest of the Muy- 

 bridge gallopers is to the artist's; and they are 

 wholly unnecessary. 



There are many such minor points of criti- 



