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CHAPTER VI. 



PROPORTIONS. 



When addressing artists, it is in the highest degree 

 necessary to support the rules committed to memory by a 

 description of the relationship to one another of the 

 portions which compose the animal. Each region must 

 be limited by a visible outline, and the task undertaken 

 of affording the most approximate indication of the 

 connection existing between them. 



The proportions, in art, are not mathematical ; the 

 equality of the portions constitutes their equilibrium. 

 Symmetry compares all the details among themselves, 

 thence to form a whole, not only conformable to an 

 absolutely natural model, but to the one which unites 

 the perfections. 



Art is the realisation of the type of this selection. 



Mathematical measurements are only the means by 

 which the truest proportions are authentically ascertained. 

 They form the basis of the correct ideas, which are 

 indispensable, because drawing has to give to each object 

 the outline which determines the attitude in the exact 

 appearance of a subject (which is diversified to infinity 

 by nature) for the maintenance of the natural equilibrium 

 in every variety of situation and movement. 



There is nothing absolute in nature ; the word 

 proportion should, therefore, be here understood only in 

 a relative degree. A learned author, in discussing this 

 subject in a book especially devoted to it, said that a 

 numerical indication of proportions was not only both 

 difficult in enunciation and impossible in appreciation, 

 but also of questionable utility. 



How many writers might be quoted, even within the 

 compass of my recent reading, who deny all application 

 of comparative measurements on the horse, by writing . 



