14 



HORSES AND MOVEMENT 



even of those really interested in Art, have troubled 

 to consider it. 



Movement implies change, and our perception of 

 movement depends upon noting and comparing changes 



of shape, tone or colour in a series of visual impressions, 

 just as our sense of music depends upon the com- 

 parison of a series of momentary sounds. 



If sensation did not endure after the stimulus that 

 created it has ceased, we should be incapable of per- 

 ceiving change, and we should be sensible only of the 



impression of the actual moment, disconnected from 

 all that comes before or after, seeing, like the photo- 

 graphic plate, only the separate attitudes of which the 

 movement is composed, and never receiving the 

 generalized impression which means seeing movement. 



Our perception of movement, then, is created by an 

 act of recollection and is dependent on memory. Con- 

 sequently it can only be drawn from recollection. 



In this the drawing of movement differs essentially 

 from other forms of memory work. Artists, of course, 

 constantly work from memory when dealing with fugitive 

 effects of light, colour, grouping. They do so because 

 such effects, though stationary, are of such brief duration 

 that they do not allow sufficient time in which to record 

 them on the spot. A group of figures, for instance, if 

 only it would remain unaltered for a considerable length 

 of time, could be painted directly, as the still-life painter 

 paints his subjects, but the artist knows from experience 

 that the group may at any moment be broken up by 

 the movement of the individuals that compose it, so 

 that he may think it wiser, instead of spending any of 

 the precious seconds on the act of drawing, to devote 

 them all to observing and storing up an impression from 

 which he can work later. 



In such a case, to work from memory is merely the 



