A NOTE ON THE DRAWING OF MOVEMENT 



19 



not to be a complete disconnexion of parts, there must 

 be a sense of continuity which carries across the inter- 

 ruptions and re-establishes the rhythmic principle. 



The comparison may be challenged on the grounds 

 that the rhythm of music occurs in time, which it may be 

 said does not find a place in looking at a work of art, 

 of which the whole is seen simultaneously. Such an 

 argument is based on a misunderstanding of how pic- 

 tures and statues are really seen. Even a general 

 impression of a picture is only received by a survey, 

 however rapid. And really to see and grasp all that 

 is in a great picture is a task equivalent to grasping all 

 that there is in a great play. The mere act of running 

 the eye along any of the innumerable paths of a 

 picture involves an expenditure of time, however 

 brief, which shows that the sense of rhythm conveyed 

 by works of art is as truly dependent upon time as is 

 the rhythm of a piece of music. 



Motion which does not give rise to rhythmic impres- 

 sions seems to be beyond the essential powers of art to 

 express, and the occurrence of such motion can only be 

 suggested by the representation of certain phenomena from 

 which it can be deduced by a process of reasoning. 

 A railway train at speed shows no changes of shape, and 

 creates no rhythmic impressions, thus giving to the artist 



no means of appealing to the spectator's natural response 

 to rhythmic suggestion. He may blur the spokes, and 

 from such an indication the spectator may reason that 

 the train is in motion ; but he does not feel it. Allow 

 the artist, however, to build a pattern about it, of trailing 

 steam, flapping window blind, and whirling paper picked 

 up from the track, or still less connected with the train's 

 motion let him throw a rhythmic pattern of tree-shadows 

 upon train and embankment, and he can produce a 

 feeling of swift movement in the picture, despite the 

 train's own inexpressive rigidity. 



The representation of phases and phenomena asso- 

 ciated with our perception of movement in nature such, 

 for instance, as indistinctness, confusion, apparent de- 

 formation, though it may intensify and complete the 

 effect created by the fundamental rhythms, is always 

 subordinate to them. For while a mere pattern dis- 

 sociated from all idea of nature, and all representation 

 of objects, can produce an effect of motion to the eye, 

 a figure represented in a picture, however clearly it is 

 shown to be in action, will produce no such effect if it 

 does not make a pattern or form part of a pattern which 

 is rhythmic in itself ; and this, as has been already 

 pointed out, the arrested attitude of a figure as recorded 

 by an instantaneous photograph hardly ever does. 



