ANATOMY AND ART. 
BY 
Robert Fletcher. 
THE ANNUAL PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS, 
DELIVERED 
December 12, 1891^. 
The question whether art in its early development was at 
all aided by anatomy, and the further inquiry whether the 
aid of anatomy is of any real benefit to art, are not new 
questions. Critics and artists have expressed their opin¬ 
ions on one or the other side. Mr. Ruskin, with character¬ 
istic vehemence, has returned a decided negative to both 
questions. Writers on art, being human, are prone to re¬ 
peat dogmatic rules, and so the assertion is very commonly 
made that the artist who proposes to represent the human 
form, whether in sculpture or in painting, must in part fit 
himself for his work at the dissecting table. It is the pur¬ 
pose of this address to endeavor to examine the matter from 
a historical point of view chiefly. The rise and progress of 
the study of anatomy, and its rapid advance by means of 
artistic illustrations after the invention of printing, consid¬ 
ered in relation to art in its earlier age and its later devel¬ 
opment, will, perhaps, assist in an understanding of the 
subject. 
While anatomy may be defined generally to be the study 
of an organized body, there are many recognized divisions 
of the subject, one only of which concerns the present in¬ 
quiry. Artistic anatomy comprehends the whole external 
54—Bull. Phil. Soc., Wash., Vol. 12. (411) 
