How to Show Pictures to Children/Chapter 2
II
THE CHILD AND THE PICTURE
In selecting pictures for children we must take the child’s point of view. He likes a picture for what it shows him. His interest is in the subject, not in the art. He does not know or care whether it is beautiful, or cleverly treated, rare or famous or what not. He wants to know what it is about. If it represents something which pleases him, that is enough. He has reasons of his own for his preferences, apparently growing out of very simple psychological principles. It is for us to study and gratify these childish preferences, making them a stepping-stone for the higher appreciation of art.
I recently asked a young mother what pictures her little boy likes best. “Animals,” was the prompt reply. Glancing around the nursery, I saw a perfect menagerie of toys: horses, dogs, cats, sheep, etc., in every imaginable material from rubber and china to the most realistic imitations in skin and fur. The father had begun in the child’s infancy to bring home toys of this sort, and it was a natural transition from toy to picture. A baby girl’s first toy is commonly the doll, and from this the natural transition is to pictures of babies. If daddy happens to be fond of yachting, the boy’s first toys are likely to be boats, and from these he is ready for shipping scenes. If mother has a fad for gardening, the little girl, brought up among flowers, will naturally like pictures of flowers. Both boys and girls spontaneously point out other children as soon as they begin to “take notice.” Naturally enough, then, the pictures of children secure their immediate response. In short, the child’s first pleasure in pictures seems to consist largely in the principle of recognition. He is proud and pleased to be able to identify an object. You arouse his interest in a picture by pointing out the familiar features. The other day I dropped a bank-book which opened on a small woodcut of the “Institution for Savings,” a very uninteresting edifice. My four-year-old nephew fell upon it eagerly. “See the cunning house,” he exclaimed, gazing at it with the rapture of Ruskin before the cathedral of Amiens. This plainly was the sheer joy of recognizing a familiar thing in miniature.
The child’s first favorites, then, in the way of pictures, are from the subjects most familiar to him in his toys and surroundings. These are easy to supply, and should be in the best possible form, artistically and mechanically. They should represent large, plain, simple objects, making what educators call a “unit.” Many designs intended for children are made in a decorative style to please the illustrator, and are not at all suitable for the young. Intricacy of line is confusing to the child’s eye. A figure must emerge well from the background to be clearly distinguished. Impressionism is not for children. At first the pictured object is not so satisfying as the real thing, because it cannot be handled. The pictured baby cannot be hugged, nor the pictured animal dragged about the nursery floor. In the course of time, however, pictures make a place of their own in the child’s affections. They are perhaps the most restful of all his playthings. Certainly they afford his most quiet amusement—much to the mother’s relief.
Next to the principle of recognition in the child’s picture experience comes the element of curiosity. He is eternally asking questions and trying to increase his stock of ideas. Pictures like all other objects will contribute to this end. From pictures of domestic pets so easily identified, he passes with awe and curiosity to pictures of wild animals which have never come into his ken: elephants, camels, and lions: and from these again to mythical beasts like the dragon. From pictures of houses and churches, such as he sees daily, he turns with inquiring eyes to views of splendid public buildings such as he has never known. From children of his own class, in dress and appearance like his own, he advances to the child life of other periods and lands. In these cases the new thing is enough like the old to seem halfway familiar, and still so unfamiliar as to stimulate new interest. The child must begin with what he can understand, but his thirst for knowledge gives him a zest for something beyond, not so far beyond, however, that it is in outer darkness. The universal rule of progress is by one step at a time.
It is singular how the opposite pleasures of rccognition and curiosity alternate and balance each other 
Mansell, Photo. John Andrew & Son co.
in a child’s likes and dislikes. All boys and girls have a strong conservative element in their make-up, the girl clinging tenaciously to her battered old dolls, and the boy loyal to his dismembered dogs and horses. At the same time they are always teasing for some new toy or amusement. So with pictures. At times they seem interested only in something familiar, and again they utterly refuse to look at the “tiresome old” picture book they “know by heart.” I have a box of miscellaneous prints which tests the caliber of many an unsuspecting little visitor. While I am busy at my desk, this box is explored, and the discoverer brings me the special treasures selected. I remember one little girl whose amusement consisted in counting out the pictures she herself happened to have. Another surprised me very much by finding a few old photographs I had entirely forgotten. They were Nativity subjects by some early Italian painters, quite archaic in style and supposedly unattractive to a child. But in this case they were the reminder of a happy hour in the schoolroom, and the child poured forth to me the story of the manger as she had heard it from her teacher. All the charming modern children’s pictures counted for nothing beside these which suggested a familiar train of thought. Children of a different temperament choose the striking and unusual things to have them explained. “What is the giant [St. Christopher] going to do with the baby on his shoulder?” “Why docs a little boy [Prince Charles] wear a lace bonnet, or a little girl [Penelope Boothby] lace mittens?” As soon as the child is eapable of grasping more than one object at a time, or, in other words, of relating the various elements of a composition, he progresses from the single object, or unit, to the story picture. His pleasure is now of a higher order than mere recognition or curiosity: it is the awakening of the imagination. This faculty once aroused needs only the right touch to transport him into a paradise of joy. The good story picture is the great desideratuum. This may be illustrative of a text or anecdotic in itself. In either case his lively fancy finds plenty of exercise in reading the story into the picture or the picture into the story. The story subjects he likes best at first are those drawn from his own little world, but he soon grows to new interests, As kindergartners so well understand, children enjoy seeing things done, and those pictures are ever popular which portray the primitive tasks of life like spinning, knitting, sewing, churning butter and feeding hens, sowing the seed and gathering the harvest. Other subjects follow in due order, and go far towards widening the horizon of the child’s mind.There are certain classes of subjects to which the child remains long indifferent. He has no use for adult portraits, generally speaking, unless they are connected with some story. They are all very well to vary the monotony of a history lesson, but taken by themselves, they are dull and uninteresting. This is natural enough. What normal, wide-awake child enjoys sitting in a company of silent grown-ups?
Landscape art pure and simple does not interest the average child to any extent. The love of nature in early years is due in a measure to the exhilarating effect of air and sunshine, The great out-of-doors is a glorious playground in which the child delights to sport like any other healthy young animal. As his mind develops, the latent æsthetic impulses are awakened. He rejoices in the “shout of color to glad color,” and his heart leaps up at the sight of the rainbow in the sky. Though beauty must make its first appeal to the senses, it finds its way at last to the inner spirit, quickening the imagination, and creating a joy which is quite of its own kind. We can never draw a hard-and-fast line between the sense experience and the underlying æsthetic joy, but we come to recognize the signs of the deepening experience in our children’s maturer years. In the mean time we can hardly expect a pictured out-of-doors to produce the same effect that the world of nature does on the child. It lacks the stimulating influence of sun and air. Nature pictures like nature poetry must bide their time. We need not be discouraged if our children fail to respond to Corot and Inness, but we can please them best by giving them photographs of the woods and meadows associated with their own summer outings. They usually respond more quickly to actual views of natural scenery than to ideal landscape. Subjects representing the unusual and striking in nature, like Niagara Falls and the majestic peaks of the Alps, also arouse their interest. Another opening wedge to the appreciation of pure landscape art is the animal picture with landscape setting, like some of the Dutch or French cattle subjects. It has been a capital idea in some schoolroom decorations to arrange a series of such subjects to follow the sequence of the seasons. This correlation of landscape art and nature study makes a pleasant introduction to an otherwise uninteresting subject. In schools where pupils are taught to recognize the forms of trees, I am told that landscape pictures iake on a peculiar interest if they contain well-defined tree examples.
Besides the subjects which the children do not themselves like are those which we do not want them to like. The vulgar and the sensuous should, of course, be eliminated from their repertory. The imagination should be fed only on the pure and clean. The beauty of the human figure should be taught chiefly through the ideal forms of great sculpture. The child familiarized with the austere and chaste nobility of the Greek gods will be embarrassed by no impure suggestions. The repugnant and the horrible should likewise he kept from children. We pride ourselves that we have traveled a long way from the medieval period when churches were decorated with the martyrdom of saints and the last sufferings of the Saviour. In their place we have moving-picture shows which display all the details of disaster and crime as if actually taking place before our eyes. Philanthropists are trying to save the children from patronizing these places, and we must avoid a similar element in illustrated newspapers and magazines and in prints. If a child is attracted by such things, he shows a morbid taste which should be repressed. If he shrinks from them, he should be carefully guarded from anything which will give a shock to his sensitive nature. I recently heard of a little boy of five who was convulsed with grief over the fate of a picture kitten—left alone on a rock in a stormy sea. A friend of mine once confessed to me that she had never quite recovered from the horror of a vivid picture of the Deluge shown to her in her childhood.
The grotesque often has a certain comic element in it which has its value in amusing the child, but the line is sometimes hard to draw between the grotesque and the gruesome. I have seen illustrated books of fairy tales in which the ogre who looks so funny to the grown-ups is a very alarming creature to the child. The children who are terrified by the circus clown—and there are not a few such—are of the kind whose pictures must be carefully chosen.
Pictures which are outside a child’s range of interest should certainly not be forced upon him. If he is overdosed by zealous parents and teachers with subjects beyond his comprehension, or not appealing to his preferences, he may revolt altogether. Whatever a child likes to hear about, or read about, or look at in real life, that he enjoys in a picture. We must look, then, for the material which connects naturally with the average child’s experience, and we should provide it in sufficient variety. Some of us recall with amusement a period in the nineties when the schools “discovered” the Madonna, so to speak, and the children were treated to the subject till they were tired. A little girl I knew, coming home to lunch oue day to find a dish she especially disliked, exclaimed wearily, “If there’s anything I hate it’s turkey soup and Madonnas.” Boys and girls have different tastes, corresponding to their different interests. On the whole, however, we may be fairly sure that all children will like pictures of animals, pictures of child life, and pictures with story interest. Under these headings I have collected a quantity of available subjects for home and school use.
In our collecting we must never forget to choose good art. Though the child himself finds his chief delight in what the picture is about, we must take pains to note how it is made. We remember that it is not for to-day merely, but for the future, that we are building. Let the first pictures be such as will last a lifetime, so that the nan may never be ashamed of the treasures of his boyhood, enjoying them in increasing measure as he develops the higher appreciation of art.
The child’s enjoyment of pictures is unhampered by any prejudices or preconceived ideas. There is a certain advantage in having nothing to unlearn. The motives which actuate the adult do not affect him at all. It means nothing to him that a picture is by Raphael or Titian, as he has never heard of these worthies. When his love of beauty is aroused, it is an unaflected joy. We must never force our own tastes and opinions upon him. It is better to admire the wrong thing sincerely than the right thing insincerely. As the child learns more about the principles of art and craftsmanship, the critical faculties enter into his experience and enrich his pleasure. At a certain stage of his development we can help the child to understand and appreciate how the picture is made, as I try to explain in the next chapter. The whole tale of our art enjoyment is a threefold one: the perfect picture satisfies the senses, stimulates the critical faculties, and inspires the spiritual imagination. The body, mind, and spirit are all involved. The keener the senses, the more susceptible the imagination and the more extensive the technical knowledge, the greater will be the capacity to enjoy. The most encouraging thing about training the æsthetic sense is that if started right, and properly nourished, it will come to sure fruition.