Abstract
THE eleventh instalment of Mr. Herbert Spencer's admirable series of papers on “Professional Institutions” appears in the Contemporary, the profession of which he traces the development this month being that of the painter. Mr. Spencer does not concern himself with the rude drawings made by prehistoric man, but deals rather with the development of pictorial art from the point at which the early civilised stage is connected with the uncivilised, illustrating his arguments by reference to the remains and records of historic peoples. The first step in the development appears to have been the painting of the image of a dead man, to be placed on his grave. Priests painted as well as carved these effigies; in fact, an examination of available evidence shows that “pictorial art in its first stages was occupied with sacred subjects, and the priest, when not himself the executant, was the director of the executants.” Painting was originally subordinated to sculpture, which fact accounts for its relatively slow development. It became secularised in the later stages of Grecian life. Mr. Spencer traces these changes, as well as the differentiation of the lay painter from the clerical painter, and the differentiation of lay painters from one another.
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Science in the Magazines. Nature 53, 428 (1896). https://doi.org/10.1038/053428a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/053428a0