ABSTRACT
We owe some valuable information about the mental life of the child to the scribblings and drawings it begins to produce from about its fourth or fifth year. In 1887 the Italian art-historian C. Ricci, wrote an interesting and witty book about the drawings of children, which started assiduous investigations in this field. German art teachers, such as Konrad Lange, A. Lichtmark, and G. Hirth and H. Cornelius in Munich, have taken up and developed Ricci’s ideas. Contributions have been made by Americans and Frenchmen, so that there is to-day a large literature on the subject of children’s drawings. Extensive collections were made, among others, by the historian Lamprecht, in Leipzig. In 1895, J. Sully wrote a sound psychological survey in his book, “ Studies of Childhood,” which is still worth reading today. 1905 brought two large illustrated works, one by S. Levinstein, who belongs to Lamprecht’s school, the other by the well-known Munich pedagogue, G. Kerschensteiner. Since then literary activity has cooled down somewhat. We need only mention two larger books, that of the Frenchman, G. H. Luquet (1913), and a very fine study by W. Krötzsch (1917), which filled in many gaps.
