ABSTRACT
The customary way an artist learned the rudiments of painting before the Civil War was to obtain some advice from a practicing artist if possible, and then to study instruction books and copy engravings, casts, and paintings. The academic program for learning to draw was, in fact, the only one in existence at the time, and with the rise of landscape painting it continued to be the accepted means of learning to train the hand and eye. Most instruction books did not teach principles for composing figures or complete paintings. Of greater importance than identifying engravings as sources for particular paintings is the way that they affected the artist’s way of seeing and depicting form. The early efforts of the untrained artist consist, as a rule, of simplified drawings or diagrams of objects in their most familiar aspect, either frontal or in profile.
