Color

The Commission nominated by Your Excellency to give its opinion upon the method of Madame Cave, and upon the question as to whether that method can be introduced into the schools, has the honor of presenting to Your Excellency the results of the examination that it has made. The uncertain rate of progress in teaching drawing, the want of fixed principles that has prevailed in the instruction of it up to this day, even from remote ages, have long since rendered it desirable to have a method surer in its results, and capable of being applied by all teachers alike. Anything like demonstration is impossible by the ordinary methods of instruction: the different ways in which the masters may regard the instruction and the art itself become the rule - a very variable one, as we can imagine - that governs the schools. Even admitting that these different roads can lead to an almost common result, that is to say, to a satisfactory knowledge of drawing, it is easy to see how important the functions of the master become, and how necessary it is that his special talents should qualify him for guiding the pupils in the midst of the uncertainty of the rules. The first difficulty in such a method of instruction consists, then, in finding a sufficiently large number of teachers endowed with indispensable talents, and resigned to the exercise of functions that are, of course, poorly recompensed. The second, and perhaps the most insurmountable difficulty, consists in the impossibility of procuring good models. Those that are met with in the schools, produced in all the successive styles, chosen hap-hazard, devoid of correctness or expression, can only vitiate the pupil's taste, and render the best guidance almost useless.
About the Author: Marie-Elizabeth was a painter, a student of Camille Roqueplan, and was married to the painter Clément Boulanger. She met Delacroix during the famous masked ball at the 1833 Carnaval organized by Alexandre Dumas. A love affair blossomed between the two painters, although after an escapade in Flanders in September 1839, their relationship transformed into a deep friendship, tinged with nostalgia. In 1843 she was remarried to François Cave, then head of the Beaux-Arts at the Interior Ministry. In 1860 she published an essay on drawing, which was reprinted in 1862, with a preface by Delacroix.