Children as artists | Cotsen Children’s Library

Another case of going to look for one thing and being surprised by something else on the shelf… What caught my eye was the inscription on the front cover identifying this album of children’s art as the creations of African schoolboys: most of this kind of material in Cotsen comes from Western Europe or North America.

The inside of the front wrapper is filled with a note in block letters explaining that primary school students between the ages of nine and thirteen cut linoleum blocks or made watercolor drawings from their imaginations. The group was a mix of boys who had lived for two or more generations in the city of Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia (now Harari, the capital of Zimbabwe) and the bush, living with relatives in order to take advantage of the educational opportunities. Laid in the album is a card: all the names of the boys who contributed to the album are written in pencil on the back.Here are some examples of the artwork in the album. The first linocut is unsigned and seems to be a fanciful design based on plants. The second has two boys in the foreground and floating overhead two boys riding bicycles down a road. “Tongai 1950” appears in the line of triangles along the bottom. “Tongai” is a boy’s name in Shona, a language spoken in Zimbabwe.According to the author of the note, the girl pupils at Chirodzo School were excluded from art instruction: they took domestic arts where they learned to make puddings and sweets. the boys would have rather traded places with them instead of participating in the school’s world-famous art program under the direction of the Canon Edward Paterson (1895-1974).

These watercolors suggest otherwise. Kenneth Kudenga boldly signed his name on a colorful landscape with animals. The caption written for the second watercolor explains: “They love setting themselves problems–here the problem of showing a beast drinking from the front.” The next one according to the caption shows “the terrors of the bush–crocodile, snakes, lion, leopard appear often in the work of city children, afraid of the bush.”A Scot who emigrated with his family to South Africa in 1901. After military service in Namibia and East Africa, he accepted a scholarship to study at London’s School of Arts and Crafts, then returned to South Africa to train for the Anglican priesthood. After ordination in 1928, he served in several Transvaal congregations, where his artistic interests surfaced in the launching of projects to teach pupils skills like bas relief carving or painting murals in churches.

Paterson enjoyed the reputation as the leading art educator in Africa. Between 1939 and 1953, he taught at Cyrene School, where he developed an unusual curriculum for art education. Under his tuition, his students so distinguished themselves that their work was displayed in a series of travelling exhibitions between 1949 and 1953 in South Africa, England, and America. White Rhodesians began buying the young men’s artwork, which helped to underwrite the cost of classes at Cyrene. When he moved to the Chirodzo School in Salisbury, his students’ work continued to attract international attention. Grace McCann Morley, the forward-thinking director of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, organized an exhibition of 900 pieces of African student art which was view there in 1958. The archive remained at SFMoA, where a curator recently highlighted it in a video presentation.This recognition may have encouraged Paterson to think that the director Frank McEwen of the new National Gallery in Salisbury established 1957 would welcome him and his students. When opportunities did not materialize, the two men quarrelled openly with change in the situation. Eventually McEwen’s work on Zimbabwean art overshadowed that of Paterson, whose influence has been questioned by scholars more recently. His own limitations as an artist, it has been argued, may have prevented students to move beyond copying his style and to develop more comprehensive technical skills. His harshest critics claim most of his students ended up in the tourist trade and few established vibrant artistic practices.No one disputes, however, that some of Zimbabwe’s first artists got their start in Paterson’s classes. It would be interesting to see how many of the boys whose work appears in this album continued to make art after they left Chirodzo School.

This year Cotsen acquired three manuscript turn-ups of “The Beginning, Progress, and End of Man,” a rhymed bit of religious doggerel with metamorphic pictures which was virtually unknown until the research of Penn State Professor Jacqueline Reid-Walsh established that it was in circulation from the end of the English Civil War until late in the nineteenth century. It survives mostly in versions made by American, English, and Scottish children with their engaging illustrations, a subject of a previous post.

Here Adam first leads up the van. [1760?]. (Cotsen)

This category of manuscripts is usually considered a kind of outside art by children, but this new group of related ones, prove that some were made by professional artists. Two of the three are signed and priced by Salathiel Court, a writing master.

Court signature in the Fisher manuscript turn up.

Signature of Salathiel Court on the Dixon family copy of a manuscript turn up.

Court’s signature with the price of 2 shillings.

The vertical format of his turn ups is somewhat unusual. The more usual horizontal orientation allows for folding the sheet into panels with flaps and opening one at a time until the entire sequence is revealed. All three of these new acquisitions are stitched into in stiff drab paper wrappers with leather backstrips; two have flaps with “buttonholes” for the fasteners opposite. They are similar enough to suggest that Court may have sold his handiwork bound.

The three manuscript turn ups in stiff paper covers

Here Adam first comes on the stage. [1753?]. (Cotsen)

One was produced before 1753, when a William Fisher wrote his name in it.

Fisher’s dated signature

The brightly colored illustrations are spirited, the lion and eagle being two of the best.

The lion in the Fisher manuscript turn up

The eagle and baby in the Fisher manuscript turn up

The eagle and the baby in the Fisher manuscript turn up

The rich man in the Fisher manuscript turn up.

It is an understatement to say that second of the Court turn ups was almost loved to death. Most of the folds are over stitched to keep them from falling apart. Although not quite as detailed or vigorous as the figures in the William Fisher turn up, they are clearly by the same hand.

The lion in the Dixon manuscript turn up

The eagle and baby in the Dixon manuscript turn up

The rich man in the Dixon family manuscript turn up

The flap illustrated with the mermaid’s tail has the signatures of the children John and Hannah Dixon, probably members of a well-known Hexhamshire, Northumberland family. Signatures of an Edward and Robert Dixon are written elsewhere. The third example was made by Martin Bell in 1836; it was sold with the Dixon one. It rather looks as if Martin copied the Dixon family copy, but added his own touches.

The signature sheet of the Martin Bell manuscript turn up of The Beginning Progress and Eng of Man

Martin Bell’s signature sheet. Here Adam first leads up the van. 1836. (Cotsen)

Martin Bell’s drawing of the skeleton

The skeleton in the Dixon manuscript turn up.

Who was their creator, Salathiel Court? More than a little something is known about him because he was a “very singular and eccentric character” who rated a section in Bulmer’s History & Directory of Cumberland (1801). Perhaps if he had not had an extraordinary turn for wit and humour,” he would not have tumbled precipitously into vagabondry, running up debts and associating with “low company.” Being a thirsty man, he was “a living sign of dissipation,” sometimes creating signboards for inns and pubs—whether to pay outstanding bills or to get drinking money is unknown. A story about a job painting a lion signboard survives:

He requested to be allowed to represent it chained, but the man would not go to the expense of such a security. Salathiel, to punish the parsimony of the host, painted the sign in water colours, so that on the first shower of rain…the lion vanished. Being accused of unfair dealing, he replied that “the lion had indeed run away, but it was what might be expected in a wild beast – without a chain.”

During a stint as the town crier, he attracted crowds with this public announcement about a lost wallet:

A big, fat Frenchman lost his purse,
And he can’t find it, which is worse;

He that lost it, let him seek it,
He that found it, let him keep it.”

The Frenchman’s English wasn’t good enough to understand the joke and kept whispering to Court “Ce bien, dat well.” The man recovered his purse in spite of Court’s waggery. One wonders how long he kept that job.

What brought Court down was the performance of illegal marriages, such as unions between people related by marriage. One such couple came before the magistrate, who demanded a copy of the missing marriage certificate. When the husband asked Court for another one, he quoted a quip by Jonathan Swift about a clandestine marriage he performed:

Behind this hedge in stormy weather,
I joined this —– and rogue together,
Let none but He that rules the thunder,
Part this —– and rogue asunder.

Eventually the officials caught up with Court and in the summer of 1760 he was sentenced to be deported to America for fourteen years. After that Court’s trail in Ancestry Library goes cold.

Cotsen Children’s Library

Princeton University

Category Archives: Children as artists

Made by Children: An Album of Prints and Drawings by Boys at Chirodzo School, Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia

Made by a Rascally Writing Master: Manuscripts of “The Beginning, Progress, and End of Man”