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Show THE OLDEST ART GALLERY IN THE WORLD - i The paintings are of particular Interest. In-terest. In their first stages they are crude drawings and sketchings done In red or black crayon. Tho next stage shows some shade. The next stage Includes the use of additional colors, and the final stage Indicates a real command of color. In tbd caves of France, near Toulouse, and also In the valley of the Dordogue, zoologists find depleted the characteristic character-istic animals of the old stono ago, namely, bison, horses, reindeer, stag, and mammoth; but In tho AHamlra cave in Spain, President Henry Falr-9t Falr-9t field Osbprno, of the American Muse-J Muse-J um of natural history, finds tho fin-M fin-M est expression of palaeolithic art. Its H frescoed celling Is more than sixty U feet long, and shows In polychrome, H b.son, horses, stags and wild boar, j Tho cave thus forms perhaps tho old-U old-U est art gallery In tho world. Its pulnt-H pulnt-H lags were discovered In 1870 in tho H grounds of a Spanish nobleman, who H was digging In tho cavo without real- izlng that it was decorated. Ills lit-H lit-H ,,e daughter who accompanied him H happened to look up at tho vaulted telling overhead, and shouted "Horos, orosl" (bulls bulls) with such ex- clteraent that the father paused to in-j in-j vestlgate. It la safe to say, says, Mr. j Wlssler, of the American Museum of Natural H"etory that this little Span ish girl was tho first person wlti n many thouand years 'o set eyes on those prehistoric paintings'. The excellence ex-cellence of the drawing Is the first thing to strlko tho observer, but h s next observation will probably be that thcro Is no perspective composition. Each figure stands alone. Tho subjects sub-jects chosen aro almost exclusively tho largo mamals of tho times the bison, mammoth, reindeer, horse, wild boar and rhinoceros. Their relative frequency of occurrence, says Mrs. Wlsslcr, Is almost In the order stated. Occasionally, he adds, deer and Ibex are found and very rarely, birds. Another An-other Interesting thing about this cave is Its proof of the fact that in the development of painting the earliest earl-iest art was pictorial, not decorative. Decoration came with the new Btone age namely, the elaboration of geometric geo-metric patterns. Commenting upon thIB Mr. Wlssler says that the fact Is merely hlstoKcal and not biological there seems to bo no Inherent reason why geometric art might not have developed de-veloped first had the attention of tho early man been focused upon It. Thus the discoveries In the caves In Franco and Spain give us a. new glimpse of the men of the old stone age. Tho Outlook. |