Of all classes, perhaps artists are more apt to form a clear cut image of the features of persons whom they meet--particularly if they are portrait painters. There are instances of celebrated portrait painters who were able to execute a good portrait after having once carefully studied the face of the sitter, their memory enabling them to visualize the features at will. Some celebrated teachers of drawing have instructed their scholars to take a sharp hasty glance at a nose, an eye, an ear, or chin, and then to so clearly visualize it that they could draw it perfectly. It is all a matter of interest, attention, _and practice_. Sir Francis Galton cites the instance of a French teacher who trained his pupils so thoroughly in this direction that after a few months' practice they had no difficulty in summoning images at will; in holding them steady; and in drawing them correctly. He says of the faculty of visualization thus used: "A faculty that is of importance in all technical and artistic occupations, that gives accuracy to our perceptions, and justice to our generalizations, is starved by lazy disuse, instead of being cultivated judiciously in such a way as will, on the whole, bring the best return. I believe that a serious study of the best means of developing and utilizing this faculty, without prejudice to the practice of abstract thought in symbols, is one of the many pressing desiderata in the yet unformed science of education."
Fuller relates the method of a celebrated painter, which method has been since taught by many teachers of both drawing and memory. He relates it as follows: "The celebrated painter Leonardo da Vinci invented a most ingenious method for identifying faces, and by it is said to have been able to reproduce from memory any face that he had once carefully scrutinized. He drew all the possible forms of the nose, mouth, chin, eyes, ears and forehead, numbered them 1, 2, 3, 4, etc., and committed them thoroughly to memory; then, whenever he saw a face that he wished to draw or paint from memory, he noted in his mind that it was chin 4, eyes 2, nose 5, ears 6,--or whatever the combinations might be--and by retaining the analysis in his memory he could reconstruct the face at any time." We could scarcely ask the student to attempt so complicated a system, and yet a modification of it would prove useful. That is, if you would begin to form a classification of several kind of noses, say about seven, the well-known Roman, Jewish, Grecian, giving you the general classes, in connection with straight, crooked, pug and all the other varieties, you would soon recognize noses when you saw them. And the same with mouths, a few classes being found to cover the majority of cases. But of all the features, the eye is the most expressive, and the one most easily remembered, when clearly noticed. Detectives rely much upon _the expression of the eye_. If you ever fully catch the _expression_ of a person's eye, you will be very apt to recognize it thereafter. Therefore concentrate on eyes in studying faces.