In 1884 Pitt-Rivers addressed the annual meeting of the Dorchester School of Art, and during his address he drew attention to his collections of drawings by children, agricultural labourers and 'savages' that he held. He hoped that these drawings would help his thinking about the origins and development of art.

He explained his methodology as:

... To apply these considerations to the origin and development of Art, the only way of approaching the satisfactory study of the question is to take note of the performances of persons belonging to different races and in different stages of culture who are wholly untaught, and notice whether in their first attempts at drawing they shew such different powers of representation as to warrant the idea of congenital inequality. This I have endeavoured to do, and the result is shewn in the rude drawings which are exhibited this evening. From time to time, when opportunity has presented itself, during the last few years I have obtained drawings from untaught aborigines of different savage countries who have come to England, by taking them into a room one by one so as to prevent their copying from one another, and after giving them a pen or pencil and a piece of paper, I have asked them to do their best to make a drawing of me or some other person or object in the room. I have noted their method of proceeding and preserved the drawings, which have been put together and classified as far as possible either by races or by the peculiarities of the drawings. I have done the same thing with untaught country children and adults of our own race, and I have had the drawings mounted on cards in such a way as to enable a comparison to be formed between them and the first attempts of savages. ... [Pitt-Rivers' address to the Dorchester School of Art, February 1884]

Most of this collection has now been lost but parts remain in the Pitt-Rivers papers held by Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum in M39a. Within a blue envelope entitled 'Children's Drawings Handley' are small sheets of paper, folded once, which contain drawings by schoolchildren from Handley, Dorset, each of which is named and aged. They seem to have been asked to draw certain specific things, including a blackboard, clock, certain animals but in addition they have drawn random objects like trains and lighthouses. These drawings are shown here, they were scanned by Rachel McGoff in August 2011 as part of the Rethinking Pitt-Rivers project.

All these pictures are shown on this site with the permission of Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum who hold the copyright for them.

AP, August 2011.