Art Books

EARLY ART SCHOOLS IN ENGLAND. harles the First appears to have been the first English Sovereign who regarded art, not merely as an aid to the splendour of the throne, but for its own sake. As Walpole says, 'Queen Elizabeth was avaricious with pomp, James the First lavish with meanness.' To neither had the position of the painter been a matter of the slightest concern. But from Charles the... more...

Introduction No more accurate account of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition has been given than one that was forced from the lips of a charming Eastern woman of culture. Walking one evening in the Fine Arts colonnade, while the illumination from distant searchlights accented the glory of Maybeck's masterpiece, and lit up the half-domes and arches across the lagoon, she exclaimed to her... more...

THE MIND OF THE ARTIST An able painter by his power of penetration into the mysteries of his art is usually an able critic. Alfred Stevens. The Belgian painter, not the English sculptor. Art, like love, excludes all competition, and absorbs the man. Fuseli. A good painter has two chief objects to paint, namely, man, and the intention of his soul. The first is easy, the second difficult, because he has... more...

CHAPTER I. Long after the extinction of the practical art-power evolved from the master-minds of Greece and Rome, though rudely shattered by the northern tribes, it failed not to enforce from them an admission of its grandeur. Loving, as all rude nations do, so much of art as goes to the adornment of life, they also felt that there was a still higher aim in the enlarged spirit of classic invention. It... more...

ABOUT CENSORSHIP Since, time and again, it has been proved, in this country of free institutions, that the great majority of our fellow-countrymen consider the only Censorship that now obtains amongst us, namely the Censorship of Plays, a bulwark for the preservation of their comfort and sensibility against the spiritual researches and speculations of bolder and too active spirits—it has become time... more...

PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1887. The following lectures were the most important piece of my literary work done with unabated power, best motive, and happiest concurrence of circumstance. They were written and delivered while my mother yet lived, and had vividest sympathy in all I was attempting;—while also my friends put unbroken trust in me, and the course of study I had followed seemed to fit me for... more...

PREFACE. 1. I must pray the readers of the following Lectures to remember that the duty at present laid on me at Oxford is of an exceptionally complex character. Directly, it is to awaken the interest of my pupils in a study which they have hitherto found unattractive, and imagined to be useless; but more imperatively, it is to define the principles by which the study itself should be guided; and to... more...

LECTURE I. THE DISCOVERY AND APPLICATION OF ART. A Lecture delivered at Manchester, July 10, 1857. 1. Among the various characteristics of the age in which we live, as compared with other ages of this not yet very experienced world, one of the most notable appears to me to be the just and wholesome contempt in which we hold poverty. I repeat, the just and wholesome contempt; though I see that some of... more...

How the PianoCame To Be From the dried sinews stretched across the shell of a dead tortoise to the concert-grand piano of the present day is a far flight. Yet to this primitive source, it is said, may be traced the evolution of the stringed instrument which reached its culmination in the piano. The latter has been aptly called "the household orchestra," and in tracing its origin one must go far... more...

The Sculpture and Mural Decorations "In this fair world of dreams and vagary,Where all is weak and clothed in failing forms,Where skies and trees and beauties speak of change,And always wear a garb that's like our minds,We hear a cry from those who are aboutAnd from within we hear a quiet voiceThat drives us on to do, and do, and do." The persistent necessity for creation is strikingly... more...