Painters and Painting

270 Pages·2016·7.5 MB·English

by  Wedmore Frederick.

PAINTERS AND
PAINTING
BY
SIR FREDERICK WEDMORE
AUTHOR OF
"STUDIES IN ENGLISH ART," "ON BOOKS AND ARTS
" MERYON "
NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
LONDON
WILLIAMS AND NORGATE

5D
PREFACE
It is in hoped that this Httle
no way
book shall take the place of pocket-
a
Dictionary of Painters serviceable work
a
"
of reference whose business being to include
the insignificanti,s foredoomed to dulness
:
has chance to be interesting.
no
In occupied with the paenrcfeosrm-
my pages
"
and personalitiesof artists who
are
the connoisseur's delight there is not
room
"
for the inclusion of all Schools for the faint
;
praise of the commonplace for the
; grave
condemnation of coteries lifted momentarily
into prominence, and sure to be once more
obscure. And several reallygreat, who
men,
have been discussed too much, I scarcely
discuss at all. My will have been
purpose
accomplished if this book shall be found not
quite wanting in interest by those who know,
and not quite wanting in utility,besides, by
those who do not know, about pictorialArt.
F.W.
December 1912.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I THE PRIMITIVES 9
17
II DURER AND HOLBEIN
25
III THE LITTLE MASTERS
33
IV GREAT PAINTERS OF THE LOW COUNTRIES
43
V LATER DUTCH PAINTING
51
VI VENETIAN MASTERS
.
59
VII THE SPANISH PAINTERS
81
VIII HOGARTH TO ROMNET
101
IX TURNER AND CONSTABLE
113
X THE LATER ENGLISH ART
123
XI WATER COLOURS
. .
142
XII THE GRAND MANNER AND NATTIER
.
151
XIII FRENCH EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ART
.
177
XIV CLASSICS : ROMANTICS
XV IMPRESSIONISTS AND * THE GOOD PAINTING ' 187
221
BIBLIOGRAPHY
.
223
INDEX
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAOB
Raphael La Belle Jardinikre 225
:
, ,
Holbein Portrait of Erasmus 227
:
. .
Rembrandt Portrait of the Painter 229
: .
Rubens The Three Graces 231
: . . ,.
Titian Venus and Adonis 233
:
.
Veronese St. Helena 235
. . . . ,
Velasquez : The Portrait of a Sculptor 237
Hogarth: The Shrimp Girl. 239
"Old" Crome Household Heath 241
:
Reynolds Portrait of Samuel Johnson 243
:
RoMNEY : Lady Hamilton as Euphrosyne 245
Nattier Mile, de Clermont 247
:
Watteau Les Champs Elysies 249
:
Chardin Le BenMiciti 251
:
Courbet The Wave 253
:
.
BouDiN Trouville Harbour 255
:
.
VII

PAINTERS AND PAINTING
CHAPTER I
THE PRIMITIVES
Of all pictorial Arts, major and minor
"
Painting in Oil Water Colour, Engraving,
or
Etching, and Lithography it is Painting that
"
makes to the of the easiest and most
mass us
fascinating appeal. Scarcely less than the
others it have the virtues of Design and
may
of Draughtsmanship; in the magic of touch
it is their equal and it has richly what they
;
wholly lack, the glamour of the colours of
the world. For all that, I cannot in this
volume pictorial artists confine myself
on
quite strictly to Paint alone.
Changing circumstances, the of
passage
long time and of endless variety of
an men
and peoples, have allowed the art of the
painter the art of the etcher and
engraver,
"
too to become at last, only less than that
"
of the writer, the record of the past and
9
10 PAINTERS AND PAINTING
present ^the record of the visible and of the
"
vanished Nor, than the
scene. any more
great art of Literature, is Painting
or
"
pictorialart broadly simply that record.
"
Not only nature and human nature lie
within its purview. Conceptions and
yienagrsn-
it has interpreted, well beings and
as as
facts. Its themes include the ardour of
faith,and the hopes and the dejections
many a
of men's dreams. Those who have practised
it to the mind's in vast procession
appear eye
figuresinnumerable, from the hours of
an
"
early civilization to those of late. For this
a
procession begins, it be, with Apelles,
may
whose brush used under the blue of
was
Grecian heavens, and it does not quite end
with Corot, Courbet, Manet, Boudin, whose
witnesses of tempered illumination,
eyes were
and of dawns, and of the pearl-
vaporous
steel oxidized silver,of the skies
grey, -grey,
of France.
Amongst the of paintersand
mass engravers
who artists who had individualityand
were
"
ideal,who not copyistsof Nature
an were mere
of few forerunners much greater than
or a
themselves little book like this choose,
a can
"
for treatment for reference, relativelyfew.
or
It is important that the selection be, in nearly