Practical Hints on Painting, Composition, Landscape, and Etching

An excerpt from the beginning of the INTRODUCTION: IN a practical treatise it is not possible to touch in any but the most superficial way on the theories and traditions of the "Old Masters.'' Yet it must be remembered that apart from the interest that is awakened in the student by the attention being drawn to fine works of art, a sense of Taste is thereby cultivated which will materially help his progress in learning painting, while the sight of beautiful statues and pictures of the great Masters will lead him to try and trace the methods by which ' Art ' has been practised and perfected in former periods. One fact which will be observed is, that there is a scientific basis to the study of Art, and another that Art was taught on a classical tradition from master to pupil in the early days. The result was that certain "schools" were founded - schools in which the several artists chose in common either the same method of painting or a similar point of view in looking at a subject. In drawing the student's attention to the general facts of Art, he will be led to interest himself in the outlook which Englishmen have exhibited in Art, and to note the causes which have prevented a British School from existing in the sense that one has existed abroad. We know that in Italy within the centuries that saw the growth and development of the great Renaissance, Dante and Giotto revived poetry and the art of design, Brunellesco built the dome of St. Maria del Fiore, Ghilberti cast the gates of the Baptistery, and such great men in art as Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael Sanzio, and Michael Angelo Buonarotti created their immortal works, and were followed by Titian, Tintoretto, and Paolo Veronese and others, themselves the outcome of a long-existing school. This period led to the artistic development of which the modern school of figure-designers have inherited the ideas and principles. Without tracing the eventual transition to later periods at all closely, it will suffice to say. Art eventually became conventionalised, and died out in Italy. In France, without going farther back than Poussin, we see a school based on classical tradition; and this may still be said to exist. His influence followed later by that of Watteau, and then again by the classical talent of Ingres (to name only a few masters), was followed by J. F. Millet and Corot, showing genius under different manifestations. What has happened since? Men acknowledging no school, such as Manet and Monet, appear, the former with unerring knowledge painting his picture 'direct from life, ' and the latter his original "Impressions" of Nature; and another. Degas, building his 'new' view of the figure on classical lines. We also find in Flanders, Germany, Spain, and the Netherlands, schools of painting in which one man, achieving perfection, passes away and gives place to another; but in England, except for the efforts of Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723) and Hogarth, no one before their time ever tried to make or found one. It is true that a certain decided although superficial art movement was at times created; but it was by no means the result of native-born talent. From the fifteenth century onwards a long succession of painters came at the invitation of various kings and nobles, and lived and worked here, but till the end of the eighteenth century no artists, except those mentioned, stood forth independent of foreign influence