A SELECTION OF THE WORLD'S ART
MASTERPIECES FOR YOUNG PEOPLE
BY
DOLORES BACON
Illustrated fromGreat Paintings
Besides making acknowledgments to themany authoritative writers upon artists andpictures, here quoted, thanks are due tosuch excellent compilers of books on artsubjects as Sadakichi Hartmann, Muther,C. H. Caffin, Ida Prentice Whitcomb,Russell Sturgis and others.
Man's inclination to decorate his belongingshas always been one of the earliest signs ofcivilisation. Art had its beginning in the linesindented in clay, perhaps, or hollowed in thewood of family utensils; after that came crudecolouring and drawing.
Among the first serious efforts to draw werethe Egyptian square and pointed things, animalsand men. The most that artists of thatday succeeded in doing was to preserve thefashions of the time. Their drawings tell usthat men wore their beards in bags. Theyshow us, also, many peculiar head-dresses andstrange agricultural implements. Artists ofthat day put down what they saw, and theysaw with an untrained eye and made the recordwith an untrained hand; but they did not putin false details for the sake of glorifying thesubject. One can distinguish a man from amountain in their work, but the arms and legsembroidered upon Mathilde's tapestry, or thefigures representing family history on an Orientalrug, are quite as correct in drawing and aslittle of a puzzle. As men became more intelligent,hence spiritualised, they began toexpress themselves in ideal ways; to glorifythe commonplace; and thus they passed fromEgyptian geometry to gracious lines and beautifulcolouring.
Indian pottery was the first developmentof art in America and it led to the workingof metals, followed by drawing and portraiture.Among the Americans, as soon as that termceased to mean Indians, art took a most distractingturn. Europe was old in pictures,great and beautiful, when America was worshippingat the shrine of the chromo; but thechromo served a good turn, bad as it was. Itwas a link between the black and white ofthe admirable wood-cut and the true colourpicture.
Some of the Colonists brought over here theportraits of their ancestors, but those paintingscould not be considered "American" art, norwere those early settlers Americans; but thegeneration that followed gave to the worldBenjamin West. He left his Mother Countryfor England, where he found a knighthood andhonours of every kind awaiting him.
The earliest artists of America had to goaway to do their work, because there was noplace here for any men but those engaged inclearing land, planting corn, and fightingIndians. Sir Benjamin West was President ofthe Royal Academy while America was stillrevelling in chromos. The artists who remainedchose such objects as Davy Crockettin the trackless forest, or made pictures of theContinental Congress.
After the chromo in America came the pictureknown as the "buckeye," painted by relaysof artists. Great canvases were stretchedand blocked off into lengths. The scene wasdrawn in by one man, who was followed by"artists," each in turn painting sky, water,foliage, figures, according to his specialty.Thus whole yards of canvas could be paintedin a day, with more artists to the square inchthan are now employed to paint advertisementson a barn.
The Centennial Exhibition of 1876 came asa glorious flashlight. For the first time realart was seen by a large part of our nation.Every farmer took home with him a new ideaof the possibilities of drawing and colour.The change that