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Art Principles
With Special Reference to Painting
Together with Notes on the
Illusions Produced by the Painter
By
Ernest Govett
With Thirty-one Illustrations
G. P. Putnam's Sons
New York and London
The Knickerbocker Press
1919
Copyright, 1919
by
ERNEST GOVETT
The Knickerbocker Press, New York
PREFACE
This book is put forward with much diffidence,for I am well aware of its insufficiencies. My originalidea was to produce a work covering all the principlesof painting, but after many years spent in consideringthe various recorded theories relating to æstheticproblems, and in gathering materials to indicatehow the accepted principles have been applied, Icame to the conclusion that a single life is scarcelylong enough for the preparation of an exhaustivetreatise on the subject. Nevertheless, I planned awork of much wider scope than the one now presented,but various circumstances, and principallythe hindrance to research caused by the war, impelledme to curtail my ambition. Time was fading,and my purpose seemed to be growing very old. Ifelt that if one has something to say, it is better tosay it incompletely than to run the risk of compulsorysilence. The book will be found little more thana skeleton, and some of its sections, notably thosedealing with illusions in the art, contain only a fewsuggestions and instances, but perhaps enough issaid to induce a measure of further inquiry into thesubject.
That part of the work dealing with the fine artsgenerally is the result of long consideration of the[Pg iv]apparent contradictions involved in the numeroussuggested standards of art. In a little book onThe Position of Landscape in Art (published undera nom de plume a few years ago), I threw out, as a