Download or read book Rembrandt s Changing Impressions written by Robert Fucci and published by Walther Konig Verlag. This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669) manipulated his copperplates in unprecedented ways to achieve printed images that were often in flux. That many of the different results were circulated as finished works in their own right marked a new moment in the appreciation of printmaking and the collecting of prints in the seventeenth century.0Rembrandt was the first artist to treat the print medium as a means of crafting visibly changing images. He was also the first printmaker to fully explore the use of newly available Asian papers for their aesthetic and technical effects. Many of these variations were the outcome of Rembrandt’s intense and restless search for results that satisfied his artistic sense. 'Rembrandt’s Changing Impressions' highlights 18 of the artist’s most notably intriguing or dramatically altered prints. It gathers together 52 impressions from 14 different U.S. collections to best show the images in their circulated iterations. 0This is the first time in over 40 years that such an exhibition has been undertaken, and the new scholarship contributes much to a reinvigorated discussion. This publication reproduces all the works in the exhibition.00Exhibition: The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University in the City of New York (09.09.-12.12.2015).
Download or read book Quid est secretum written by Ralph Dekoninck and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-09-10 with total page 780 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines how secret knowledge was represented visually in ways that both revealed and concealed the true nature of that knowledge, giving and yet impeding access to it.
Download or read book Rembrandt written by Jaco Rutgers and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-23 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A compelling reconsideration of Rembrandt’s printed oeuvre based on new research into the artist’s life and work As a pioneering printmaker, Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669) stood apart from his contemporaries thanks to his innovative approach to composition and his skillful rendering of space and light. He worked with the medium as a vehicle for artistic expression and experimentation, causing many to proclaim him the greatest etcher of all time. Moreover, the dissemination of the artist’s prints outside of the Dutch Republic during his lifetime contributed greatly to establishing Rembrandt’s reputation throughout Europe. Sumptuously illustrated with comparative paintings and drawings as well as prints, this important volume draws on exciting new scholarship on Rembrandt's etchings. Authors Jaco Rutgers and Timothy J. Standring examine the artist’s prints from many angles. They reveal how Rembrandt intentionally varied the states of his etchings, printed them on exotic papers, and retouched prints by hand to create rarities for a clientele that valued unique impressions.
Download or read book The Art of Paper written by Caroline Fowler and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2019-11-05 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The untold story of how paper revolutionized art making during the Renaissance, exploring how it shaped broader concepts of authorship, memory, and the transmission of ideas over the course of three centuries In the late medieval and Renaissance period, paper transformed society--not only through its role in the invention of print but also in the way it influenced artistic production. The Art of Paper tells the history of this medium in the context of the artist's workshop from the thirteenth century, when it was imported to Europe from Africa, to the sixteenth century, when European paper was exported to the colonies of New Spain. In this pathbreaking work, Caroline Fowler approaches the topic culturally rather than technically, deftly exploring the way paper shaped concepts of authorship, preservation, and the transmission of ideas during this period. This book both tells a transcultural history of paper from the Cairo Genizah to the Mesoamerican manuscript and examines how paper became "Europeanized" through the various mechanisms of the watermark, colonization, and the philosophy of John Locke. Ultimately, Fowler demonstrates how paper--as refuse and rags transformed into white surface--informed the works for which it was used, as well as artists' thinking more broadly, across the early modern world.
Download or read book Rembrandt Is in the Wind written by Russ Ramsey and published by Zondervan. This book was released on 2022-03-22 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do art and faith intersect? How does art help us see our own lives more clearly? What can we understand about God and humanity by looking at the lives of artists? Striving for beauty, art also reveals what is broken. It presents us with the tremendous struggles and longings common to the human experience. And it says a lot about our Creator too. Great works of art can speak to the soul in a unique way. Rembrandt Is in the Wind is an invitation to discover some of the world's most celebrated artists and works and how each of them illuminates something about God, people, and the purpose of life. Part art history, part biblical study, part philosophy, and part analysis of the human experience, this book is nonetheless all story. From Michelangelo to Vincent van Gogh to Edward Hopper, the lives of the artists in this book illustrate the struggle of living in this world and point to the beauty of the redemption available to us in Christ. Each story is different. Some conclude with resounding triumph while others end in struggle. But all of them raise important questions about humanity's hunger and capacity for glory, and all of them teach us to love and see beauty. "The artists featured in these pages—artists who devoted their lives and work to what is good, true, and beautiful—remind us that we can, and should, do the same." —Karen Swallow Prior, author of On Reading Well
Download or read book Rembrandt s Etchings The text written by Arthur Mayger Hind and published by . This book was released on 1912 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Conchophilia written by Marisa Anne Bass and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2023-05-16 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A history of shells in early modern Europe, and their rich cultural and artistic significance"--
Download or read book Antiquity Forgot written by Howard B. White and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It was probably Rousseau who first thought of dreams as ennobling experiences. Anyone who has ever read Reveries du Promeneur Solitaire must be struck by the dreamlike quality of Rousseau's meditations. This dreamlike quality is still with us, and those who experience it find themselves ennobled by it. Witness Martin Luther King's famous "1 have a dream. " Dreaming and inspiration raise the artist to the top rung in the ladder ofhuman relations. That is probably the prevailing view among educated people of our time. Rousseau made that view respectable and predominant. Yet in another sense, the problem is much older. It is the problem of political philosophy and poetry, the problem of Socrates and Aristophanes, of Plato and Homer. Yet, while antiquity usually gives the crown to philosophy, since Rous seau, the alternative view tends to prevail. The distinction is not, however, a formal one. Sir Philip Sidney enlisted Plato on the side of poetry. The true distinction is between imagination and reason. If reason is to rule, as Aristotle points out,l the most architectonic of the sciences, that is political science, should rule. It is political philosophy which must determine the nature of the arts which will help or which will hinder the good of the city or the polity. That does not mean that a mere professor should stand in judgment of Shake speare, Bacon, and Rembrandt. It means that ifhe studies these three great artists, he is not over-stepping disciplinary limits.
Download or read book A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings V written by Ernst van de Wetering and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-12-12 with total page 674 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is the fifth volume of A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, a project devoted to all Rembrandt’s paintings. This is the work of ‘The Rembrandt Research Project’, consisting of a group of scholars led since 1993 by Professor Ernst van de Wetering. The project began in 1968 with the aim of separating Rembrandt’s own paintings from the vast number of Rembrandtesque paintings made by his many apprentices and followers. Having opted for a chronological approach to the cataloguing of Rembrandt’s paintings (from 1625 till 1642) in the first three volumes, it was decided in 1993 to adopt a thematic approach for further volumes. This was largely to facilitate the recognition of different hands. The new approach yielded much more information not only about Rembrandt’s working methods but also about the function and meaning of his works. This expanded field of view meant that etchings and drawings with similar themes also needed to be included. In 2005 Volume IV appeared, devoted to Rembrandt’s self-portraits, in painting, etching and drawing. Volume V consists of a catalogue and analysis of the so-called small-scale history and genre paintings. That theme was chosen because this type of complex work shows a variety of full-length protagonists acting in different narrative settings. For this reason, in the 17th century, painting, etching or drawing biblical and mythological scenes was looked upon as an artist’s greatest challenge. The choice of this theme proved to be highly fruitful in several ways. Small-scale history pieces reveal Rembrandt’s artistic ambitions most clearly. They also offer the authors a much more accurate view of the daily routine in Rembrandt’s studio; his apprentices mostly copied this type of work or used it as a starting point for their own. As a result it was easier to distinguish the works by the master himself from those of his pupils. All aspects of the skills necessary to create a pictorial illusion play a part in the creation of small-figured history paintings. These aspects were referred to as ‘the basis of the noble art of painting’ in Rembrandt’s days. Two seventeenth century painter/theoreticians discussed these principles systematically in two books which up till now have only sporadically been consulted in the context of 17th century studio practice. Karel van Mander wrote his Grond der edel vry schilder-const [Basis of the Art of Painting] in 1604 and Samuel van Hoogstraten produced his Inleyding tot de hooge schoole der schilderkonst [Academy of Painting] in 1678. Van Hoogstraten was a pupil of Rembrandt between 1642 and ’48. Comparing the two books and considering them in relation to Rembrandt’s oeuvre, gradually reveals his original views on painting and how these had developed during his career. Thus, the authors of this new Volume of A Corpus have gained an unexpected and profound insight into Rembrandt’s ideas and approach to his art. The ‘basic aspects’ of painting included the following topics: function and methods of drawing; human proportions; various positions, poses and gestures of figures; ways of arranging a scene’s protagonists in a composition; facial expressions of a variety of emotions; light, shadows and reflected light; landscape and animals; draperies and articles of clothing; methods of painting, and various characteristics and uses of colours. The way these ‘basic aspects’ were selected and dealt with presumed that the more practical side to the art of painting would be learned by the apprentice in the daily routine of his master’s studio. With the development of art history in the nineteenth century the ‘basic aspects’ of the art of painting listed above acquired the vague label of ‘style’. However, the seventeenth century categorization of the ‘basic aspects’ provides a much more acute means of probing the views and criteria for judging a painting by Rembrandt and his contemporaries than the concept of ‘style’. Volume V in the series A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings breaks new ground from the point of view of art history, not only in its approach to Rembrandt as an artist, but more particularly to his thinking about painting. Moreover, a detailed comparison of Rembrandt’s works and those by his apprentices who based their works on his, led to a profound and detailed understanding of Rembrandt’s views on pictorial quality. In art historical literature quality usually does not feature prominently since it is regarded as being too subjective. This comparative approach, together with the analysis of seventeenth century categories of thought about painting, have given the research on Rembrandt a new impetus, at the same time allowing us to see more clearly through seventeenth century eyes. That is why the new volume of the ‘Corpus’ is an important publication – not only for art historians but also for all who want to fully enjoy the numerous works of art that date back to the Dutch Golden Age, now scattered in museums around the world.
Download or read book Guide to an Exhibition of Drawings and Etchings by Rembrandt and Etchings by Other Masters in the British Museum written by British Museum. Department of Prints and Drawings and published by . This book was released on 1899 with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Rembrandt s Religious Prints written by Charles M. Rosenberg and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2017-09-11 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A stunning catalogue of the seventy religious prints from the 2017 exhibition, featuring detailed background information on each piece. Rembrandt’s stunning religious prints stand as evidence of the Dutch master’s extraordinary skill as a technician and as a testament to his genius as a teller of tales. Here, several virtually unknown etchings, collected by the Feddersen family and now preserved for the ages at the University of Notre Dame, are made widely available in a lavishly illustrated volume. Building on the contributions of earlier Rembrandt scholars, noted art historian Charles M. Rosenberg illuminates each of the seventyreligious prints through detailed background information on the artist’s career as well as the historical, religious, and artistic impulses informing their creation. Readers will enjoy an impression of the earliest work, The Circumcision (1625-26); the famous Hundred Guilder Print; the enigmatic eighth state of Christ Presented to the People; one of a handful of examples of the very rare final posthumous state of The Three Crosses; and an impression and counterproof of The Triumph of Mordecai. From the joyous epiphany of the coming of the Messiah to the anguish of the betrayal of a father (Jacob) by his children, from choirs of angels waiting to receive the Virgin into heaven to the dog who defecates in the road by an ancient inn (The Good Samaritan), Rembrandt’s etchings offer a window into the nature of faith, aspiration, and human experience, ranging from the ecstatically divine to the worldly and mundane. Ultimately, these prints—modest, intimate, fragile objects—are great works of art which, like all masterpieces, reward us with fresh insights and discoveries at each new encounter. “Despite many reliable catalogues of Rembrandt etchings, very few have focused on the religious content of these prints. The outstanding range of the Feddersen Collection offers an excellent occasion for closer examination of Rembrandt’s development—as a printmaker but also as a spiritual devout Christian, especially evident from his thoughtful return to the same subjects across his career. Charles Rosenberg and his team at the Snite Museum deserve our thanks for fresh analysis of Rembrandt’s religious prints, combined with the latest scholarship on the artist and his etchings output. Rembrandt scholars but also all lovers of the artist will want to consult this important catalogue.” —Larry Silver, author (with Shelley Perlove) of Rembrandt’s Faith: Church and Temple in the Dutch Golden Age “Rembrandt’s etchings of religious themes capture the emotional heart of their subjects through a uniquely inventive approach to both technique and content. . . . The seventy prints gathered by Jack and Alfrieda Feddersen span the full range of Rembrandt’s production and offer an outstanding resource for appreciation and research. This catalogue tells the fascinating story of how the collection was formed and brings a fresh analysis to each print. Charles Rosenberg’s extensive catalogue entries will be useful reading for anyone interested in the history of European art and one of its most talented practitioners, Rembrandt van Rijn.” —Stephanie Dickey, Queen’s University
Download or read book Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago written by and published by . This book was released on 1915 with total page 16 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Becoming a Life Change Artist written by Fred Mandell Ph.D. and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2010-08-03 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Artist's Way meets What Color is Your Parachute? in an innovative approach to reinventing yourself at any stage of life. Leonardo da Vinci, Monet, Picasso, and Berthe Morisot are some of the most creative thinkers in history. What do these artists have in common with you? More than you think, if you're looking to tackle a major life transition. The skills these artists used to produce their masterpieces are the same abilities required to make successful shifts-whether it's finding a new career or a new purpose or calling in life. In Becoming a Life Change Artist, Fred Mandell and Kathleen Jordan share the groundbreaking approach made popular in their workshops across the country. There are seven key strengths that the most creative minds of history shared, and that anyone rethinking their future can cultivate to change their life effectively: *Preparing the brain to undertake creative work *Seeing the world and one's life from new perspectives *Using context to understand the facets of one's life *Embracing uncertainty *Taking risks *Collaborating *Applying discipline * As Mandell and Jordan illuminate, at its heart, making a major life change is a fluid process. But, armed with these seven key skills, anyone can overcome the bumps and obstacles effectively. With targeted exercises throughout, this is a book for all ages and stages-from those looking to transition to a new career to people embarking on retirement. Becoming a Life Change Artist sparks the luminous creativity that lies within each of us.
Download or read book FINE PRINTS written by SIR FREDERICK WEDMORE and published by BEYOND BOOKS HUB. This book was released on 2023-05-13 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the collecting of Prints—of prints which must be fine and may most probably be rare—there is an ample recompense for the labour of the diligent, and room for the exercise of the most various tastes. Certain of the objects on which the modern collector sets his hands have, it may be, hardly any other virtue than the doubtful one of scarcity; but fine prints, whatever School they may belong to, and whatever may be the money value that happens to be affixed to them by the fashion of the time, have always the fascination of beauty and the interest of historical association. Then, considered as collections of works of art, there is the practical convenience of their compactness. The print-collector carries a museum in a portfolio, or packs away a picture gallery, neatly, within the compass of one solander-box. Again, the print-collector, if he will but occupy himself with intelligent industry, may, even to-day, have a collection of fine things without paying overmuch, or even very much, for them. All will depend upon the School or master that he particularly affects. Has he[Pg 10] at his disposal only a few bank-notes, or only a few sovereigns even, every year?—he may yet surround himself with excellent possessions, of which he will not speedily exhaust the charm. Has he the fortune of an Astor or a Vanderbilt?—he may instruct the greatest dealers in the trade to struggle in the auction-room, on his behalf, with the representatives of the Berlin Museum. And it may be his triumph, then, to have paid the princely ransom of the very rarest “state” of the rarest Rembrandt. And, all the time, whether he be rich man or poor—but especially, I think, if he be poor—he will have been educating himself to the finer perception of a masculine yet lovely art, and, over and above indulging the “fad” of the collector, he will find that his possessions rouse within him an especial interest in some period of Art History, teach him a real and delicate discrimination of an artist’s qualities, and so, indeed, enlarge his vista that his enjoyment of life itself, and his appreciation of it, is quickened and sustained. For great Art of any kind, whether it be the painter’s, the engraver’s, the sculptor’s, or the writer’s, is not—it cannot be too often insisted—a mere craft or sleight-of-hand, to be practised from the wrist downwards. It is the expression of the man himself. It is, therefore, with great and new personalities that the study of an art, the contemplation of it—not the mere bungling amateur performance of it;—brings you into contact. And there is no way of studying an art that is so complete and satisfactory as the collecting of examples of it. And then again, to go back to the material part of[Pg 11] the business, how economical it is to be a collector, if only you are wise and prudent! Of pleasant vices this is surely the least costly. Nay, more; the bank-note cast upon the waters may come back after many days. The study of engravings, ancient and modern—of woodcuts, line engravings, etchings, mezzotints—has become by this time extremely elaborate and immensely complicated. Most people know nothing of it, and do not even realise that behind all their ignorance there is a world of learning and of pleasure, some part of which at least might be theirs if they would but enter on the land and seek to possess it. Few men, even of those who address themselves to the task, acquire swiftly any substantial knowledge of more than one or two departments of the study; though the ideal collector, and I would even say the reasonable one, whatever he may actually own, is able, sooner or later, to take a survey of the larger ground—his eye may range intelligently over fields he has no thought of annexing. From this it will be concluded—and concluded rightly—that the print-collector must be a specialist, more or less. More or less, at least at the beginning, must he address himself with particular care to one branch of the study. And which is it to be? The number of fine Schools of Etching and Engraving is really so considerable that the choice may well be his own. This or that master, this or that period, this or that method, he may select with freedom, and will scarcely go wrong. But the mention of it brings one, naturally, to the divisions of the subject, and the[Pg 12] collector, we shall find, is face to face, first of all, with this question: “Are the prints I am to bring together to be the work of an artist who originates, or of an artist who mainly translates?” Well, of course, in a discussion of the matter, the great original Schools must have the first place, whatever it may be eventually decided shall be the subject of your collection. You may buy, by all means, the noble mezzotints which the engravers of the Eighteenth Century wrought after Reynolds, Romney, and George Morland, but suffer us to say a little first about the great creative artists, and then, when the possible collector has read about them—and has made himself familiar, at the British Museum Print-room say, with some portion of their work—it may be that though he finds that they are nearly all, however different in themselves, less decorative on a wall than the great masters of rich mezzotint, he will find a charm and spell he cannot wish to banish in the evidence of their originality, in the fact that they are the creations of an individual impulse, whether they are slight or whether they are elaborate. The Schools of early line-engravers, Italian, Flemish, German, are almost entirely Schools of original production. I say “almost,” for as early as the days of Raphael, the interpreter, the translator, the copyist, if you will, came into the matter, and the designs of the Urbinate were multiplied by the burin of Marc Antonio and his followers. And charming prints they are, these Marc Antonios, so little bought to-day. Economical of[Pg 13] line they are, and exquisite of contour, and likely, one would suppose, to be valued in the Future more than they are valued just now, when the rhyme of Mr. Browning, about the collector of his early period, is true no longer— “The debt of wonder my crony owes Is paid to my Marc Antonios.” That in the main the earlier work is original, is not a thing to be surprised at, any more than it is a thing to lament. The narrow world of buyers in that primitive day was not likely to afford scope for the business of the translator; the time had not yet come when there was any need for the creations of an artist to be largely multiplied. That time came first, perhaps, in the Seventeenth Century, when the immediately accepted genius of Rubens gave ground for the employment of the interpreting talent of Bolswert, Pontius, and Vosterman. Again, there was Edelinck, Nanteuil, and the Drevets. It need scarcely be said that extreme rarity is a characteristic of the early Schools. The prints of two of the most masculine of the Italians, for instance, Andrea Mantegna and Jacopo de’ Barbarj, are not to be got by ordering them. They have, of course, to be watched for, and waited for, and the opportunity taken at the moment at which it arises. In some measure there will be experienced the same engaging and preventive difficulty in possessing yourself of the prints of the great Germans and of the one great Flemish master,[Pg 14] Lucas of Leyden. And if these, in certain states at least, in certain conditions, are not quite as hard to come upon as the works of those masters who have been mentioned just before them, and of their compatriots of the same period, that is but an extra inducement for the search, since there is, of course, a degree of difficulty that is actually discouraging—a sensible man does not long aim at the practically impossible. Now, in regard to the early Flemish master with whom Dürer himself not unwillingly—nay, very graciously—exchanged productions, there are yet no insuperable obstacles to the collector gathering together a representative array of his work; it is possible upon occasion even to add one or two of his scarce and beautiful and spirited ornaments to the group, such as it may be, of subjects based on scriptural or on classic themes. To be a specialist in Lucas van Leyden would be to be unusual, but not perhaps to be unwise; yet a greater sagacity would, no doubt, be manifested by concentration upon that which is upon the whole the finer work of Albert Dürer. Of late years, Martin Schöngauer too, with the delicacy of his burin, his tenderness of sentiment, and his scarcely less pronounced quaintness, has been a favourite, greatly sought for; but, amongst the Germans, the work that best upon the whole repays the trouble undertaken in amassing it, is that of the great Albert himself, and that of the best of the Little Masters. And who, then, were the Little Masters? a beginner wants to know. They were seven artists, some of them Dürer’s direct pupils, all of them his direct successors;[Pg 15] getting the name that is common to them not from any insignificance in their themes, but from the scale on which it pleased them to execute their always deliberate, always highly-wrought work. There is not one who has not about his labour some measure of individual interest, but the three greatest of the seven are the two brothers Beham—Barthel and Sebald—and that Prince of little ornamentists, Heinrich Aldegrever. Nowhere was the German Renaissance greater than in its ornament, and the Behams, along with subjects of Allegory, History, and Genre, addressed themselves not seldom to subjects of pure and self-contained design. Rich and fine in their fancy, their characteristic yet not too obvious symmetry has an attraction that lasts. Barthel was the less prolific of the twain, but perhaps the more vigorous in invention. Sebald, certainly not at a loss himself for motives for design, yet chose to fall back on occasion—as in the exquisite little print of the Adam and Eve—upon the inventions of his brother. There is not now, there never has been, very much collecting here in England of the German Little Masters. Three pounds or four suffices, now and again, to buy at Sotheby’s, or at a dealer’s, a good Beham, a good Aldegrever. In their own land they are rated a little more highly—are at least more eagerly sought for—but with research and pains (and remembering resolutely in this, as in every other case, to reject a bad impression), it is possible, for a most moderate sum, to have quite a substantial bevy of these treasures; and though large indeed in their design, their real art quality, they[Pg 16] are, in a material sense, as small almost as gems. Mr Loftie, who made a specialty of Sebald Behams, was able, I believe, to carry a collection of them safely housed in his waistcoat-pocket. If we pass on from the Sixteenth to the Seventeenth Century, we have the opportunity, if we so choose, of leaving Line Engraving, and of studying and acquiring here and there examples of the noblest Etching that has been done in the world. For the Seventeenth Century is the period of Rembrandt—the period, too, of that meaner but yet most skilful craftsman, Adrian van Ostade, and the period of the serene artist of classic Landscape and Architecture, who wrought some twenty plates in aquafortis—I mean Claude. In an introductory chapter to a volume like the present, there is time and space to consider only Rembrandt. And it cannot be asserted too decisively that in the study and collection of Rembrandt, lies, as a rule—and must, one thinks, for ever lie—the print-collector’s highest and most legitimate pleasure. And even a poor man may have a few good Rembrandts, though only quite a rich man can have them in great numbers and of the rarest. Rembrandt is a superb tonic for people who have courted too much the infection of a weakly and a morbid art. Not occupied indeed in his representations of humanity with visions of formal beauty, his variety is unsurpassed, his vigour unequalled; he has the great traditions of Style, yet is as modern and as unconventional as Mr Whistler. Of the different classes of Rembrandt’s compositions, the sacred subjects perhaps—at least some minor[Pg 17] examples of them—are the least uncommon; and in their intimate and homely study of humanity, and often too in their technique, the sacred subjects prove themselves desirable. Never, however, should they be collected to the exclusion of the rarer Portraiture or of the rarest Landscape. A Lutma, a De Jonghe, in a fine state and fine condition, a Cottage with a Dutch Haybarn, a Landscape with a Tower, attain the summit of the etcher’s art, and, both in noble conception and magical execution, are absolutely perfect. Why, such impressions of the Rembrandt landscapes as were dispersed but two or three years since, when the cabinet of Mr Holford passed under the hammer, appeal to the trained eye with a potency not a whit less great than can any masterpiece of Painting; and, to speak in very soberest English, no sum of money that it could ever enter into the heart of the enthusiast to pay for them would be, in truth, a too extravagant, a too unreasonable, ransom. In the Eighteenth Century original Etching falls into the background, and the skill of the engraver, in those lands where, in the Eighteenth Century, it was chiefly exercised—in France, that is, and England—is devoted in the main to no spontaneous creation, but to the translation of the work of painters. In two mediums, thoroughly opposed or thoroughly contrasted, yet each with its own value, the engraver’s labour is executed; there flourished, side by side, the delicate School of Line Engraving and the noble School of Mezzotint. Reproductive or interpretive Line Engraving had done great[Pg 18] things a generation or so earlier, and even Mezzotint was not the invention of the Eighteenth Century, though it was then that the art discovered by Von Siegen, and practised with a singular directness by Prince Rupert, was brought to its perfection. But the Eighteenth Century—even the latter half of it—was certainly the period at which both arts were busiest; and not so much the professed collector as the intelligent bourgeois of the time gathered these things together—in England chiefly Mezzotints, in France chiefly Line Engravings—and a very few shillings paid for the M‘Ardell or the Watson after Reynolds, and later for the Raphael Smith or the William Ward after George Morland. Often the engraver was a publisher of his own and other people’s prints. That was the case in Paris as much as in London; and in Paris, in the third quarter of the Eighteenth Century, the line engravers issued for a couple of francs or so—and the Mercure de France was apt, like newspapers in our own day, to notice the publication—those admirable, and still in England, too little known prints which record the dignified observation, the sober, just suggested comedy of Chardin. There were exceptions, of course, to the common rule that in the period of our first Georges, and of Louis the Fifteenth, engraver’s work was translation. Hogarth, in the first half of the century—about the time when the French line engravers were occupied with their quite exquisite translations of the grace of Watteau, Lancret, and Pater—wrought out on copper with rough vigour his original conceptions of the Rake’s[Pg 19] and of the Harlot’s Progress, and not a few of his minor themes; but when it came to the rendering into black and white of those masterly canvases of Marriage à la Mode, professional engravers, such as Ravenet and Scotin, were employed to admirable purpose, and a little later the very colours of the canvas seemed to live, the painter’s very touch seemed to be reproduced, in the noble mezzotints of Earlom. And the immense successes of this reproductive engraving, with the art of Hogarth, brings us back to the truth of our earlier proposition; the period was a period of interpretation, not of original work, with the engraver. The whole French Eighteenth Century School, from Watteau down to Lavreince, is to be studied, and collected, too, in Line Engraving. The School is not invariably discreet in subject: Lavreince has his suggestiveness, though rarely does he go beyond legitimate comedy, and Baudouin, François Boucher’s son-in-law, has his audacities; but against these is to be set the dignified idyl of the great master of Valenciennes; the work of Watteau’s pupils, too; the works of Boucher; Massard’s consummate rendering, in finest or most finished line, of this or that seductive vision of Greuze; the stately comedy of Moreau le jeune; and, as I have said already, the excellent interpretations of the homely, natural, so desirable art of Chardin. Mezzotint really did for all the English painters of importance of the Eighteenth Century, and in a measure for certain earlier Dutchmen, all that Line Engraving accomplished for the French. “By these men I shall[Pg 20] be immortalised,” Sir Joshua said, when the work of M‘Ardell and his fellows came under his view. Gainsborough, it is true, was not interpreted quite so much or quite so successfully. But Romney has as much justice done to him in later English Mezzotint as the luxurious art of Lely and Kneller obtained from one of the earlier practitioners of the craft—John Smith. Morland’s continued and justified popularity in our own time is due to nothing half as much as to the mezzotints by Raphael Smith, and Ward, and Young, and others of that troop of brethren. And it was mezzotint, in combination with the bitten line for leading features of the composition, that Turner, early in our own century—in 1807—decided to employ in the production of those seventy plates of Liber Studiorum upon which, already even, so much of his fame rests. Liber Studiorum occupies an interesting and a peculiar position between work upon the copper wholly original and work wholly reproductive. Turner etched the leading lines himself. In several cases he completed, with his own hand, in mezzotint, the whole of the engraved picture; but generally he gave the “scraping” to a professional engraver, whose efforts he minutely supervised and most elaborately corrected. In recent years, almost as much, though not quite as much sought for as the Liber plates of Turner, are certain rather smaller mezzotints which record the art of Constable; but Constable himself did nothing on these plates, though he supervised their production by David Lucas. Turner’s connection with professional[Pg 21] engravers was not confined to the priceless and admirable prints of the Liber. He trained a school of line engravers, welcoming at first the assistance of John Pye and of George and William Cooke. These two brothers were the engravers mainly of his Southern Coast, and nothing has been more manly than that; but the work of William Miller, in the Clovelly of that Southern Coast, and in a subsequent series, interpreted with quite peculiar exquisiteness those refinements of light which in Turner’s middle and later time so much engaged his effort. With Turner’s death, or with the death of the artists who translated him, fine Line Engraving almost vanished. It had all but disappeared when, nearly fifty years ago, there began in France and England that Revival of Etching with which the amateur of to-day is so rightly concerned. A few etchings by Bracquemond—of still-life chiefly—a larger number by Jules Jacquemart, of fine objects in porcelain, jewellery, bronze, and noble stones, are amongst the more precious products of the earlier part of the Revival of Etching, and they are so treated that they are inventions indeed, and of an originality that is exquisite. But the greatest event of the earlier years of the Revival was the appearance, as long ago as 1850, of the genius of Méryon, who, during but a few years, wrought a series of chefs-d’œuvre—inspired visions of Paris—and died, neglected and ignored, in the great city to which it is he who has raised, in those few prints of his, the noblest of all monuments. [Pg 22] Two other men of very different genius and of unsurpassed energy we associate with this revival of Etching. Both are yet with us in the fulness of their years; and both will occupy the collector who is wise in his generation, and will be, one may make bold to say, the delight of the far Future as well as of the Present. I mean Sir Seymour Haden and Mr. James Whistler. The prints of Seymour Haden shame no cabinet; the best of Whistler’s scarcely suffer at all when placed beside the master-work of Rembrandt. But it is dangerous treating much of contemporaries when one’s task is chiefly with the dead; and though I might mention many other not unworthy men, of whom some subsequent historian must take count—nay, who may even be referred to at a later stage of this volume—I will confine myself here, in this introductory chapter, to just the intimation that Legros and Helleu are, next after the etchers I have already named, those probably who should engage attention...FROM THE BOOKS.
Download or read book Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus written by Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents and explores the seven known oil sketches of Christ on oak panels by Rembrandt, along with over 60 paintings, drawings and prints by him and his pupils.
Download or read book Rembrandt written by Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn and published by . This book was released on 1977 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rembrandt is revered not only as a painter, but as a supreme master of drawing and etching as well. His work in etching spanned most of his career and embraced the wide range of subjects he pursued in his painting: portraits, landscapes, biblical scenes, pictures with allegorical and mythological themes, and more. This comprehensive collection contains Rembrandt's complete etchings? over 300 works? shown in their original size. They have been reproduced directly from a rare collection famed for its pristine condition, fresh, clean impressions, rich contrasts, and brilliant printing.
Download or read book German Art History and Scientific Thought written by MitchellB. Frank and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fresh contribution to the ongoing debate between Kunstwissenschaft (scientific study of art) and Kunstgeschichte (art history), this essay collection explores how German-speaking art historians of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century self-consciously generated a field of study. Prominent North American and European scholars provide new insights into how a mixing of diverse methodologies took place, in order to gain a more subtle and comprehensive understanding of how art history became institutionalized and legitimized in Germany. One common assumption about early art-historical writing in Germany is that it depended upon a simplistic and narrowly-defined formalism. This book helps to correct this stereotype by demonstrating the complexity of discussion surrounding formalist concerns, and by examining how German-speaking art historians borrowed, incorporated, stole, and made analogies with concepts from the sciences in formulating their methods. In focusing on the work of some of the well-known 'fathers' of the discipline - such as Alois Riegl and Heinrich W?lfflin - as well as on lesser-known figures, the essays in this volume provide illuminating, and sometimes surprising, treatments of art history's prior and understudied interactions with a wide range of scientific orientations, from psychology, sociology, and physiognomics to evolutionism and comparative anatomy.
