A Biographical History of the Fine Arts: Being Memoirs of the Lives and Works of Eminent Painters, Engravers, Sculptors, and Architects. From the Earliest Ages to the Present Time. Alphabetically Arranged, and Condensed from the Best Authorities. Including the Works of Vasari, Lanzi, Kugler, Dr. Waagen, Bryan, Pilkington, Walpole, Sir C. Eastlake, and Mrs. Jameson. With Chronological Tables of Artists and Their Schools, Plates of Monograms, Etc., and Supplement, Volume 2

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George Gebbie, 1873 - Artists
 

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Page 775 - ... is chiefly exerted in historical pictures, and the art of the painter of portraits is often lost in the obscurity of his subject. But it is in painting as in life ; what is greatest is .not always best. I should grieve to see Reynolds transfer to heroes and to goddesses, to empty splendour and to airy fiction, that art which is now employed in diffusing friendship, in renewing tenderness, in quickening the affections of the absent, and continuing the presence of the dead.
Page 775 - In full affluence of foreign and domestic fame, admired by the expert in art and by the learned in science, courted by the great, caressed by sovereign powers, and celebrated by distinguished poets, his native humility, modesty, and candour...
Page 775 - His talents of every kind, powerful from nature, and not meanly cultivated by letters ; his social virtues, in all the relations and all the habitudes of life, rendered him the centre of a very great and unparalleled variety of agreeable societies, which will be dissipated by his death. He had too much merit not to excite some jealousy, too much innocence to provoke any enmity. The loss of no man of his time can be felt with more sincere, general, and unmixed sorrow.
Page 725 - Poussin seemed to think that the style and the language in which such stories are told, is not the worse for preserving some relish of the old way of painting, which seemed to give a general uniformity to the whole, so that the mind was thrown back into antiquity not only by the subject, but the execution.
Page 816 - The works of Rubens have that peculiar property always attendant on genius, to attract attention, and enforce admiration in spite of all their faults. It is owing to this fascinating power that the performances of those painters with which he is surrounded, though they have perhaps fewer defects, yet appear spiritless, tame, and insipid ; such as the altar-pieces of Grayer, Schut, Seghers, Huysum, Tyssens, Van Balen, and the rest.
Page 760 - 'you will not find a man in whose conversation there is more instruction, more information, and more elegance, than in that of Ramsay.
Page 746 - Having since that period frequently revolved this subject in my mind, I am now clearly of opinion that a relish for the higher excellencies of the art is an acquired taste, which no man ever possessed without long cultivation, and great labour and attention.
Page 739 - Microcosm ; or, a picturesque delineation of the arts, agriculture, manufactures, &c. of Great Britain...
Page 775 - Sir Joshua Reynolds was on very many accounts one of the most memorable men of his time. He was the first Englishman who added the praise of the elegant arts to the other glories of his country. In taste, in grace, in facility, in happy invention, and in the richness and harmony of colouring, he was equal to the great masters of the renowned ages.
Page 816 - RUBENS appears to have had that confidence in himself, which it is necessary for every artist to assume, when he has finished his studies, and may venture in some measure to throw aside the fetters of authority; to consider the rules as subject to his controul, and not himself subject to the rules; to risk and to dare extraordinary attempts without a guide, abandoning himself to his own sensations, and depending upon them.

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