American painters- with eighty-three examples of their work engraved on wood (1879) (14747627366)

Identifier: americanpainters00shel (find matches)
Title: American painters: with eighty-three examples of their work engraved on wood
Year: 1879 (1870s)
Authors: Sheldon, George William, 1843-1914
Subjects: Painters Painting, American
Publisher: New York : D. Appleton and company
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Internet Archive



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k always has in it that one touch ofnature —human nature—which interests, brightens, awakens the sympathy.The heart is the object that a work of art appeals to. The appeal to theintellect is only incidental. That is why Meissonier is not so great an artistas Wilkie. At the same time a work of art should elevate as well as excitethe emotions. The professor was getting upon delicate ground, and I re-solved to ask him point-blank whether the infusion of a moral design into awork of art is artistically legitimate. His reply was cpiick and clear. Amoral end is legitimate, he said; painters have immoral ends, why cant theyhave moral ones? A good deal of modern art-work is a prostitution of art.A good many pictures excite immoral feelings in the spectator. They havethis effect, whether they were intended to or not. Why should not a painteraim to excite moral feelings ? Much of the present representation of the nudeis all wrong, and has no reason for existing. Take any young girl with you
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< 0 z < <►4<IS) 0 oZ D00 w I H wao u.wm Cfl DCQSDJ00 ——=^ ROBERT W. WEIR. 163 into a room where some French figure-pieces are hanging, and she will with-draw her arm from yours and walk out. In Europe, of course, they are moreaccustomed to this sort of thing. But a great deal of French art is reallylewd and immoral, whatever people may say they think about it, and itscleverness does not excuse it. After all, a picture is a register of the artistsown moral state. A vulgar mind cannot produce a refined picture. Mostof Stuarts portraits contain an expression that he had on his own lips—yet they are all good portraits. He reflected himself in his works—and hecouldnt help it. What is art ? I asked. Art, he replied, is mans interpretation of beauty, expressed not onlyin form and color, but in every truth which can be represented or suggestedby poetic words or by pictorial skill. It is the chiseled, colored, or writtenindex of the mind ; and for this reason, in its puri