Edward Hornor Coates

“ The purpose of the Academy has been and is to offer opportunities for higher education, and facilities for study subject to criticism by the instructors; it is not to teach details but the fundamentals of art, and the instruction is primarily and chiefly for those who intend to make art a profession.
When Michael Angelo saw Titian's painting of Danæ, he is said to have remarked "pity that in Venice they do not learn how to draw well," and to have added that if "art had done" for that great master of luminosity and color "all that nature had, everything would have been possible for him." ”

“ The field of art education is large enough to be sub-divided to the advantage and welfare of all, but the Academy must be the highest school, the university of art teaching, or its school department has no reason for existence. ”

“ Names will be forgotten and fortunes will melt away, but while that splendid marble lasts the fame of the giver will remain.
Recently there has been started by one of our large hearted citizens a plan to secure Leon Bonnat's splendid portrait of Cardinal Lavigérie, Bishop of Algiers, and famous for his efforts to wipe out the African slave trade. This seems likely to fail on account of the present ownership of the picture, but other works equally important may be had which would give dignity and reputation to the Academy and to the city. Is not this the opportunity of the Art Club? ”

“ What could not an age accomplish when the love of art was so intense, and devotion to self so utterly forgotten.
What better service can be rendered to our time than the offering to it of loftier ideals and more potent inspirations? ”

“ Still the love of art, like the love of nature—and the one always brings the other or is born with it—grows upon us with ever increasing force; and the time comes when, endowed with new power of vision, the old ideals thrown aside, we wander with Diaz in the woods of Fontainbleau, or on the borders of the Seine with Daubigny ”

“ If any one be inclined to give credence to the superstition that the Academy's directors are sufficient unto to themselves, and arrogate to themselves control and responsibility for all art in Philadelphia, a protest and denial must here be entered. The Academy eighty-five years ago, was founded, fostered and built up by the citizens for the public good. ”

“ It gives us a thrill of patriotic pride, as for a moment we feel ourselves present in that Hall, already filled with sacred associations, where twenty-nine years before, the forefathers signed the Declaration of Independence, and where now seventy-one of our citizens, of whom forty-one are lawyers, are met to subscribe to the articles of association for this our first art academy. ”

“ As for several years past, it is in charge of a Committee of Artists, nominated by the exhibitors of the previous year, and in connection with the regular Exhibition Committee of the Directors.
Of the permanent collection of the Academy it is not always the fashion to speak with the respect which it deserves. Whether this be owing to ignorance, or to the fact that the frames of some of the pictures sadly need renewing, or to that wilful lack of appreciation, regarding its own things, which distinguishes Philadelphia among American cities, it is difficult to say. ”

“ There are doubtless some who are slow to believe that Wagner's is the music of the future, or who fail to see behind the misty lines of Corot the master poet-painter of landscape art. It is not true that the glories of the Ufizzi, the Louvre or the Vatican lie open to all who look upon them for the first time. One of the most distinguished critics of modern times says that Edgar Allen Poe, with all his genius and intellectual qualification, could not have been a great poet, because he had not sufficient knowledge. ”

“ Unfortunately there is no statute legislative or moral against that "parallelism," which in railway building has been checked, but which, whether in the matter of art education, or other direction, constantly threatens the welfare of a particular branch of endeavor, by the starting of new and weakling ventures, rather than in the building up and maintaining of those which already exist. There are to-day in Philadelphia four life schools. Why should there be more than one—the Academy? ”

“ In conducting the schools the Direction aims that study shall be on the broadest, most liberal and highest plane, still believing, in the face of denial, that there is a conscience in art, and that earnest sincerity and genuine purpose are the proper conditions, as well as the justification for its pursuit. ”

“ The heart of every man who travelled in foreign lands and among the treasures of the old world, kept turning homeward with the thought of what could be secured for that institution. Why should it not be so to-day? It is not the possession of a clique, nor of a body of directors happening to be in the management. They are but trustees of interests which are of great and real importance. They want the enthusiastic sympathy and the criticism, if manly and sincere, of every man and woman who has at heart the artistic welfare of the commonwealth ”

“ Almost unconsciously it has become a part of every day. In its simplest forms, and even upon the most prosaic lives, its influence is a dominant one, with a constant appeal and an answer, ever ready, to that faculty of the soul which asks to behold the beautiful, and accords it, when seen, instant recognition. ”

“ The wheels of the world will continue to turn, and it will be a beautiful or a commonplace world, as we, and not the Fates, make it. Fortune may not always favor us, Care will still mount with us as we ride ”

“ But while we are told that art, speaking generally, is everything that is not nature, it may not be claimed that all art, or that art in its finer forms and highest expression, appeals to or is intelligible to every one. ”

“ A defense of each and every canvass certainly could not be made and will not be attempted; but it must be borne in mind that the collection has grown by gift and purchase, beginning in the earliest days of American art, and continuing through a period in which the country was growing in this direction as in all others. Much that is otherwise uninteresting is of exceeding importance as illustrating the progress of art in the first century of the Republic. ”

“ A distinct feature of the School is the desire and expectation that every student shall enter the class for modelling the human figure in clay, at the same time with the class in drawing or painting, being able in this way to gain a definite knowledge of anatomical structure, form and movement. In artistic anatomy a course of thirty-five lectures is given to the whole school ”

“ The present Academy building, designed by Furness and Hewitt, and dedicated to noble uses in the first year of the Nation's second century, is one of the most commodious, as well as the best adapted for its purposes of art education and art exhibition, which has been constructed in the United States. It stands as a monument to the liberality of Philadelphia's citizens, and to the energy and persistent work of Mr. ”

“ At great cost it is arranged to offer every facility for thorough, systematic and complete work in this direction. The school rooms and equipment are unequalled by the Artists' League for the Academy of Design in New York, and are not excelled by the great schools of Paris, up to the present time. ”

“ The sketch class, the portrait class and the class in composition are open to all students. Much interest has been shown in the composition class, and good results have followed, the stimulus here given being on the literary and poetic side of art. ”