Joseph Breck

“ Life is joyful, to be lived in luxurious boudoirs, exquisite in refinement of decoration, or in pretty gardens where Nature, properly disguised, welcomes aristocratic shepherds and shepherdesses to her pastoral delights.
The changed political and social conditions of the XVIII century had their immediate effect in the world of art. Except in England—relatively democratic as compared with France and other continental countries—art was almost exclusively aristocratic, and mirrored the self-indulgent interests of fashionable patrons. ”

“ MODERN EUROPEAN PAINTINGS To trace the history of painting in the XIX century in France, is to trace the main stem of its recent developments throughout the western world. Germany has grafted something of her own national spirit upon the parent art forms of the French; England has contributed some original impulses; Holland and Spain have looked back to their own past as well as across to the contemporary painting of the French. ”

“ John S. Sargent, 1856- In this canvas, Sargent has shown the hushed pensiveness of mood, the perfection of sensitively modulated color of which his many-sided genius is capable, but which it has, in fact, rarely attained to such a degree as here. The subject of the painting is the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris at twilight, with the moon rising above the trees. In the distance may be seen the dome of the Pantheon. Various groups of figures lend the scene a measured animation. ”

“ We do not expect to find in German sculpture of the XV century that spirituality which characterizes the great achievements of the Italian school. German plastic art was one of realism, modified by a strong decorative tradition centuries old, based not only on precedent but on propriety. If the carved altarpiece were to tell in the subdued light of the Gothic church, the artist had to resort to exaggeration, to sharp contrasts in modeling, to the added emphasis of gold and color, to secure his effect. ”

“ Never has sculpture more perfectly adorned architecture; never has architecture more beautifully expressed the hopes and aspirations of a people. In this age the plastic arts were truly “the language of faith.”
From France, Gothic art spread to other lands, to Germany, Flanders, Spain, and England, and even to Italy. During the XIII and XIV centuries, the highest development of Gothic art took place in France, but, in the XV century, Burgundy and the merchant cities of Flanders gained pre-eminence. ”

“ Early XVIII Century The hectic magnificence of life in XVIII century Venice finds its reflection, naturally enough, in the decorative arts of the time. Furniture less ornate than the lavishly carved chair illustrated on this page would have seemed out of place in the great gilded salons where human peacocks strutted in the bravery of brocade and rustling silk. ”

“ The first is that an art museum is of the greatest value to a community when its collections embrace both the major and minor arts of all countries and all times. The second is that the standard must be high. It would be idle to pretend that every object in our collection is a masterpiece of the highest order, but it is better to have an ideal, which may not be wholly realized, than to have none. ”

“ Alexander Nasmyth, 1758-1840 This landscape by the Scotch painter, Alexander Nasmyth, is so unobtrusive as to be easily overlooked by the visitor. For those who feel the spirit of the little picture, however, it has an abiding charm. The artist was a man of extraordinary versatility and enterprise, an able scene painter and architect, and an inventor and engineer of eminence. In our painting one sees little of the boldness expected from a mind given credit for originating principles of steamboat propulsion and bridge construction. ”

“ The skillful artist converted his exaggerations of form and movement into beautiful decoration; seized upon the necessity of contrasting planes as a pretext for crumpling his draperies into numerous rhythmic folds, and used the resources of gilding and polychromy to enrich as well as to emphasize form.
But at his best, the German sculptor was more than a simple decorator. Our statue is a case in point. Here we have the work of one who surely has looked into the human heart. Beneath the pattern of line and area, beneath the gold and colors, is a living woman. ”

“ Hunter with Lure In the XV century, hunting and hawking—the latter also called falconry—played a significant part in the social life of the nobility. These sports and the ability to pursue them in a generous and polite fashion set the nobility apart from the commoners, and formed the chief topic of conversation, when war did not call from the slaughter of animals to the slaughter of men. One of the most necessary implements in falconry is the lure, used to recall the falcon. In the upper right-hand corner of the tapestry a man is shown waving a lure in his right hand. ”

“ Emil Carlsen, 1853 The consummate workmanship of Emil Carlsen in covering a canvas with pigments gives the illusion of appealing to more senses than the sense of vision. The delicious handling of color and the creamy texture of his paint seem to tickle the palate and to please the finger tips. The Open Sea is the sea at its most alluring. A fair breeze gives the water vivacity without making it threaten. ”

“ This artistic creed was nothing less than revolutionary at that time, in the early days of the XIX century, when the landscape painter regarded nature as unworthy of his brush unless it was bedecked with ancient temples and peopled with gods and goddesses, or at least suggested Italy or some distant land. Georges Michel lived on the heights of Montmartre in Paris. He walked out into the country and painted what he saw. His landscapes are actual studies of nature painted in the open air. As one of the first painters of paysage intime, Michel was a forerunner of Rousseau and the men of 1830. ”

“ Rembrandt, emotional, democratic, understanding and sympathizing with all mankind. But the contrast is no greater than between the popular art that flourished in the Netherlands under a free people, and the monarchical art, with its academies, court painters, sculptors, architects, tapestry weavers and cabinet makers, that revolved around the awesome person of le grand monarque, Louis XIV. Architecture, sculpture and the minor arts display more uniformity of style than the paintings of the period. ”

“ With the Han Dynasty (B. C. 206-221 A. D.) , we find ourselves on surer ground, since many works of art of various kinds and materials, and unquestionably of this era, have come down to us. Not only bronzes and jades but also pottery and sculpture bear witness to the flourishing art of this period. During the Han Dynasty, probably in the first century of our era, Buddhism reached China from India. It does not appear, however, to have exerted much influence upon the arts until about the V century. ”

“ Victorious at Salamis and Plataea, the Greek world arose triumphant from its struggles with Asia. The birth of national consciousness ushered in a new period of art, the Golden Age of Greece (480-400 B. C.) . The conventions of the archaic style gave place to a free style, adequate to the sculptor's every need. Grace, simplicity, and truth in the representation of the living form characterize the sculpture of this period; draperies are rendered with marvelous skill. Liberal patronage was extended to the arts, particularly by the state. ”

“ Flemish, about 1500 It is impossible to date any period of art with absolute accuracy; for art is always in the process of change, and the flourishing of any period of art is long anticipated by preliminary manifestations. In a general way, however, it may be said that the Gothic period extends from the second half of the XII century through the XV century. Italy presents an exception. The tentative Gothic art of the XIII century in Italy gave place to the new movement, founded upon enthusiasm for antiquity, as well as for nature, which we call the Renaissance. ”

“ Gothic tapestries of the XV century illustrate the true principle of mural decoration. Designers deliberately avoided realistic imitation of nature with spatial effects and tricks of illusion. They strove to achieve a decorative flatness of design which would emphasize rather than destroy the architectonic quality of the wall the tapestry was to cover.
A tapestry is woven, not embroidered, and forms a single fabric. Only two elements are employed in the making of it, the warp and the woof (or weft) . ”

“ The surviving works of art of this era are far from numerous, but they are sufficient to warrant the belief that China, except in the field of ceramic art, rarely if ever surpassed the achievements of this golden age. Chinese Buddhist sculpture attained its noblest development in the T'ang period. As to T'ang painting—unfortunately, surviving examples are of the utmost rarity—it is characterized by austere beauty and spiritual elevation. Admirable also are the productions of the metal worker, the weaver, and the potter. ”

“ His character is well seen in such a painting as ours, where the Mother is full of modesty, her face expressing a tender, timid love for her child, who does not embrace her after all, not the most natural thing for a baby to do, but amuses himself with playing with the leaves of a book which the Madonna holds. ”

“ Of the six wood-engravings drawn by Millet and cut by his brothers, three are represented in the collection.
Millet was a thoughtful artist, to whom the spirit of things was at least as important as their visual aspect. His deep and sincere sympathy with the life of the peasant, to whose class he himself belonged, determined to a large extent his choice of subject. But Millet never descended to anecdotal trivialities; he avoided the pale sentimentality of such a painter as Jules Breton. His thought, like his technique, was virile, positive, honest. ”

“ As a general rule, Italian furniture of the Rococo Age is easily recognized by its prodigal indulgence in the spices, so to speak, of furniture designing. Rarely is a piece of Italian furniture of the elaborate character of this pearwood chair so successful in combining an almost excessive richness of carving with a fine feeling for proportions and harmonious ensemble. Indeed, it is not impossible that the chair is the work of a cabinet maker who may have come from France to Venice in the suite of some great nobleman. ”

“ Gothic Casts Sculpture of the Hellenistic Period (323-146 B. C.) shows a further development of tendencies already manifested in the preceding century. Individualism led to a vigorous development of portraiture and genre sculpture. Art ran the whole gamut of passion, from the bestial to the ideal, and this amplification of the emotional theme was accompanied by a wider range of subject material than had yet occurred. With these changes came a lowering of ideals. Spiritual emptiness, sensationalism, and lack of self-restraint are only too often characteristic of Hellenistic art. ”

“ A psychologist has pointed out somewhere that if it were not for the artists among us pointing out the beauties of landscape, very few of us would ever appreciate them. One finds no landscapes painted on Greek vases. The early European painters used landscapes only as backgrounds for portraits or religious subjects. Certainly there exist in nature charms of color in shadow, rich varieties of pure tone in sunlight which none of us suspected until the Impressionist painters insisted upon them. ”

“ We must be content to designate our tapestry as Flemish, woven at the close of the XV century. The story of Esther was popular among the Flemish weavers at this time. Our tapestry, which formed part of a set, may be compared with three hangings of the same subject belonging to the Cathedral of Saragossa.
The reproduction can give but an unsatisfactory idea at best of the original. Not only do we lose the mellow harmonies of color, but in reducing the design of so large a tapestry to a few square inches many of the most beautiful details are necessarily lost. ”

“ This collection of pottery from the island of Cyprus shows an almost unbroken succession of styles from the Early Bronze Age, about 3000 B. C., down to the Roman period, and thus gives us a complete picture of the art of pottery in an important center of ancient civilization for about three thousand years. Artistically, it is probably the most successful product of the Cypriote artist. His sense of form and decoration could here find full expression without disclosing the lack of high artistic inspiration, which is apparent in his sculptural creations. ”

“ Painting On Silk by Ma Yuan During the Sung dynasty, a period of highly developed civilization landscape painting occupied the attention of the greatest artists. Wearying of the complexity of life, men of culture turned with eager desire to the peace and solitude of nature. This love of nature finds beautiful expression in the paintings of Ma Yuan, one of the three greatest landscape painters of the period. ”

“ Georges Michel, 1763-1843 To those who asked him why he did not go to Italy for his subjects, Georges Michel would answer: “The man who can not find enough to paint during his whole life in a circuit of four miles is in reality no artist.” ”

“ Myron, who excelled in the representation of bodily forms and action; Polyclitus, the sculptor of athletes and the exponent of academic perfection; and above all Phidias, the great genius of the age, who combined technical skill with the expression of lofty, spiritual ideals.
In the next period, that of the IV century (400-323 B. C.) individualism began to dominate Greek thought and action, replacing the earlier civic and religious influences. Art became more individual and more emotional. Portraiture grew in favor. ”

“ Artisans ranked as artists, and justly. Among the distinguished artists of the XVIII century must be included such great craftsmen as Chippendale, Sheraton, Hepplewhite, Oeben, Riesener, Gouthiere, and Caffieri—to make but a brief selection from among the numerous English and French cabinet-makers, metal chasers, and other craftsmen of the period. The productions of these celebrated artisans were rightly looked upon as works of creative art of a high order, and the makers were accorded the patronage and protection of royalty and nobility. ”

“ Dynasty XXII-XXV The Egyptian collection, purchased from the Drexel Institute, includes over seven hundred objects, ranging from sculpture and painting to furniture and utensils of daily life. It affords an adequate illustration of the conditions under which art flourished in the ancient land of the Nile, and of the characteristic forms of art expression which were evolved to meet these conditions.
After monumental architecture, the system of decoration evolved by the Egyptians is perhaps their greatest contribution to the world's art. ”