Willard Huntington Wright

“ But if many of the American painters who have made our art history are dismissed peremptorily in biographies which, I assure you, are not “interesting,” and which obviously are far from adequate or even fair when compared with the consideration given lesser English painters, what answer have the editors of the Britannica to offer their American customers when many of our noteworthy and important artists are omitted altogether? ”

“ Among these names are painters of a high and important order — painters who stand in the foremost rank of American art, and who unquestionably are greater than a score of English painters who receive very special critical biographies, some of which extend over columns. And yet — apparently for no other discernible reason than that they are Americans — they are given the briefest mention with no specific criticism. ”

“ A comparison, for instance, between English and French painters, as they are presented in this encyclopædia, would leave the neophyte with the conviction that France was considerably inferior in regard to graphic ability, as inferior, in fact — if we may read the minds of the Britannica's editors — as the French fleet is to the British fleet. In its ignorant and un-English way the world for years has been laboring under the superstition that the glories of modern painting had been largely the property of France. ”

“ Modern German painting fares even worse than French painting in the pages of the Britannica; and while it does not hold the high place that French painting does, it is certainly deserving of far more liberal treatment than that which is accorded it. The comparatively few biographies of German artists are inadequate; but it is not in them that we find the greatest neglect of German achievements in this branch of æsthetics: it is in the long list of conspicuous painters who are omitted entirely. ”

“ We cannot refrain from wondering what would have been Whistler's fate at the hands of the Encyclopædia's editors had he remained in his native country. Sargent, surely a painter of considerable importance and one who is regarded in many enlightened quarters as a great artist, is dismissed with less than half a column! Even this comparatively long biography for an American painter may be accounted for by the following comment: “Though of the French school, and American by birth, it is as a British artist that he won fame.” ”

“ But in the case of American art, not even the strictly impartial treatment occasionally accorded French and German painters is to be found, with the result that, for the most part, our art suffers more than that of any other nation when compared, in the pages of the Britannica, with British art. ”

“ One or two such disparities in space might be overlooked, but when to almost any kind of an English painter is imputed an importance equal to, if not greater than, truly significant painters from France, bias, whether conscious or unconscious, has been established.
Again regard Poussin. This artist, the most representative painter of his epoch and a man who marked a distinct step in the evolution of graphic art, is given less than half a page, about equal to the space devoted to W. P. Frith, J. W. Gordon, Samuel Cousins, John Crome, William Strang, and Thornhill ”

“ Generally British painters — even minor ones — are criticised favorably, from one standpoint or another; but only now and then is a Frenchman given specific complimentary criticism. And often a Frenchman is condemned for the very quality which is lauded in a British artist. ”

“ Turning to the other lesser moderns in French painting but those who surpass the contemporaneous British painters who are given liberal biographies, we find them very decidedly neglected as to both space and comment. ”

“ Coming down to the more modern painters we find even less consideration given them by the Britannica's editors. Delacroix, who ushered in a new age of painting and brought compositi back to art after a period of stagnation and quiescence, is nailed to France as follows: “As a colorist and a romantic painter he now ranks among the greatest of French artists.” Certainly not among the greatest English painters, for Constable is given more space than Delacroix ”

“ Our artists are either disposed of with cursory mention or ignored completely; and whenever it is possible for England to claim any credit for the accomplishments of our artists, the opportunity is immediately grasped. ”

“ Outside of certain glaring omissions, what we read in the Encyclopædia concerning the painters of France and Germany may be fair, from a purely impartial standard, if taken alone: in some instances, I believe, judicial critics of these other nations have performed the service. ”