Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

“ From there they drifted to the schools of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, then located in Chestnut Street, under the presidency of Richard Vaux, who, many years afterwards, while I was painting him, asked me why people were making so much fuss about Art then, because in the old days, when he was President of the Academy, no one ever gave it a thought, or even came to see the pictures. ”

“ Philadelphia being the seat of government of colonial times, is extremely rich in historic portraits. They are in The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts; Independence Hall; Historical Society of Pennsylvania; Carpenters’ Hall; American Philosophical Society; Pennsylvania Hospital; Academy of Natural Science; The Library Company of Philadelphia; Mercantile Library; College of Physicians; United States Mint; University of Pennsylvania; many banks and insurance companies. ”

“ Pupil of Pennsylvania Academy a few months; in Paris, of Bouguereau, Robert-Fleury, and Jules Lefebvre.
Her "Holland Family at Prayer," exhibited at the Paris Salon, 1893, and "Jessica," belong to the Public Library in Williamsport; "Clam-Diggers Coming Home—Cape Cod" was in the Venice Exhibition, 1903; one of her pictures shows the "Julian Academy, Criticism Day."
She has painted many portraits, and her work has often been thought to be that of a man, which idea is no doubt partly due to her choosing subjects from the lives of working men. She is of the modern school of colorists. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Built for the accommodation of the greatest preacher of the day, it became the Academy where the greatest teacher in the province, also a clergyman in like orders, established his fame as a Provost and nurtured into permanence the reputation of his College. In 1764 Whitefield himself wrote of the Academy as "one of the best regulated institutions in the world," after preaching on the opening of a new term of the College in September. [1] He was in Philadelphia the following spring, and Dr. ”

“ While much may be urged with reason against compulsory instruction of art in the public schools, it would seem that few could be found to object to the education of art instructors, and the addition of an optional art branch to the State schools for the benefit of those who are desirous of art instruction, but are too poor to avail themselves of the advantages offered by such admirable art schools as those of the Cooper Institute and Artists' League in New York, the National Academy or the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, or the Academy in Philadelphia. ”

“ Opposite is The Architectural School, Thirty-sixth Street and Woodland Avenue, second only in importance and numbers to the Ecole des Beaux Arts, Paris: the esprit de corps of faculty and students is most pronounced; students and graduates, of late years, have won more competitive prizes, and scholarships, than those of all other American schools combined. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Farther on, to the right, is the Art Club, in the Renaissance style, in which exhibitions of paintings, concerts, and public lectures are held. At Locust Street, to the right, is the Academy of Music, while to the left is the Pennsylvania School of Industrial Art, incorporated in 1876, with a special view to the development of the art industries of Pennsylvania. A characteristic feature is the department of weaving and textile design. The Industrial Museum Hall is connected with this excellent institution. ”

“ Why, in so many words, that the knowledge of Art in this country is inconsistent with the existence of the Academy, and that their success as a body of men instituted for promoting and encouraging the Fine Arts, requires the destruction or concealment of all works of Art of great and acknowledged excellence. ”

“ There are thirty-four buildings on a campus of 1500 acres; “Old Main,” built in 1857 as the Agricultural College of Pennsylvania, native limestone, is fine specimen of early architecture; the chemistry and liberal arts buildings are Classic style; mining and agricultural groups, Italian Renaissance.
The college maintains departments of study in industrial and fine arts, architecture, art history, and engineering; architectural exhibitions show many specimens of students’ work, some of them prize winners in the Beaux Arts contests ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ One who looks toward Philadelphia from the railway station on the east side of the Schuylkill, may see a cluster of spires and domes centering around the Academy of Fine Arts, which is so agreeably composed that one would almost imagine the position of each to be the deliberate choice of a master in composition. ”

“ 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 study of the Greek Language was joined with that of Latin; and a course of instruction having thus been adopted equal in extent to that usually pursued in the highest seminaries, nothing more was requisite to place the academy of Philadelphia on the footing of a collegiate establishment, than the right of assuming the title, and the privilege of conferring degrees upon the students. The hope of obtaining collegiate honours has always exercised a powerful influence over the youthful mind ”

“ It will find a welcome and a response in the hearts of all pure men; and purchasers wherever a spark of patriotism lingers. It is sold at the cheap rate of twenty-five cents, and by the hundred at a still lower price.
Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts.—We had hoped to be able to notice the Spring Exhibition of this Society, but cannot do justice to the splendid array of home and foreign talent on the walls of its Galleries, in the present number ”

“ They were not only connected through the medium of the trustees, but were managed by the same faculty of professors; and the students belonging to the two departments were often mingled together in the same classes. The distinction seems to have been simply this, that those pupils whose object was to go through a regular course of instruction, and ultimately receive the honour of graduation, were considered as members of the college; those who attended merely the English and mathematical schools, without pursuing classical or philosophical studies, as members of the Academy ”

“ Frishmuth collection of colonial antiquities. A Bureau of Identification is maintained where art objects may be classified.
The school is at the northwest corner of Broad and Pine Streets; porch of this building, facing Broad Street, is a fine example of Tuscan architecture, erected, 1828. The school has forty instructors. Free scholarships are given in each county of this state. This is the leading school in America in associating the study of art with practical training; through its equipment{63} students not only design, but actually manufacture ”

“ The Normal Art Course embodies all the special studies required by modern educators for teachers of art and design, and with courses in the fine arts, illustration, and costume illustration; has trained many women, now earning handsome emoluments and winning distinction. ”

“ In the Academy of Fine Arts is something of everything, and not much of anything—a few figures and busts, most in plaster, a few architectural plans and pencil drawings, and a collection of very old oil paintings. It really seemed to me as if some private picture gallery had been carefully weeded of all the rubbish in it, which had then been put here out of the way. Most of the oil paintings are so injured, that it is scarcely possible to make out what they are intended to represent, which, after all, is no great loss. ”

“ Having been himself at one time a pupil in the old Academy building, his interest has been enhanced in the course of the present work by the memory of his attendance on tuition in the venerable birthplace, now no more, of the great educational institution whose continuing years have left a record of such great interest, and which to-day holds out such enlarging promises, the fruitage of the seed laid there in 1749 by the "voluntary society of founders," as the Trustees were termed by the first Provost. ”

“ Philadelphia is wise to set up a high standard, but not wise when it makes the way too easy. For art is a stern master. It cares not if the weak fall by the roadside, so long as the strong, unhampered, succeed in getting into their own. The best thing that has been done at the Academy for many a day is the reducing of the scholarships from a two, or three, years' interval free of responsibility, to a summer's holiday among the masterpieces of Europe, which, I am told, is all they are now. ”

“ The works of the younger men are seen in the exhibitions held from year to year at the Academy of Design, the Society of American Artists, N. Y., in Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston, and elsewhere throughout the country. Some of their works belong to permanent institutions like the Metropolitan Mus., the Pennsylvania Acad., the Art Institute of Chicago, but there is no public collection of pictures that represents American art as a whole. ”

“ Particularly in the central and southern colonies, where commercial demands early made themselves felt, the tendency was to teach more practical subjects. This tendency led to the evolution, about the middle of the eighteenth century, of the distinctively American Academy, with a more practical curriculum, and by the close of the century it was rapidly superseding the older Latin grammar school. Franklin's Academy at Philadelphia, which began instruction in 1751, and which later evolved into the University of Pennsylvania, was probably the first American Academy. ”

“ 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." ”

“ A pamphlet called Proposals Relative to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania, written in 1749 by Dr Franklin, led to an association by certain citizens of Philadelphia, for the purpose of raising to the dignity of an Academy the Charitable School which had been established in 1740, and which was then struggling under a debt upon the building erected for its use and the accommodation of the celebrated preacher Whitefield. ”

“ I saw the Academy of Fine Arts last autumn, but went there again, as the exhibition of paintings had been opened. This collection, however, consisted merely of portraits, and these were rather indifferent. In general, the fine arts, as I believe has already been mentioned, do not yet flourish in the United States to a great degree ”

“ Born and educated in Great Britain, he emigrated to this country about the commencement of the year 1754, and soon after his arrival, was employed in the academy to teach those higher branches, which were at that time introduced into its course of studies. In the performance of this duty, he acquitted himself so well, and, in other respects, gave so much satisfaction to the trustees, that when the institution assumed the form of a college, he was unanimously chosen to fill the office of provost. ”