Art treasure

“ The intrinsic value, however, of the art treasures bequeathed by this glorious painter to posterity does not consist simply in their high state of preservation and delicate work, but in the emotions produced by the contemplation of their conception and beauty; in fact, the effect produced by the study of a really beautiful picture upon the mind is never effaced, it becomes photographed, as it were, upon the imagination, and we can always bring to our remembrance some prominent incident in connection with its composition or general beauty. ”

“ Why, all our art treasures of to-day are only the dug-up commonplaces of three or four hundred years ago. I wonder if there is real intrinsic beauty in the old soup-plates, beer-mugs, and candle-snuffers that we prize so now, or if it is only the halo of age glowing around them that gives them their charms in our eyes. ”

“ The richest art treasures on earth have ever since accumulated in the retreats where choice collections then were first commenced, as we shall have occasion more fully to state when we come to sketch the age now transpiring. ”

“ To describe the rare paintings, the rich gems of statuary and the other miracles of art which were there to be seen would be as impossible as it would be to portray the exquisite taste which enhanced the value of each and constituted more than half its charm. ”

“ The soul's best treasures, the heart's best gems?
Have you, too, found that you could not supply
The place of those jewels so rare and chaste?
Do all that you borrow or beg or buy
Prove to be nothing but skilful paste?
Have you found pleasure, as I found art,
Not all-sufficient to fill your heart? ”

“ As we repeat each look, on our slow return through the temples, the same elegance, the same refinement, the same indifference to the outrages of time, contrast again with the permanence and the forces of nature. With the fatigue and repetition of the innumerable beauties of gold and color, carving and bronze, the sense of an exquisite art brings the indefinable sadness that belongs to it, a feeling of humility and of the nothingness of man. ”

“ Sitting before it, there are yearly hundreds of canvases and brushes and paints and paintings; but they lack the beauty.—The words, the rhythm, the metre, the music of Paradise Lost? Millions of productions, from musty tomes in the British Museum to the upper left-hand corner of the “patent inside” of a newspaper, have all these; but no beauty.
What then? That same indefinable something which in man we call the soul, and in art, the spirit; that which the admiring soul instinctively feels and recognizes. ”

“ What it is, matters less than what is made of it, as the value of a work of art lies in the flowering of the workman's skill. We bring into the world with us different gifts: one has received gold, another granite, a third marble, most of us wood or clay. ”

“ Though much of that exists in our modern decorations, it is highly desirable that it should not partake of that character; a little taste, a little poetry, gracefulness, order, and some display of general knowledge, of artistic combinations and principles, cannot fail to make our productions more valued and valuable. Give a tinge of some originality,—display an attempt of your own inventive powers, based upon acknowledged principles of beauty and effect, and your productions will soon reach an eminence of which art is ever capable! ”

“ For this reason also, I do not so much admire the statuary who forms a beautiful figure out of gold, as him who, by the resources of art, is able, even in crumbling clay, to exhibit a marvellous and inimitable mould of beauty. ”

“ Taking the Fine Arts at their lowest value, as a mere source of pleasure, from the love of imitation or representation of agreeable objects—the remembrancer of scenes of interest, the elegant accomplishment by which homes are embellished and made more beautifully homely—surely some little gratitude is due, where it has been the fashion to be sparing of any praise, to those good and pious men who in their convents prepared, improved, and invented colours as well as implements of Art; were themselves the early painters, and by their extensive patronage may be called the Fathers of the Arts. ”

“ The world will see a simple rag
Become a treasure rarely known.
LINES TO A PROMISING YOUNG ARTIST. These bays be thine; and, tho’ not form’d to shine
Clear as thy colour, faultless as thy line,
Yet shall the Muse essay, in humble verse,
Thy merits, lovely Painting! to rehearse. ”

“ Merely that the pile of gold pieces may increase in the coffers, and that the Fafnir's4 treasure, which always brings mischief, may glitter and sparkle more and more! Oh, how gladly a painter or a sculptor must go out into the air, and with head erect imbibe all the refreshing influences of spring, until they people the inner world of his mind with beautiful images pulsing with glad and energetic life! ”

“ This would be a merit of a sort—the sort of merit that one would expect from first-rate wax works, the merit of the Greek painter who depicted grapes so cleverly that the birds came and pecked the picture. But this is not the merit of the high art of letters, which, like all the high arts, is an art of enchantment, the passage into a region which is earth, and yet earth translated, seen in a light neither of the sun nor of the moon. ”

“ Free as the ancients with their gods and legends, he pours forth his Cupids, beautiful women, genii, Bacchantes, and historical figures, and at the same time draws into his kingdom of art all nature with its variety of plants, flowers, and fruits, all civilisation with its fulness of splendid vessels and jewels, of shining stuffs, emblems, weapons, 344 and masks. All that he created breathes the naïve, sensuous satisfaction of the genuine painter. ”

“ Painting, from being a necessity of life, passed into a luxury, and the king, the state, or the private collector became the patron. Nature and actual life were about the only sources left from which original art could draw its materials. ”

“ The difficulty is not that there are no beautiful realities, Mr Savoyard: the difficulty is that so few of us know them when we see them. We have inherited from the past a vast treasure of beauty—of imperishable masterpieces of poetry, of painting, of sculpture, of architecture, of music, of exquisite fashions in dress, in furniture, in domestic decoration. ”

“ There is something in this sort of treasure, when arranged for show, which takes from their beauty. Pictures are made to be looked at for themselves. The view of them excites the passions or calms the heart; or if even only gratifying to the taste, yet they please for themselves, and require no extraneous interest. It is a bathos indeed to turn from them to stones from the mine; but diamonds and jewellery, and even delicately-carved cups, elegant statuettes and fantastic toys, are agreeable to look at only as objects of personal ornament or use. ”

“ There are works, again, which, without professing to entertain for the authors any strong personal regard, we read and re-peruse, as we admire a fine piece of sculpture or porcelain, an antique bronze or cameo, as masterpieces of art or models of style. We are perfectly conscious, as we proceed, that they are not to be trusted as authorities, and perhaps it is so on the very account which renders them irresistibly attractive. ”

“ AND now we come to that great and important subject, the Fine Arts, which day by day are becoming more appreciated and find a rapid increase of patrons. It is true that there are some who do not regard Art as an essentiality, and who are even indifferent to it as an ornament. ”

“ The soft, unworldly light gleamed down on beautiful works of art, rare and costly pieces of sculpture, medals, gems, and here and there alcoves filled with the productions of those whom the intellectual world call Masters. ”

“ Thus, though both sculpture and easel pictures are decorative in one sense, they are executed with no consideration or regard for other purposes than to please. As we have before shown, the humblest of the decorative arts may be raised to the dignity of a fine art if an artist takes the work in hand and succeeds, or the work may degenerate into mere craftsman’s work. ”

“ Recipients of the boons of Art have their duty co-ordinate with the artist’s. Art gives a bounty or a pittance, as we have the will or the capacity to receive, — copper to the blind, silver to the fond, red gold to the passionate, dense light of diamond to the faithful lover. We gain from a noble picture according to our serenity, our pureness, our docility, our elevation of mind. ”

“ All must be of a piece. Harmony and a wise utility are consulted, without regard to show. Still, as a rich man, we allow him reception-rooms, lofty, large, adorned with good copies of ancient works of art, and fine specimens of modern. ”

“ for I wish rather, in this lecture at least, to dwell on the effect that decorative art has on human life—on its social not its purely artistic effect. ”

“ To grow up in the presence of the statues; to become acquainted with antique art long before any other; to perceive the beauty and enjoyableness of a statue before seeking for the beauty and enjoyableness of a picture or a piece of music; this is the reverse of the artistic training which every individual man or woman obtains consciously or unconsciously in our own day; for we begin with the art born nearest our time, then proceed to those further; we go from music to painting, and from painting to sculpture. ”

“ Yet when we think of the really great statues, pictures, poems, music of the world, we find that these are really great because of something more—and that more is their theme, their presentation of a noble portion of the human soul. Artists and art-students may be satisfied with perfect specimens of a craftsman's skill, independent of his theme; but the mass of men will not be satisfied; and it is as wrong to suppose that art exists for artists and art-students, as to talk of art for art's sake. ”

“ I thought it necessary in a former discourse, speaking of the difference of the sublime and ornamental style of painting—in order to excite your attention to the more manly, noble, and dignified manner—to leave perhaps an impression too contemptuous of those ornamental parts of our Art, for which many have valued themselves, and many works are much valued and esteemed. ”

“ Knowledge, sympathy, imagination, are all divining-rods, with which he discovers treasure. Let a painter go through the grounds, and he will see not only the general colours of green and brown, but their combinations and contrasts, and the modes in which they might again be combined and contrasted. ”

“ The fragments of ancient grandeur which time and war have spared, the relics of bygone ages which have resisted the destructive elements, will, as the materials of art, give reality and truth to the pictorial history of times past, while the painter of modern events can command the most accurate representations not only of the costume, but of the very persons of the great men whose deeds he is called upon to immortalize. ”

“ It was the abundance of material, hitherto never used in art, the variety of that material, in an age when variety was the rule and not the exception, it was the richness of that material, not in quantity and variety only, but in individual quality, that made early paintings what we see. It was their genuine and true love of beauty, and of nature and of the eternal relations between nature and beauty, that made those men great artists. ”

“ And this we have represented to us most clearly in the plastic art, or statuary; where the perfection of outward form is a symbol of the perfection of an inward idea; where the body is wholly penetrated by the soul, and spiritualized even to a state of glory, and like a transparent substance, the matter, in its own nature darkness, becomes altogether a vehicle and fixture of light, a means of developing its beauties, and unfolding its wealth of various colours without disturbing its unity, or causing a division of the parts. ”

“ Nothing, perhaps, shewed the grandeur and the grasp of ancient art more strongly than the vigour with which the old painters used the effect produced upon the human mind by the power of contrast, and the infinite skill with which they employed that power, so as never to violate those essential principles of harmony which affect painting and sculpture fully as much as they affect music and poetry. ”

“ Though it be allowed that elaborate harmony of colouring, a brilliancy of tints, a soft and gradual transition from one to another, present to the eye what an harmonious concert of music does to the ear, it must be remembered that painting is not merely a gratification of the sight. Such excellence, though properly cultivated where nothing higher than elegance is intended, is weak and unworthy of regard, when the work aspires to grandeur and sublimity. ”

“ With a limitless wealth of material at his command, and gifted with enterprise, originality, and taste, the American artist can look confidently forward to taking his place beside the best the world has produced. ”

“ I fear it will here be urged against me that having denied that the conception of beauty can supply a standard for works of art, I contradict myself by acknowledging ornaments to be works of good art. ”

“ So here is one branch of decorative art in which rich people may indulge themselves unselfishly; if they ask for good art in it, they may be sure in buying gold and silver plate that they are enforcing useful education on young artists. ”

“ Carry the strange face or form tatooed upon the arm of the savage up to beauty and it becomes a Madonna or a Transfiguration. Carry a stone altar and a smoking sacrifice up to beauty and it becomes a Cologne cathedral or a Westminster Abbey. Indeed, historians might use the beautiful as the touchstone of human progress. The old milestones of growth were metals. ”

“ Tell me what sentiment does not come within the province of the painter? He has entire nature at his disposal, the physical world, and the moral world, a churchyard, a landscape, a sunset, the ocean, the great scenes of civil and religious life, all the beings of creation, above all, the figure of man, and its expression, that living mirror of what passes in the soul. More pathetic than sculpture, clearer than music, painting is elevated, in my opinion, above both, because it expresses beauty more under all its forms, and the human soul in all the richness and variety of its sentiments. ”