Chapter II: Preface

JUST how we should look at pictures, just how we should judge of them, is not for any one person to say. We all have our different ways of estimating art; and art is capable of being estimated in different ways. In these lectures I have endeavored to set forth the various points of view. The painter’s conception has received perhaps the primary attention, but I have given the public’s conception of the picture also. Nor do I mean to apologize for arguing both sides of the case. Art might be better understood, if there were less special pleading and theorizing about it. It is so largely dependent upon the individual make-up of the artist, that any precise theory about it must fall short of the mark. Instead of quarrelling over terms and trying to put the opposition in the wrong, it would be better frankly to examine the product in the light of the producer’s intention and draw our conclusions from that. We should not always agree, but that is all the more reason for tolerance and liberality.

J. C. V. D.

RUTGERS COLLEGE,
November, 1902

------------------------------------------------------------------------

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I. _Truth in Painting._—Theory of 1
realism—The old masters as realists—And the
Dutch painters—Absolute realism impossible—The
real and truth defined—Art a series of
signs—Recognizing the convention—In poetry,
music, and painting—Grasping the artist’s
intention—Realism merely the elaboration of the
sign—Millet _vs._ Meissonier—Attitude of the
realists—Kinds of truth—The camera _vs._ the
human eye—Individual truths—National
truths—Universal truths—Great art universal in
scope—Greatness as shown in Rembrandt, Titian,
and Velasquez—Art truths both great and
small—Millet _vs._ Gérôme—Truth by
suggestion—Michael Angelo and Shakespeare—The
truth of history—And of archæology—The truth of
art—The law of sacrifice, Velasquez _vs._
Bonnat—Realism not the sum-total of art—But its
value not to be denied

CHAPTER II. _Individuality or the Personal 31
Element._—The personal equation—Variations in
handwritings—Different points of view—Different
views of landscape—Sketches of the model in the
class-room—Variations in portraiture—Difference
between the camera and our eyes—Individual
styles in literature—And in art—Personal
qualities of the painter in his work—Carpaccio
and Bellini—Michael Angelo in the
Sistine—Rembrandt in his pictures—Giorgione,
Correggio, Corot, Raphael, Titian—Dürer’s
“Christ on the Cross”—The disagreeable
personality in art—Vulgarity, brutality, and
insipidity—Conceit in painting—The insistent
personality—Eccentricity _vs._ individuality—The
lost individuality—The copyist and the
realist—The academic pattern—Impersonal
art—Great art above laws and formulas—Something
more to painting than individuality and realism