THE WORLD'S GREAT PAINTERS
I--THE ITALIANS (PART I)
1. _Italy: the Birthplace of Modern Painting_--The influence of
Byzantium; the intellectual awakening of Europe; the development of
commerce.
2. _The Early Painters_--Cimabue, Giotto, Fra Angelico, Botticelli.
3. _Art Patrons of the Renaissance_--Lorenzo de' Medici; Leo X.
_Leonardo da Vinci: The Father of Modern Painting_--Story of his life;
his versatility; the Last Supper; the Mona Lisa.
READING from Walter Pater's Essay on the Renaissance.
BOOKS TO CONSULT--Luebke: History of Art. J. A. Symonds: The Renaissance
in Italy. Vasari: Lives of the Painters.
A brief introductory paper might take up the influence of Roman
classical literature and history on Italian art, and also the effect of
Greek culture after the Crusades. The childlike subjects and methods of
the early painters are also of great interest, and what they took from
Byzantine art, and how they were influenced by the study of anatomy. The
luxury of the times and its demands for pictures and statues, the
influence of the extravagance of court life, the Popes as art patrons,
all can be discussed. One entire paper might be given to St. Peter's at
Rome, and another to Da Vinci's great picture "Mona Lisa," and what art
critics have said of it. See also Ruskin's estimates of the Primitives.
II--THE ITALIANS (PART II)
1. _Life of Raphael_--His family and his father's influence; change in
his style through his instructors. His patrons, and what he did for
them. His personal disposition, and its effect on his style.
2. _Raphael as a Painter_--Give the impressions of famous travelers,
authors and art critics. Where his paintings are, their number, their
subjects. The Madonna, his favorite subject. Various ways in which he
treated it.
3. _Michelangelo_--The story of his life and training as a painter.
Versatility (as architect, painter, sculptor and poet). Brief
description of his works and their location. Readings from his sonnets.
4. _A Comparison of Raphael and Michelangelo_--Their relations in life,
their difference of temperament, and the contrast in the spirit of their
work.
5. _Titian_--History of his personal experience. Description of his most
famous paintings. His effect on the history of painting, as a colorist.
BOOKS TO CONSULT--Muentz: Raphael. C. C. Black: Michelangelo Buonarotti.
Crowe and Cavalcaselle: Titian. C. C. Perkins: Raphael and Michelangelo.
This program should be liberally illustrated with photographs; if no
others can be obtained, the Perry pictures will do excellently. Those
who have been abroad may compare impressions of different painters, and
especially of the various Madonnas painted by Raphael. Pictures of the
exterior and interior of the Sistine Chapel and of Saint Peter's should
be shown, with colored photographs of the frescoes on the walls and
ceiling of the former.
III--SPAIN
1. _Early Spanish Painters_--Murillo: the artist of the church; his
Madonnas. Ribera.
2. _Velazquez_--The artist of the crown; influence on him of Herrera and
Pacheco; peculiarly Spanish character; his patron, Philip IV.; the forty
portraits of this king; visit of the painter to Italy; mythological and
religious pictures; his Christ on the Cross.
3. _Recent Spanish Painters_--Goya: his portraits; story of his quarrel
with the Duke of Wellington. Fortuny: influence upon him of Meissonier;
small and motley figures. Zuloaga: resemblance of style to Goya. Sorolla
y Bastida: painter of sunshine on figures; pictures in the Luxembourg
and the Metropolitan Museum.
4. _The Madrid Gallery_--The greatest picture-gallery of the world;
built for Charles III. Collections of Charles V., Philip II., and Philip
IV. (2,000 pictures.) Its paintings by Titian, Raphael, Tintoretto,
Velazquez, Van Dyck, Rubens, and Teniers. Huge modern historical works
like those at Versailles.
BOOKS TO CONSULT--Curtis: Velazquez and Murillo. Armstrong: Life of
Velazquez. Stirling-Maxwell: Annals of the Artists of Spain. Temple:
Modern Spanish Painting.
There were several great patrons of art in Spain, like Charles V. and
Philip II. Read of their relations to the painters and their work.
Discuss the contribution of the Spanish painters to realism. How does
Velazquez compare with Raphael? Analyze the peculiar contribution of
Sorolla to modern painting.
IV--HOLLAND AND BELGIUM
1. _Painters of Interiors_--Metsu, Van Ostade, Jan Steen, Wouvermans.
Note the humor and satire in the painters of genre; also, their minutely
careful method.
2. _Landscapes and Marines_--Cuyp, Ruysdael, Van der Velde. Describe the
characteristics of the Dutch landscape. Show pictures of cattle combined
with landscape.
3. _Figures_--Hals, Van der Heist, Van Dyck, Rubens. Tell the story of
Van Dyck and the English court, and describe his pictures of King
Charles I. Note the huge canvases of Rubens, his high colors and his
heavy figures. Mention the meeting of Rubens and Velazquez and its
probable effect on the former. Notice the quantity of works attributed
to Rubens (1,300 titles Smith's catalogue), and discuss the likelihood
of his having produced all these without help.
4. _Rembrandt_--His history, style (light and shade), and effect on
painting. Describe the numerous portraits of himself and his wife. Note
his work as an etcher. Description of the Night Watch.
BOOKS TO CONSULT--Crowe and Cavalcaselle: Early Flemish Paintings. Max
Rooses: Dutch Painters of the Nineteenth Century. Malcolm Bell:
Rembrandt van Rijn and His Work. E. Dillon: Rubens.
The Dutch school was the pioneer of modern landscape-painting; show its
influence on Constable and other English artists. The Dutch were
faithful illustrators of peasant and burgher life, and it is interesting
to make a study of costume, furniture, and jewelry as shown by them.
Take up the galleries of Amsterdam, The Hague, and Antwerp, and show
photographs of Van Dyck's Crucifixion, and Rembrandt's Night Watch. At
Haarlem there is a small gallery noted for its paintings by Franz Hals,
particularly The Syndics. There is a small group of modern Dutch
painters deserving of notice: Mauve, the two Marises, Mesdag, and
Israels.
V--FRANCE (PART I)
1. _Poussin and Claude_--Influence of Domenichino on Poussin. Relation
to Cardinal Barberini. Richelieu and Louis XIII. Influence of Poussin
on landscape-painting. Claude's studies in Italy. Late success.
Mythological and Scriptural subjects. The _Liber Veritatis_. Ruskin's
estimate. Comparison with Turner in the National Gallery, London. Claude
as an etcher. Hamerton's opinion of him.
2. _Court Painters and Others_--LeBrun. Patronage of Seguier. Work under
Louis XIV. and Colbert at Fontainebleau, Versailles, and Sceaux.
Watteau, _peintre des Fetes Galantes_. Artificial pastoral scenes.
Reading from Pater's A Court Painter. Chardin. Only painter of humble
life of his time. Neglect then; appreciation now. Why this change in
opinion? Fragonard. Relation to Chardin. Greuze. Names of some of his
court beauties. Are they true to life?
3. _David and Ingres_--Inspiration of the antique in David. Historical
subjects. Napoleon pictures. Compare Ingres with David.
4. _Delaroche, Gericault, Delacroix_--Delaroche's loyalty to classic
traditions of painting. Pictures at Versailles. Gericault: His pictures
of nature and especially animals. Delacroix: Connection of the romantic
movement in painting with that in literature. Effect of Delacroix's
influence on modern painting.
BOOKS TO CONSULT--Sir Edmund Head: Handbook of the History of the
Spanish and French Schools of Painting. Lady Dilke: French Painters of
the Eighteenth Century. Staley: Watteau and His School. Turner and
Baker: Stories of the French Artists.
Have a paper on The Influence of the French Revolution on French Art.
Before that, that artificial and frivolous spirit characterized the work
of the painters as it did the life of the court, for which they largely
did their work. Note the many pictures illustrating the life of
Napoleon, his battles, and his victories; Versailles is full of them.
The enthusiasm of patriotism and the new national sense are shown in
this reaction.
VI--FRANCE (PART II)
1. _The Romanticists_--Followers of Delacroix. Their principles. Dupre,
Isabey, Jacque, Corot, Daubigny. Story of Corot's life. Coloration and
style. Compare with Constable.
2. _The Barbizon School_--Description of life in the Forest of
Fontainebleau. Millet. Country life. Poverty. Later appreciations. The
Angelus. Pictures in the United States. Rousseau. Diaz. Cazin.
3. _The Impressionists_--Manet, Monet, Degas, Raffaelli.
4. _Pictures of Genre_--Describe what is meant. Discuss the relative
merits of pictures that tell a story and those that merely give an
impression. Meissonier, Cabanel, Baudry, Rosa Bonheur, Ziem, Bouguereau,
Constant, Fromentin, Jules Breton. Pictures by these painters in the
United States.
5. _Painters of the Open Air_--The appreciation of atmosphere in French
painting. Lepage, Roll, Dagnan-Bouveret.
BOOKS TO CONSULT--Hourticq: Art in France. Theodore Child: Some Modern
French Painters. J. C. VanDyke: Modern French Masters. D. Cady Eaton:
Handbook of Modern French Painting. C. Sprague Smith: Barbizon Days.
The story of the life of the artist colony and their friends at Barbizon
would make a delightful paper. Material of an interesting sort may be
found in A Chronicle of Friendships, by Will H. Low. See also R. L.
Stevenson. Among the great decorative artists of our time is Puvis de
Chavannes. He has one well-known painting in the Boston Public Library.
Boutet de Monvel, the painter of children; Bonnat, the portrait-painter;
and, among the younger artists, Sisley may be mentioned. Illustrate with
photographs of a Corot landscape, Millet's Angelus, Meissonier's 1805,
Rosa Bonheur's Horse Fair, Jules Breton's Brittany Pardon, Lepage's Joan
of Arc, and Dagnan-Bouveret's Madonna.
VII--GERMANY
1. _German School of the Reformation Period_--Albrecht Duerer: Nuremberg.
Court painter to Charles V. Lucas Cranach: Court painter to three
Electors. Hans Holbein: Augsburg. Court painter to Henry VIII. Drawings
at Windsor.
2. _Munich School_--Cornelius, the founder. Study in Rome. Brought to
Munich by King Ludwig. Kaulbach (his cartoons), Piloty, Defregger,
Lenbach, Carl Stuck, Plockhorst, and Gabriel Max, and the religious
painters.
3. _The Duesseldorf School_--Schadow, the chief director. In Rome with
Cornelius. Huebner, the two Achenbachs, Carl Mueller, Meyer von Bremen.
Pronounced sentimentalism.
4. _The Berlin School_--Ludwig Knaus, head of the Academy; his Holy
Family in the Metropolitan Museum. Menzel, Werner, Carl Becker.
5. _Painters of To-day_--Arnold von Boecklin. (Photographs.) Fritz von
Uhde. (Photographs.) Realism and impressionism in Germany. Influence of
French art on Germany of to-day.
BOOKS TO CONSULT--Atkinson: Schools of Modern Art in Germany. Radcliffe:
Schools and Masters of Painting. K. Berlin: Contemporary German Art.
Buxton and Poynter: German, Flemish, and Dutch Painting.
If there can be one more paper in this program, it should be on the
critic Winckelmann and his classical influence. This was shown
particularly in Raphael Mengs, in the eighteenth century, court painter
to the King of Poland, and his pupil, Angelica Kauffmann. German art has
been influenced greatly by those who have written about his philosophy,
Lessing, Goethe, the Sehlegels, and others. Mention should be made of
Kugler, Waagen, and Doctor Bode, to-day.
VIII--ENGLAND (PART I)
1. _Lely and Kneller_--Story of their lives. Their rank as artists.
Lely's relation to the court of Charles II. Kneller's to that of
William and Mary. Similarity of the work of the two painters. The
pictures of the Hampton Court beauties of the time.
2. _Hogarth_--Choice of subjects and manner of treatment. Influence of
the Dutch school. Reasons for the great popularity of his work among the
English. Historical value. Interest rather than beauty. Engravings.
Pictures in the British Museum.
3. _Reynolds, Gainsborough, and Romney_--The portrait painters of the
eighteenth century. Well-known pictures of women and children: the
Duchess of Devonshire, Cherry Ripe, The Strawberry Girl, etc. Reynolds'
school for painting. Readings from his Discourses.
4. _Raeburn and Wilkie_--Subjects from humble life. The sentimental
story as a theme. Scottish emotionalism in art and in literature;
Wilkie's Blind Man's Buff and The Blind Fiddler.
5. _Constable_--Great painter of English landscape. Intense sympathy
with his subject. Appreciation of the artistic value of mists, clouds,
and showers. Effect on modern French landscape painters. Great
commercial value of Constable's pictures to-day. Paintings in the
National Gallery, at South Kensington and in the Metropolitan Museum.
6. _Turner_--Greatest English landscape painter. Strange story of his
life. His eccentricities. Style of his painting. Comparison with Claude
and Poussin. Unfortunate choice of pigments and consequent fading of his
pictures. Readings from Ruskin's Modern Painters.
BOOKS TO CONSULT--Gleeson White: Master Painters of Britain. Spielmann:
British Portrait Painting to the Closing of the XIX Century. Allan
Cunningham: Lives of the Most Eminent British Painters and Sculptors.
Horace Walpole: Anecdotes of Painting in England.
This program is so full that it may easily be divided between two
meetings. Notice beside the artists mentioned those of less distinction:
Sir Thomas Lawrence, the portrait painter belonging to the Reynolds
school; Blake, the mystical and symbolical artist who influenced the
later pre-Raphaelites; and Landseer, the painter of animals (who may be
compared with Rosa Bonheur). Illustrate the paper with photographs as
far as possible.
IX--ENGLAND (PART II)
1. _The Pre-Raphaelites_--Their origin and principles: sincerity and
truth to nature. Holman Hunt: Light of the World; The Triumph of the
Innocents. Dante Gabriel Rossetti: Ecce Ancilla Domini; Beata Beatrix.
Photographs of these pictures may be shown, and those who have seen them
may give their impression of them.
2. _The Academicians_--Sir Frederick Leighton, Sir J. E. Millais and his
desertion of the Pre-Raphaelites, G. F. Watts, Sir Alma Tadema, Frank
Dicksee, Sir E. J. Poynter, Sir Luke Fildes, Sir Hubert von Herkomer,
Sir W. Q. Orchardson. In this connection there may be a reading from
Herkomer's memoir.
3. _The Independents_--Sir E. Burne-Jones. Solomon J. Solomon. Maurice
Grieffenhagen. Mortimer Menpes. J. Byam Shaw. The influence of French
painting on England is interesting to trace.
BOOKS TO CONSULT--Ruskin: Modern Painters. Holman Hunt: History of
Pre-Raphaelitism. Gleeson White: Master Painters of Britain. Cosmo
Monkhouse: British Contemporary Artists.
Ford Madox-Brown, who has not been mentioned in the program, should be
mentioned if there is time. The articles in various current magazines by
Ford Madox-Brown Hueffer, dealing with the men of the Pre-Raphaelite
school, are full of incident and humor. The poems of Dante Gabriel
Rossetti and his sister, Christina, should be noticed and several of
them read. Rossetti's wife was the model for many Pre-Raphaelite
pictures. She might be described and the story told of her death and the
burial with her of her husband's poems, subsequently exhumed and
published.
X--AMERICA
1. _Early Painters_--Copley, Gilbert Stuart, West, and Trumbull.
2. _The Hudson River School_--Kensett, Cropsey, Church, Bierstadt.
Influence of Duesseldorf and Munich on these painters.
3. _Whistler and La Farge_--French influence on American painters.
Whistler's portrait of his mother. Controversy with Ruskin. Story of the
libel suit. Why is Whistler's appeal not more popular? La Farge's
picture of the Ascension of Christ. Japanese and oceanic sketches. Mural
paintings in public buildings. La Farge as a colorist and decorator.
4. _Sargent and Abbey_--Sargent's style. Famous portraits. Decorations
for Boston Library. Abbey's illustrations of Shakespeare. Story of the
Holy Grail. Coronation picture of Edward VIII.
5. _Characteristic Groups_--Landscape: Inness, Troyon, Wyant. Marines:
W. T. Richards, de Haas, Rehn. Figures (genre): Winslow Homer, Abbott H.
Thayer, Geo. de Forest Brush. Portraits: Eastman Johnson, W. M. Chase,
John Alexander, Cecilia Beaux.
BOOKS TO CONSULT--C. H. Caffin: American Masters of Painting. Samuel
Isham: History of American Painting. J. W. McSpadden: Famous Painters in
America. H. T. Tuckerman: Artist Life (1847).
Take up the consideration of the leading art galleries of America, the
Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the
Corcoran Gallery in Washington, and the Art Institute in Chicago; also
the new galleries in Detroit, Buffalo, Dayton, and other cities. Notice
the famous mural paintings in State capitols, city halls, and the high
schools of New York and those of the Congressional Library in
Washington.