A General View of the Fine Arts; Critical and Historical - Softcover

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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1854. Excerpt: ... Style of portraiture.--Portraits of eminent personages.--Poetic subjects. graceful, unaffected. His boldness of posture, and his singular freedom of colouring, are so supported by all the grace of art, by all the sorcery of skill, that they appear natural and noble. Over the meanest head he sheds the halo of dignity; his men are all nobleness, his women all loveliness, and his children all simplicity; yet they are all like the living originals. He had the singular art of summoning the mind into the face, and making sentiment mingle in the portrait. The admirers of portrait painting are many, and it is pleasant to read the social and domestic affections of the country in these innumerable productions. In the minds of some, they rank with historical compositions; and there can be no doubt that portraits, which give the form and the soul of poets, and statesmen, and warriors, and of all whose actions or whose thoughts lend lustre to the land, are to be received as illustrations of history. The most skilful posture and the richest colouring cannot create the reputation which accompanies genius, and we turn coldly away from the head which we happen not to know, or to have heard of. The portrait of Johnson has risen to the value of five hundred guineas, while the heads of many of Sir Joshua's grandest lords remain at their original fifty. Of historical and poetic subjects he painted upwards of one hundred and thirty They are chiefly in England; and in the galleries of the titled or opulent. The names of a few of the most famous may interest the reader: Macbeth and the Witches; Cardinal Beaufort; Holy Family; Hercules strangling the Serpents; The Nativity; Count Ugolino; Cymon and Iphigenia; The Fortune-teller; Garrick between Tragedy and Comedy; The Snake in th...