Modern Painting

OF ALL MY BOOKS, THIS IS THE ONE YOU LIKE BEST; ITS SUBJECT HAS BEEN THE SUBJECT OF NEARLY ALL OUR CONVERSATIONS IN THE PAST, AND I SUPPOSE WILL BE THE SUBJECT OF MANY CONVERSAT...

There must have been a day in Mr. Whistler's life when the artists of Japan convinced him once and for ever of the primary importance of selection. In Velasquez, too, there is s...

Until a few years ago Chavannes never sold a picture. Millet lived his life in penury and obscurity, but thirty years of persistent ridicule having failed to destroy Degas' geni...

But when all has been said, I prefer Manet in the quieter and I think the more original mood in the portrait of his sister-in-law, Madame Morisot. The portrait is in M. Duret's...

Is the introduction of the subject into art the one and only cause for the defeat of the brilliant genius which the Revolution and the victories of Napoleoncalled into existence...

Or let us choose the well-known drawing of the Italian lady sitting in the Louis XV. arm-chair, her long curved and jewelled hand lying in her lap and a coiffure of laces pinned...

Great as was my wonderment, it was tenfold increased on discovering that only five of these pictures were painted by the new man, Seurat, whose name was unknown to me; the other...

The allusion in Sir Frederick's speech to French methods, and the exhibition of a picture by M. Bouguereau in the Academy, is strangely significant. For is not M. Bouguereau the...

Looking at this picture, the ordinary man will say, "If such ugliness as that exists, I don't want to see it. Why paint such subjects?" And at least the first part of this criti...

That France should have a Luxembourg is natural enough; that we should have one would be anomalous. We are a free-trading country. I pass over the failure of the Luxembourg to r...

Such is the genesis of Mr. Smith's collection, and it is typical of a hundred now being formed in London. In ten years Mr. Smith has laid out forty or fifty thousand pounds. He...

The sowing of evil seed is an irreparable evil; none can tell where the wind will carry it, and unexpected crops are found far and wide. I had thought that the harm occasioned t...

About Mr. Schmalz's picture I have really no particular opinion. I do not think it worse than any picture of the same kind by the late Mr. Long. Nor do I think that it can be sa...

Except Mr. Sargent, no one in the New English Art Club comes forward with a clearly formulated style; everything is more or less tentative, and I cannot entirely exempt from thi...

I have not told you about the very serious progress that Mr. George Thompson has made since the last exhibition; I have not described his two admirable pictures; nor mentioned M...

Sex is as important an element in a work of art as it is in life; all art that lives is full of sex. There is sex in "Pride and Prejudice"; "Jane Eyre" and "Aurora Leigh" are fu...

How much we should borrow, and how we should borrow, are questions which will agitate artists for all time. It is certain, however, that one of the most certain signs of genius...

The photograph of the portrait of Miss Alexander is as suggestive of the colour as a pianoforte arrangement of _Tristan_ is of the orchestration. The sounds of the different ins...

Mr. Richmond says "it is not painting at all". We must understand therefore that the picture is void of all accomplishment--composition, drawing, and handling. We will take Mr....

To differentiate between the crowd of workmen that surrounded Filippo Lippi and Botticelli were impossible. They painted beautiful things because they lived in an age in which u...