From the Preface. A PREVIOUS book of my assembled essays - "On Books and Arts" - touched on Pictorial Art, the Stage, and Literature. This one ventures to be altogether about Pictorial Art, with this reservation always: that to my mind no writing about any Art is other than pedantic, academic, or fragmentary - "memoires pour servir," at the most - it is not based on vivid, irrepressible interest in the Life we know. The general reader, here in England - to whom this candid word is with much esteem addressed-does not care ...
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From the Preface. A PREVIOUS book of my assembled essays - "On Books and Arts" - touched on Pictorial Art, the Stage, and Literature. This one ventures to be altogether about Pictorial Art, with this reservation always: that to my mind no writing about any Art is other than pedantic, academic, or fragmentary - "memoires pour servir," at the most - it is not based on vivid, irrepressible interest in the Life we know. The general reader, here in England - to whom this candid word is with much esteem addressed-does not care greatly for the writing that he calls "Art Criticism"; and often I agree with him. But his ideas of what Art Criticism is, are apt to be narrow. To two fields he limits it. With him, Art Criticism - all Criticism, indeed - is primarily fault-finding. Secondarily, it may be also, peradventure, investigation. But the investigation that is held to be creditable - to have conferred distinction-is generally investigation into minor facts: little, disputed points that have the interest of uncertainty and puzzle. The German, perhaps, is responsible for introducing, or for making much of, that order of Criticism which consists of slow or fevered debate, between two or more learned persons seldom endowed with any conspicuous faculty for Writing, as to whether this most second-rate painter or that one did veritably succeed in being the author of this or that most second-rate work. Masterpieces do not very often require or invite this method of treatment; and I confess that masterpieces seem to me worthiest of study, and likeliest to inspire delight. But this method-this order of Criticism-has, in some measure, "caught on" amongst us, because in England the contribution of an idea is ever less welcome, as it is also ever less easy, than the contribution of a fact. Another order of investigation exists, nevertheless, although it may not be so well assured of the every-day reader's respect. I speak now of investigation in the sense of an elucidation of qualities, an analysis of temperament, a presentation, in full light, of a character or an achievement, an aim or a feat. That, in the instinctive opinion of the everyday reader, has not been, and cannot be, any great part of Criticism. It is a something, indeed, scarcely conceived of by him - because it is the Criticism of the creative Writer: the criticism of Coleridge, Baudelaire, Gautier, Zola, Anatole France....
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Add this copy of Whistler and Others to cart. $24.98, very good condition, Sold by Bookcase rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Carlisle, UNITED KINGDOM, published 1906 by Isaac Pitman.
