Back Matter

Appendix, Glossary, Etc.

Schools of Painting

A school in painting consists of the disciples or followers of some great painter who advances beyond his fellows and whose methods and influence they follow. The word is also applied to the methods and doctrines of a group of painters, as the Pre-Raphaelite school or the Barbizon school. In early times schools were named for the cities where they first flourished, as the Florentine school and the Venetian school. Below will be found a brief outline of the chief schools.

Italian Schools

The Primitives. The men who first began to improve upon the traditions of crude early painting. Choosing religious subjects, they gave to painting more appearance of life and truth. Their work showed great piety and devotion and spiritual elevation. Cimabue (1240-1302) and Giotto (1266-1337) and Fra Angelico (1387-1455) were among the greatest representatives. There were primitives also in the early art development of other countries.

Florentine School. This was one of the great schools of the renaissance in Italy. The painters reached great perfection in drawing composition and expression. Botticelli (1446-1510), Andrea del Sarto (1486-1531), Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), Michelangelo (1474-1564) and Raphael (1483-1520) were the great masters.

Venetian School. The chief characteristic was perfection in color and effects of light and shade. Beauty of color and harmony, with less attention to the lines of drawing prevailed. The great men were Giorgione (1477-1511), Titian (1477-1576), Tintoretto (1518-1592) and Paolo Veronese (1528-1588).

Other Schools. There were many schools, usually named for the cities where they flourished, as the Parmese, Sienese, etc., and after the really great schools had declined came the so-called Mannerists and Eclectics, represented by the lesser lights such as Guido Reni (1575-1642) and Carlo-Dolci (1616-1686). These men were copyists as compared with the greater masters.

German School

This school began in the middle ages but the first great painter was Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), both engraver and painter. Next came the celebrated Holbeins, Hans the Elder (14591524) and Hans the Younger (1495-1543). These are the great names after which came a decline. Though Dürer was original and excelled in truth of line, the German school was less original than the Italian.

Spanish School

The first worthy works came in the Fifteenth Century chiefly under the influence of Flemish art and later of Italian. Not until Velasquez (1599-1660) did they take on a distinctly national cliracter. He gained in breadth, simplicity, subtle harmony and great strength over all predecessors. There are many minor schools. Murillo (1618-1682) founded the Andalusian school and later came Goya (1746-1828) and Fortuny (1838-1874).

Dutch School

This school, led by Rembrandt (1607-1669) and Franz Hals (1584-1666), excelled in the rendering of light and shade. Genre and still-life painting came to be its recognized means of expression under De Hoogh (1632-1681), Gerard Dou (1613-1675), Jan Steen (1626-1679). Even the landscape men, Van Ruisdael (1600-1670) and Hobbema (1638-1709) represented their subjects very much as still-lifes. It was a realistic school.

The Flemish School

The beginners of this school, Hubert van Eyck and his younger brother Jan van Eyck (Fifteenth Century), were the inventors of oil-painting itself; or at least they perfected it so that it became useable. Their work was like most early work, delicate and minute. Memling (1425-1495) was one of the greatest of this school. In the Seventeenth Century came Rubens (1577-1640) and Van Dyck (1599-1641). Teniers the Younger (1610-1690) soon followed them. He painted peasant life and scenes, though not exclusively, and was very realistic, like the Dutch genre painters with whom he was contemporary.

The English Schools

Not until the Eighteenth Century did England have a native school of art. The great men were Hogarth (1697-1764), Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792), Gainsborough (1727-1788), and Constable (1776-1837), who with Turner (1775-1851) did so much to advance landscape art, and Landseer (1802-1873). Later came the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, who endeavored to paint with the exactness of the Primitives. Chief among them were Rossetti (1828-1882), Holman Hunt, Sir John Millais and Burne-Jones.

French Schools

The Seventeenth Century ushered in a notable period in French art with Nicholas Poussin (1593-1665) and Claude Lorrain (160o-1682). In the next century, Watteau (1684-1721) painted his shepherds in satins and fanciful scenes and Greuze (1725-1805) his romantic girls' heads. Chardin (1699-1779), with his still-lifes and genre subjects, belongs to this period.

In 1748 David was born, who was to revive the classic style and found the French classic school by his large canvases now in the Luxembourg gallery in Paris. His pupil, Ingres (17801867), carried on the classic tradition.

The Romantic School came with Delacroix (1799-1863), who was the leader of Romanticism. This school added color to the formal classic method of exact drawing. It strove to idealize and to awake emotion instead of merely conforming to standards of correctness. Dalaroche (1797-1856) was a follower.

The Barbizon School. Corot (1796-1875), Rousseau (1812-1867), and Daubigny (1817-1878) portrayed nature in a new way, giving the sentiment of color and light. Millet (1814-1875) and Jules Breton were the peasant-painters of this school. Troyon (1810-1865) and Rosa Bonheur were great animal painters, and following them came Bouguereau, Meissonier, Gerome and Puvis de Chavannes.

The Impressionists. Manet (1833-1883) was a leader in the original movement that led to the school known as Impressionist, which has greatly influenced modern painting. Claude Monet carried forward impressionistic discoveries into landscapes. One of their methods is that of placing pure colors side by side instead of mixing them. This is not so new, as it is mentioned by da Vinci, but the school has taught us much as to the influence of colors upon each other.

American School

Until the Revolution, Americans in their new country were not able to give much time to art. The forests had to be subdued and bread and butter earned. But Copley (1737-1815) and Benj. West (1738-182o) did good portrait work, while Gilbert Stuart (1755-1828) was better than either and more American. Later on a landscape school arose. Alexander Wyant (1836-1892) and George Inness (1825-1894) are the best known representatives. Whistler was more English than American. The present generation is doing wonderful work in portraiture, landscape and decoration and the interest in art is rapidly spreading. Museums and galleries are being built in many large cities. It is said that Americans paid over thirty million dollars for art objects from abroad in 1911-12 and much encouragement is also being given to native art.

Glossary Of Technical Terms

Accessories: Any objects not belonging to the main subject of the picture. See pages 16 and 160.

Accident: A special condition or aspect of an object or, objects as distinguished from a general condition.

Aerial Perspective: The art of giving due diminution to the strength of light, shade, and color of objects according to their distances and the mediums through which they are seen.

Allegory: See pages 180 and 190.

Arrangement: See pages 7, 66 and 150.

Atmosphere: See pages 74, 76, 79, 8o and 94.

Breadth: Effect resulting from subordination of details by grouping in masses and thus producing simplicity.

Character: See pages 4, 15, 16, 17 and 25.

Chiaroscuro: The art of distributing the lights and shades of a picture. See page 172.

Classic: Conforming to the best art of Greece and Rome. See page 78.

Composition: The arrangement of the elements of a picture—also the invention, or original thought of a picture. See pages 7, 37, 66 and 149.

Foreshortening: The apparent shortening of the length of an object in proportion as it is extended towards the eye of the beholder. See pages 166 and 182.

Fresco: See pages 169, 177 to 199.

Genre: See pages 200 to 223.

Generalization: The process of selecting and painting the essentials of a subject only. See pages 78, 97 and 193.

Glazing: Putting transparent color over colors to increase or decrease their brilliancy without changing the effect of light and shade.

Harmony: The effect of the proper arrangements of forms, lights, and colors in a picture. See pages 20, 36 and 104.

Hatching or Cross Hatching: Making lines that cross each other at intervals.

Idealism: See pages 15, 27, 36, 77 and 158.

Impressionism: See page 102 and Appendix on, Schools of Painting.

Lay Figure: A jointed wooden image.

Light: The illumined portion of an object that gives direct reflection.

Local Color: The true color unaffected by light, shade, distance or reflection.

Mannerism: Any peculiar method of work, especially if carried to excess.

Medium: (1) The material and method used by an artist, as painting, engraving, etching. (2) The liquid used by a painter to thin his colors.

Monochrome: Of one color.

Motive: That which inspires the conception of a picture. See pages 34, 160 and 209.

Perspective: The art of making such a representation of an object on a plain surface as shall present the same appearance that the object itself would present to the eye when seen from a particular point; or in other words it is drawing things as they appear.

Realism: See pages 15, 27, 36, 66, 192, 200 and 212.

Relief: The apparent projection of an object from the plane surface.

Romantic: Opposed to classic: Middle Ages as opposed to Greece and Rome. That which portrays much feeling.

Schools of Painting. See pages 121, 139, and Appendix on Schools of Painting.

Scrumbling: The process of passing a thin film of opaque color over another but so as not to cover it completely.

Style: See page 46.

Symmetry: See pages 37 and 150.

Symbolism: See pages 116 and 148.

Technique: Method of execution. See pages 59, 66 and 96.

Texture: Imitation of the surface of an object. See page 202.

Values: The relationships of lights and darks and color intensities throughout a picture. See pages 19, 20, 30, 80 and 117.

Vehicle: Any liquid used to dilute colors so as to make them spread more or less easily as desired: Medium.

Chronological Table of Painters