FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   7   8   9   10   11   12   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   31  
32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   >>  
hip of Mr. Frederick Wedmore. It was in the third edition. He learned much from M. Emile Michel--among other things the herculean labour that is necessary if one desires to write a standard and definitive book on a subject. Not only did M. Michel visit and revisit all the galleries where Rembrandt's pictures are displayed in Russia, France, England, Sweden, Denmark, and North Germany, but he lived for several years with Rembrandt, surrounded by reproductions of his pictures, drawings, and etchings, and by documents bearing on their history, his mind all the while intently fixed on the facts of Rembrandt's life and the achievements of his genius. Gradually the procession of dates and facts took on a new significance; the heterogeneous threads of information wove themselves into the fabric of a life. M. Michel is the recoverer-in-chief of all that truly happened during the sixty-three years that Rembrandt passed upon this earth. Every dead painter, poet, or writer of genius, has had his Recoverer. A searchlight has flashed upon all that Charles Lamb said, did, or wrote. Every forerunner who inspired Keats, from the day when he took the _Faerie Queene_ like a fever, and went through it "as a young horse through a spring meadow, romping," has been considered and analysed. You could bury Keats and Lamb in the tomes that have been written about them. With the books of his commentators you could raise a mighty monument of paper and bindings to Rembrandt. All this is very right and most worthy of regard. We do not sing "For they are jolly good fellows" in their honour, but we offer them our profound respect and gratitude. And our golfer, in his amateurish way, belongs to the tribe. He has approached Rembrandt through books. His temperament enjoyed exploring the library hive marked Rembrandt. Now he feels that he must study the works of the master, and while he is cogitating whether he shall first examine the 35 pictures at St. Petersburg, or the 20 in the Louvre, or the 20 at Cassel, or the 17 at Berlin, or the 16 at Dresden, or the 12 in the National Gallery, or the etchings and drawings in the print room of the British Museum, or the frame of etchings at South Kensington, so accessible, I drop him. Yes: drop him in favour of another who did not care two pins about the history or the politics of art, or the rights or wrongs of Rembrandt's life, but went straight to his pictures and etchings, wondered at them, and was fill
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   7   8   9   10   11   12   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   31  
32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   >>  



Top keywords:

Rembrandt

 

etchings

 

pictures

 
Michel
 
history
 

drawings

 
genius
 

honour

 

belongs

 

gratitude


golfer
 

respect

 

profound

 

amateurish

 

regard

 
mighty
 

monument

 

bindings

 

commentators

 
written

worthy

 
fellows
 

master

 

Kensington

 

accessible

 

Museum

 

Gallery

 
National
 

British

 

favour


wrongs

 

rights

 

straight

 

wondered

 

politics

 

Dresden

 

marked

 

temperament

 

enjoyed

 

exploring


library

 

cogitating

 

Cassel

 

Louvre

 

Berlin

 

Petersburg

 
examine
 

approached

 

France

 

Russia