General Catalogue of Objects in the Museum; August, 1901 (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SCULPTURE. THE ELBRIDGE G. HALL COLLECTION. CASTS IN PLASTER FROM REPRESENTATIVE ORIGINAL SCULPTURES. This collection was purchased for the Art Institute with funds provided by Mrs. Addie M. Hall Ellis, by whose direction it bears the name of Elbridge G. Hall, a citizen of Chicago from 1849 to 1877. Iu accordance with the wishes of the donor it includes only full-sized fac-similes of the original works in sculpture. These reproductions, all in plaster or staff, occupy rooms 1-6, 8 and 10 in an order approximately chronological. They are briefly catalogued in the following pages under numbers I to 438, and the greater part of them more fully in a special descriptive catalogue of the collection published in 1891. Rooms 1 and 2. Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Syrian, Asia Minor and Early Greek. The art of Asia Minor, including the rock sculpture of the Hittites, was influenced by that of Assyria and Babylonia. The latter nations in common with Persia, owed their art to the Chaldeans, at the head of the Persian Gulf. Farther back this great art movement cannot now be traced. But few remains of Chaldean art proper have come down to us, and its development in Babylonia was restricted by the scarcity of suitable material for sculpture. But its growth in Persia and Assyria, under more favorable conditions, was wonderfully luxuriant. Assyria took the lead in its propagation, carrying it westward through Syria and Asia Minor. Egypt was also anindependent worker in the same field, and the influence of Greece, still archaic, was felt there. But the drift of all the living art west of India in those days was towards Greece itself, where, from the heterogenous material thus acquired, was evolved a new and rational sculpture in which it is now difficult to find a tra...