A General View of the Fine Arts; Critical and Historical (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1851 edition. Excerpt: ...a university for instructing the savages in Christian duties and civil knowledge, and Smybert was to be professor gen-. eral of the fine arts. The scheme was abandoned, but Smybert remained in Boston. "We see," says Dunlap, "the influence of Smybert and his works upon Copley, Trumbull, and Allston. Copley was a youth of thirteen, at the time of Smybert's death, and probably had instructions from him--certainly from his pictures. Trumbull having retired from the army, resumed the study of painting, in Boston, in 1777, amidst the works of Copley, and in the room which had been built by Smybert, and in which remained many of his works. And Allston says, in a letter to a friend, after speaking of the paintings of Pine, " But I had a higher master in the head of Cardinal Bentevoglio, This account of American artists is chiefly drawn from Dunlap's Arts of Design in the United States. from Vandyke, in the college library, (Cambridge, ) which I obtained permission to copy, one winter vacation. This copy from Vandyke was by Smybert, an English painter, who came to this country with Dean, afterwards Bishop Berkeley. At that time, it seemed to me perfection; but when I saw the original, some years afterwards, I had to change my notions of perfection; however, I am grateful to Smybert for the instruction he gave me--his work rather." It is thus that science, literature, and art, is propagated; and it is thus that we owe, perhaps, the colouring of Allston to the faint reflection of Vandyke in Smybert. The best portraits which we have of the eminent magistrates and divines of New England and New York, who lived between 1725 and 1751, are from his pencil. MATHEW PRATT. Mathew Pratt was born in 1734, and at the...