Anecdotes of Painting in England (Volume 1); With Some Account of the Principal Artists, and Incidental Notes on Other Arts. Also, a Catalogue of Engravers Who Have Been Born or Resided in England (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1849. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER VIII.1 FAINTE11S AND OTUER ARTISTS IN THE REIGN OP JAMES I. It was well for the arts that King James had no disposition to them: he let them take their own course. Had he felt any inclination for them, he would probably have introduced as bad a taste as he did into literature. A prince who thought puns2 and quibbles the perfection of eloquence, would have been charmed with the monkies of Hemskirk and the drunken boors of Ostade. James loved his ease and his pleasures, and hated novelties. He gave himself up to hunting, and hunted in the most cumbrous and inconvenient of all dresses, a ruff and trowser breeches. The nobility kept up the magnificence they found established by Queen Elizabeth, in which predominated a want of taste, rather than a bad one. In more ancient times the mansions of the great lords were, as I have mentioned before, built for defence and strength rather than convenience. The walls thick, the windows piereed wherever it was most necessary for them to look abroad, instead of being contrived for symmetry or to illuminate the chambers. To that style succeeded the richness and delicacy of the Gothic. As this declined, before the Grecian taste was established, space and vastness seem to have made their whole ideas of grandeur. The palaces erected in the reign of Elizabeth by the memorable: i 1 First chapter of the second volume of the original Edition. * Hayley's opinion on this subject, when given, was allowed to be just. "James, both for empire and for arts, unfit, (His sense a quibble, and a pun his wit.) Whatever works he patronized, debased; But haply left the pencil undisgraced." Epistle to Romney. Whitehall would never have been built nor embellished by the " mere motion" of that pedantic king, but for the suggestion of the...