Report On The Paintings Of The Tb Walker Art Collections

Author : Eugen Neuhaus
Publisher : Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN 13 : 9781542418492
Total Pages : 62 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (184 download)

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Download or read book Reports on the Paintings of the T. B. Walker Art Collections written by Eugen Neuhaus and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-01-07 with total page 62 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the beginning of the Report. The seeker of the beautiful, whose knowledge of art is based in the main upon the great treasures of European Galleries would, I am sure, receive many startling surprises upon his first visit to the Walker Galleries in Minneapolis; a private gallery generously opened to the public daily, yet is far from being as well known as the great museums on this Continent and abroad, whose names are constantly on people's lips. It is very difficult, indeed, for me through fear of being accused of making exaggerated statements, to set forth my impressions appropriately of this notable collection, but I feel that the only way in which justly and adequately to describe the T. B. Walker Gallery at Minneapolis, is to say that it teems with great works of art, chosen with rare discrimination from the field of paintings and ceramics, carved Jades, porcelains and pottery, Roman and Egyptian jewelry; the paintings alone, however, are considered in this report. And it may be safely asserted that not only among private collections, but also as compared to the leading public galleries, it ranks among the greatest, in comprehensiveness, variety of subjects and artistic quality, permitting a clear insight into the important European periods of painting, beginning with the Italian Renaissance, and reaching into the Romanticistic periods of Europe, towards the end of the last century. More- over, to the student of art of our own country, this splendid collection is no less interesting, showing in many typical examples, the struggles for artistic expression and ultimate achievements of our earlier painters, in the field of portraiture, as well as in landscape painting. The gathering of this superb collection of over three hundred and forty paintings, exclusive of about one hundred thirty Indian paintings and about two hundred and seventy miniatures, besides about eighty paintings at the Public Library, hereinafter mentioned, has obviously been made with persistent care for what is representative, expressive and beautiful alike, the owner not having committed the all too common mistakes of so many guileless collectors, to whom any work by a man of reputation is ipso facto of artistic worth. Primarily, this is the collection of a man who, above everything else, satisfied his strongly developed aesthetic sense, thereby stamping his individual taste upon his accumulated treasures. The tawdry, gaudy or the sensational, so often met with in American collections, as well as abroad, find here no place; a restrained note of refinement characterizes this very remarkable aggregation which, owing to the very subtlety of its appeal, discloses to the student, gradually, but increasingly, its many fine aesthetic assets. The pleasant memory of the retrospective European section of the Panama Pacific International Exposition, at San Francisco, in 1915, gleaned with great care from the leading galleries of the continent, pales into insignificance, in comparison with the choice works of European art, in the Walker collection. The instructive value to America of this notable collection cannot be placed too high, and when once it becomes intellectually accessible to the great masses, perhaps as a part of a great University, properly aided by dignified publicity, instructive supplementary lectures and other forms of popular enlightenment, it will perform an even greater educational service than it now gives....