To one who has
starved all a life, in vain imaginings of what art might be, to know
that you are within a stone's throw of a museum full of its miracles,
Greek, Assyrian, Egyptian, Roman sculptors and modern painting, all
there!
I scarcely consider myself to have seen any thing of art in England.
The calls of the living world were so various and _exigeant_, I
had so little leisure for reflection, that, although I saw many
paintings, I could not study them; and many times I saw them in a
state of the nervous system too jaded and depressed to receive the
full force of the impression. A day or two before I left, I visited
the National Gallery, and made a rapid survey of its contents. There
were two of Turner's masterpieces there, which he presented on the
significant condition that they should hang side by side with their
two finest Claudes. I thought them all four fine pictures, but I liked
the Turners best. Yet I did not think any of them fine enough to form
an absolute limit to human improvement. But, till I had been in Paris
a day or two, perfectly secluded, at full liberty to think and rest, I
did not feel that my time for examining art had really come.
It was, then, with a thrill almost of awe that I approached the
Louvre. Here, perhaps, said I to myself, I shall answer, fully, the
question that has long wrought within my soul, What is art?
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 169 of 455
Words from 45023 to 45280
of 120793
