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: CHAPTER I. THE RISE OF MODERN NATURE PAINTING. It is Gainsborough, more than any other English artist, who would deserve the title, Father of Modern English Painting. Reynolds, in most respects a greater artist, fell short of him in two essential particulars: individual as he was, he had not so much personality, and his broad scheme of painting belongs to the older schools. It is Gainsborough who, to-day, is to be traced through the whole development of contemporary art. We recognise his influence in Constable, in the middle-Victorian land- scapists, in the young painters of the Glasgow School and the New English Art Club. This is not to depreciate Reynolds, an artist of extraordinary versatility and brilliant achievement, nor to underrate the immense influence he had over his contemporaries, over his immediate successors, and over the whole course of British Art. But he stands for Academicalism, and Gainsborough for Individuality; and just because of this his influence has slowly lessened, while that of Gainsborough has grown and is a permanent force. The three supreme names which stand at the beginning of modern art in Great Britain are Gainsborough, Constable, and Turner. Of these the two first are not only our great leaders; through their influence in France they profoundly affected the art of Europe. It is no paradox to say that modernFrench art as we know it a,t its best?from Paul Huet, the pioneer of the Barbizon school, to Pointelin to-day?would not have been what it is but for the influence of these two painters, and pre-eminently of Constable. The secret of this influence was that each forsook all that was barren in convention, and went, not to the schools, not to tradition, not to
authoritative sources, but to nature. Each painted what he really saw, a…