The Old Masters and Their Pictures, For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art

LONDON
ISBISTER AND COMPANY LIMITED
15 & 16 TAVISTOCK STREET COVENT GARDEN
LONDON: PRINTED BY J.S. VIRTUE AND CO., LIMITED, CITY ROAD.
I wish to say, in a very few words, that this book is intended to be a simple account of the great Old Masters in painting of every age and country, with descriptions of their most famous works, for the use of learners and outsiders in art. The book is not, and could not well be, exhaustive in its nature. I have avoided definitions of schools, considering that these should form a later and more elaborate portion of art education, and preferring to group my 'painters' according to what I hold to be the primitive arrangements of time, country, and rank in art.
The restrictions with regard to space under which the little volume called The Old Masters was originally written, caused me to omit, to my regret, many names great, though not first, in art. The circulation which the book has attained induces me to do what I can to remedy the defect, and render the volume more useful by adding two chapters—the one on Italian and the other on German, Dutch, and Flemish masters. These chapters consist almost entirely of condensed notes taken from two trustworthy sources, to which I have been already much indebted—Sir C, and Lady Eastlake's version of Kugler's Handbook of Italian Art, and Dr. Waagen's Handbook, —remodelled from Kugler—of German, Dutch, and Flemish art, revised by J.A. Crowe. I have purposely given numerous records of those Dutch painters whose art has been specially popular in England and who are in some cases better represented in our country than in their own.
EARLY ITALIAN ART—GIOTTO, 1276-1337—ANDREA PISANO. 1280-1345—ORCAGNA, 1315-1376 GHIBERTI, 1381-1455—MASACCIO, 1402-1428 OR 1429—FRA ANGELICO, 1387-1455.
A pencil and paper, a box of colours, and a scrap-book, form so often a child's favourite toys that one might expect that a very large portion of men and women would prove painters. But, as we grow in years and knowledge, the discrepancy between nature and our attempts to copy nature, strike us more and more, until we turn in dissatisfaction and disgust from the vain effort.