New Orleans daily crescent. [volume] ([New Orleans, La.]) 1851-1866, 1853-11-28
EDITORIAL BOOK..NOTES.


have suffered enough.
EDITORIAL BOOK-.N0TES.
spooner 1Anecdotes Of Painters, Engravers, sculp
tors Architects and Curiosities Of Artn From Mcin
Carver
1t is not little singular that we should, il
this country, owe the two chief efforts, in the
history of Art, to practical professor of the
art Of Dentistry who, busy, all day, with the
files and saws and whites of his trade, has, fol
many years, in his enthusiasm for the Fin,
Arts which speak to the eye (for he leave
Music aside. it will be perceived almost deniet
himself rest at night and spent probably tn,
larger part Of his gains, in laboring for th,
spread Of knowledge of Esthetics amongst us
His first great effort was to compile biograph.
ical and critical dictionary of Artists, amplel
and more exact than any which our Language
contained; and this he has certainly accom-
plshed. The present, his second work, is a
sequel to the other, and offers complement
naturally embodying its most pleasing part.
1t must not, however, be supposed that we mean
to exalt Dr.. Spooner among the great writer's on
the history Of Art; to place him alongside of the
learned and skillful Winckelman, or with those
who have elucidated the principles while they
commemorated the productions of Art. DR..
Spooners is far inferior, yet most useful
and agreeable branch of the matter. a regular
and a complete personal account of all who
have painted or carved or built
The Anecdotes begin, of course, with what
ever is obscurely told of the origin of Art. The
DR.. sets out, in effect, with the Greeks; merely
mentioning, in an incidental way, the Egyptians,
Phgnicians, Hebrews, etc. This, however, may
bepermitted him; since he is not writing his.
tory, but collecting personal facts; and the
earlier art Of those whom the Greeks soon
learned justly to call Barbarisns has left some
remains, but no stories. And, indeed, passing
over all else as only the formless ideas of ma
tions not destined to carry Art to any perfec
ton, We may we'll take the Greeks for our
starting point.
Like others of greater learning, Dr. Spooner
adverts to Homer's shield of Achilles, as a proof
that Art had already made no little progress,
in that poets time-supposed to be co-eval with
Solomon and his temple. But much more
might have been drawn from the blind old
man of Solos rocky isle" who is the great
source of all we know of the high antiquities of
the brightest of all nations. Among them, Art
seems to have sprung up, almost with civiliza.
ton They appear scarcely to have begun to
fabricate before they went to embellshing, and
no sooner to have invented Use than they turned
it at once to Beauty. With an amazing rapidity
Of genius, they had but ceased to dress in skins
and had only discovered the textile art, when
their fabulous Minerva arose, to deco
rote every web with design: the household
vessels-cups and vases-are yet of wood, when
they are shaped into symmetry and carved with
animated figures: the metals have barely begun
to be worked, when all instruments are fashioned
into elegance. In Homer, VIC find it all already
snus; we see everywhere in him strange mix
ture OF primitive simplicity of manners and of
rudeness in all the conveniences of life, with a
taste that decorates all they have about them.
Much Of this, however, is doubtless deceptive
The poet himself created no little of what he
described as existing and his-the most imagi-
native OF the Arts-went before the rest and
guidsk them on 70 what they had not yet per-
formed, Thus Phidias avowed that it was from |
Homer that he drew those ideas of the Majesty |
OF the Gods, which he embodied in marble thus |
the Tragic poets had little more to do for the |
Drama than to put him into dialogue; thus
even the orator needed only to strip him of
rhyt thin, in order to make eloquence in prose
50 that it may be we'll asserted that all the
higher arts had in Homer the fountain of their
subsequent perfection
Next to him comes Herodotus, as a source of
Information on the subject of which we are
treating lie makes incidental mention of many
'ningS connected with the early history of Art:
as, ior instance, the name of the Ssmian gem
cutter, who had engraved the seal ring which
Polycrates valued beyond all other things that
he possessed.
But we cannot dwell on these questions of
early Greek Art; this is place for hints not
dissertations. Nor can we pause upon the next
most delightful period of Art--that of its revival
and ascendency in Italy For all that, our
readers can consult for themselves Vasari,
Lanzi' Fiorillo, and others, as to modern,
"inckeiman, Bottiger and old Junius as to |
ancient Art We unjust come down to the newer
anecdotes OF our own day; and among these
glance more particularly at what the present
volumes tell us about the artists of our own
country.
VI the British painters down to our dav tho
stories are abundant; of Reynolds, Barry.
Northcote, Fuseli, and manv n,oro
Those Of Fuseli are the most amusing,
As to our own artists, the anecdotes are limit.
I'd to those who are no more. They include but
West, Stuart, Aston, Jarvis, and Greenough
they omit, therefore, several, of whom prOba-
bly, good deal might be told: as Copley, Leslie,
Wood, Inman, Cole, and Clevinger OF Wood,
'ne Of the most admirable of our portrait paint
srs, many eccentric anecdotes could easily be
We commend the task to Dr. Spooner,
lor the further volumes which he has, it seems,
n preparation; and that he embrace in these
.as, indeed, may be his intention) not only those
Whom he has forgotten here Gas Thorwalsden,
or example) but the living artists of distinction
70 what be relates Of Jarvis, many better |