New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1891-11-14
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
THE ART TREASURES OF MEXICO.

MEXICAN PAINTING AND PAINTERS; A Briei
sketch Of the Development Of the spanish School OF
New-York. 1901 ouarto, pp rs.
A few copies of this valuable and beautiful
book may be found at Mr.. Bouton's bookstore, in
Twenty-eighth-st Only 500 copies have been
made. The printing was done by Messrs Aien'
Lane & Scott, OF Philadelphia and it is remarkable
At once for brilliauce and delicacy. Type, paper.
and binding are alike superb. The contents OF the
book, furthermore, are worthy Of its attire Dr'
Lamborn has found new subject and he displays
it in the true spirit of scholarshlp,-earnesuy'
thoughtfully, and with fine Judgment and taste'
In 1881 and ss3 he passed seven months In tne
City of Mexico and he there collected about eighty
old paintings by known and unknown artists. lie
is persuaded that not fewer than $4,000 pictures
were painted in the Vice Royalty of Mexico during
the colonial period and, after promising that there
is little or no information TO be found anywhere
in print respecting the Mexican branch OF the
Spansh school of art, he proceeds to give an out
line of the subject and list of l27 Mexican
painters belonging to the sixteenth, seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, together WIN lew oio-
graphical particulars as to nearly forty OF them.
The malicious phraseology in which this authors
views of these artists are expressed Is not less
conspicuous and admirable than his patent ana
jealous research. In the sixteenth century many
pictures by great masters OF the ART 1ound their
wav from Spain into Mexico, chiefly through the
avenue of the Church. work called 1.-The En-
tombment," by Titan, is still there, in an Indian
village, about fifteen miles from PATTI
cuaro. and DR.. Lamborn gives an elo-
ouent estimate of its worth-quoting, on this
subject, both Charles Dudley Warner and f.
Hopkinson- Smith,-and of the worth OF pictures
by Murillo and Velazquez, which may also still
he found in Mexico. But there came time when
the art treasures went back to the Old World,-
where the demand for religious paintings was
prodgiouS about 52l and for some years later
and then the native artists took UP the brush
Their achievements it is the purpose of this work
10 indicate and commend. They were, Dr.
Lamborn thinks, chiefly drawn from the rank and
file of the ecclcsiastics. The first book printed
on the American Continent, he observes, was pub
lished at Mexico in 1886, more than a century
before the first American press started at Cam
bridge and at least eighty volumes were issued
there prior to 1000: yet, scarcely record has
survived, if any made, of the lives and
works of the Mexican painters of the sixteenth
century
Early in the seventeenth century Mexican art
took definite form, and thenceforward, for 200
years the artists were extremely industrious, and
thousands of pictures were painted by them. Then
came q change and deterioration. The author de-
votes chapter, all too Dref, 10 the characterstcs
Of the Spanish school of painting, during the period
indicated in his narrative. With the decline of
art in Spain came correspondent decline of art
in Mexico. DR.. Lamborn only touches in a casual
manner, upon the philosophy of this subject; but
it is evident that he could treat it in an able
and interesting manner il he were disposed to
treat it fully. His present book is designed only
glance at its theme, suggestion of new and
rich field of inquiry and it will indeed accomplish
benefit TO art and literature if it should lead
TO an ampler exposition of the opulence it has
unveiled. This unique volume is embellished with
prototypes of Mexican paintings of Juana 1nez
dc la Cruz u651-l6 500, an carly Mexican artist
and the earliest Mexican poet, and of Santa Rosa
de Lima u5s6-1617) the only canonized saint OF
American birth. 1t said that Rosa wrought
miracles. Pope Clement Y enrolled her saint
in 1871