World Famous Paintings [VINTAGE 1939]

Kent, Rockwell (editor)

Published by Wise & Co., Inc., New York, 1939

About this Item

Fine condition elaborately embossed and decorated brown buckram leather boards with a 5 1/2 by 4 1/2 inch front cover color pastedown painting of by Van Dyke. Includes List of Plates and Painters; Introduction by Rockwell Kent dated 1939; Alphabetical Index of Pictures; and Alpahbetical Index of Painters. Profusely illustrated with 100 tipped-into-the-volume world famous paintings by various famous artisits/painters. Also includes two-color illustrated front and rear endpapers. All pages are in very fine unmarked condition and the spine/binding is in exceedingly tight and square practically unread condition (see photographs). Unpaginated. ". Critic I've tried to be; painter, I am. As a painter then, as one who all his life has worked at art, one who while critics looked at pictures, worked at making them, let me say this: No pictures - ever - were addressed to critics: they were made for you. In the simplest and clearest terms that they were masters of, the painters through the ages have recreated life - ladscapes and flowers, air and water, human beings and dumb animals, their own thoughts of life and death and all between, their moods, their hopes, despairs, (all these and more are life): they've recreated it. Out of the emotional intensity of their own perceptions they have done this - that others, too, as long as life may last might share their wisdom and their ecstasy. In the critical commentary which accompanies the pictures, we (for in the commentary I have been assisted by my wise and learned friend, Robert Heller) w have tried - and it has been hard at times! - to not too strongly show our prejudices. What, after all, do any of us know - except, perhaps (the wisest of us) what we like. Pretend, if you want to, that you had met us at the door of the picture galler. And that you had siad to us, "Come on in and tell us what you think of the pictures." And that we had gladly accepted. (As, in fact, we wold.) Well - these comments are approximately what, trying to be honest and properly respectful of your own opinions, we would have said. Or pretend that, having met us, you cut us dead, saying indignantly to yourselves, "We don't want anyone to tell us what to like!" That would be good too. For after all the only way to cultivate our faculties of appreciation is to exercise them. And we can best do that alone." - Rockwell Kent, Ausable Forks, New York, 1939, short excerpt from the introduction. Seller Inventory # 008114

Bibliographic Details

Title: World Famous Paintings [VINTAGE 1939]

Publisher: Wise & Co., Inc., New York

Publication Date: 1939

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Fine