File:Studies in pictures; an introduction to the famous galleries (1907) (14776019672).jpg

Identifier: studiesinpicture00vand (find matches)
Title: Studies in pictures; an introduction to the famous galleries
Year: 1907 (1900s)
Authors: Van Dyke, John Charles, 1856-1932
Subjects: Painting -- Study and teaching Painting
Publisher: New York : C. Scribner's sons
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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yoften look as though they had been handling coal,and the white cuffs are sadly soiled. The works ofKibera and IJibot are suffering from the same care-lessness. Black has proved destructive to numerouspictures, and even a precise Dutchman like Terburglias left portraits that now look sooty in the face andgrimy in the linen because of the dark backgroundupon which they were painted. So you see there are many causes for pictures notbeing to-day what they were when originally painted—causes for which the painter is sometimes as re-sponsible as the restorer. But, again, you are notto infer that all old pictures are injured by bitumenand fugitive pigments. The great bulk of them werepainted with sound mediums and durable pigments,and are to-day in comparatively good condition. Butit is perhaps necessary you should know that acci-dents have happened in the best of painters studios;and that occasionally a chemical change has dis-torted a painters meaning and turned his canvas intononsense.
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CHAPTER IIIFALSE ATTRIBUTIONS, COPIES, FORGERIES Every one who comes to know the famous gal-leries and their pictures sooner or later finds outthat all is not gold that glitters, and pictures are notalways what they seem. Celebrated names are oftentacked upon inferior canvases, and many an oldmaster has had to stand sponsor for work which henever knew, never saw. This false attribution ofpictures is one of the worst stumbling blocks in thestudents pathway. You, for instance, are lookingat a Holy Family by Titian. Does the mere factthat it is under his name in the catalogue of theLouvre, or the Pitti, or the Prado, prove its genuine-ness? So far from doing so it may almost make itsgenuineness suspicious. And that statement is soliable to misinterpretation that it requires immediateexplanation. The directors of galleries are not loath to havegreat names in their catalogues. The names soundwell upon the ear; they look well to the eye; theygive rank and importance to the gallery. It becom

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