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Judgment of Pictures by Henry Rankin Poore

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Title: Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures

Author: Henry Rankin Poore

Release Date: September 16, 2008 [Ebook #26638]

Language: English

Character set encoding: US-ASCII

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PICTORIAL COMPOSITION AND THE CRITICAL JUDGMENT OF PICTURES***

[Light and Shade--Geo. Inness]

Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures

A Handbook for Students and Lovers of Art
By H. R. Poore

New York and London
G. P. Putnam's Sons

1903

_It is with sincere pleasure that I dedicate this book to my first
teacher, Peter Moran, as an acknowledgment to the interest he inspired in
this important subject_

PREFACE

This book has been prepared because, although the student has been
abundantly supplied with aids to decorative art, there is little within
his reach concerning pictorial composition.

I have added thereto hints on the critical judgment of pictures with the
hope of simplifying to the many the means of knowing pictures, prompted by
the recollection of the topsyturviness of this question as it confronted
my own mind a score of years ago. I was then apt to strain at a Corot
hoping to discover in the employment of some unusual color or method the
secret of its worth, and to think of the old masters as a different order
of beings from the rest of mankind.

Let me trust that, to a degree at least, these pages may prove
iconoclastic, shattering the images created of superstitious reverence and
allowing, in their stead, the result in art from whatever source to be
substituted as something quite as worthy of this same homage.

The author acknowledges the courtesies of the publishers of _Scribners,_
_The Century _and _Munsey's_ magazines, D. Appleton, Manzi, Joyant & Co.,
and of the artists giving consent to the use of their pictures for this
book. Acknowledgment is also made to F. A. Beardsley, H. K. Freeman and
L. Lord, for sketches contributed thereto.