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Excerpt from Treatise on Art: Consisting of Essays on the Education of the Eye, Practical Hints on Composition, and Light and Shade
In prefacing a work of this brief description, where so many branches of the Art of Painting are introduced with little more than an enumeration of their component parts, I ought to apologize, in the first instance, for thus attempting to convey any information which can be carried into practical usefulness in so small a compass; my motive for so doing was to give, if possible, an insight into the intricacies of the Art, without distracting the attention of the reader by a multitude of examples, whose union often destroys the strong impression of a single illustration. Though the varieties of painting are endless, yet the properties of which these varieties are composed are, as in music, few in number; I have endeavored, therefore, to notice only the leading principles which must be known, and which by re¿ection and observation can be extended to any infinite series of ramifications. The same simple rules which should regulate the instruction of beginners, I have endeavored to point out as existing in the highest departments of the Art, communicating by their presence that value which a vein of gold imparts to a mass of inferior matter. To some it may appear that the subject is too physically treated. I have been actuated so to do by the custom of the present time, and surely every one ought to know something of the construction of that instrument he is in possession of, and of its operations on the mind. In what I have advanced, I have quoted the opinions of the best authors to corroborate and strengthen my own, thereby hoping to render an Art by which civilized society is so highly embellished, more known and appreciated.
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