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Loading... America's Old Masters: Benjamin West, John Singleton Copley, Charles Wilson Peale and Gilbert Stuart (1939)by James Thomas Flexner
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Profiles the four eighteenth-century painters who earned the earliest international acclaim for American art. No library descriptions found.
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)759.13The arts Painting History, geographic treatment, biography United States and Canada United StatesLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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The book has been revised before this edition was published, and some color plates were added to the original 69 half-tones. The plates are often rather muddy (perhaps this is because I have the book club edition.) This was later reissued in the 1990s, so maybe the illustrations have been upgraded.
Flexner is an agreeably genial guide. Perhaps because he was initially defending works that were considered worthless when he began to write, although they were often highly regarded in their own time, he warns the reader against assuming that current taste in art is "correct." He points out the historical changes in taste, and sometimes admits to finding some works not to his own taste, but he isn't oppressively didactic. In recounting the lives of the painters, he sometimes points out obvious errors, but instead of using them to accuse the autobiographer/biographer of being a pathological liar, as many biographers do, he is willing to attribute them to honest lapses of memory if possible. ( )