Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice older book in good condition. Plates bright and vivid. Year 1916. Hardcover. English. See images for condition.

About the book >.>.> No doubt this is partly due to the fact that British art has concerned itself very greatly with what may be called the physical characteristics of the country. A considerable proportion of our painters have been devoted students of nature and have occupied themselves with records of British scenery and of those subtle effects of atmosphere and illumination which are the product of the variable British climate. Responsive themselves to the charm of their sur- roundings they have catered for a public which appreciates the beauties of nature and likes to see them realized pictorially; lovers themselves of the land in which they live they have striven to please the many people who are pos- sessed by a similar sentiment and wish to have about them pictures in which this sentiment is agreeably reflected. No record of British scenery could be complete and no appeal to British sentiment could be effective if our artists ignored the wide ide variety of subjects which the sea offers them. For the sea is with us a tradition and the love of the sea is one of the strongest of our national instincts. Because we live on an island the sea is at the same time our protection from those who might seek to do us harm and our means of communication with the rest of the world; it safeguards us against dangers to which other less fortunately situated countries are constantly exposed and yet it puts us directly in touch with even the most remote and apparently inac- cessible peoples. Therefore we regard it naturally as a friendly influence in the lives of us all. But we owe it a debt of gratitude also for the effect it has had upon our British art. It is from our insular climate from the mists and moisture which the sea brings that those atmospheric qualities come which make the study of nature in the British Isles such a never-ending delight. is the surrounding sea that encourages the rich growth of our vegetation and that gives to our landscape its wealth of detail and its ample variety of colour As the sea influences the manner of our national life so it influences the quality the sentiment and the method of our art helping us to build up a school which is insular in its merit and its expression and Rational ing and its intention. (SP)