Published: 2016-07-04
Total Pages: 632
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Excerpt from The Quarterly Review, Vol. 83: Published in June and September, 1848 While the national sobriety and self-respect made them revolt from coarse revelries in the style of Teniers, the want of middling easy classes prevented any demand for the genteel comedy of Terburgs or domesticity of Gerard Dows. Where a people live out-of-doors, and furniture is a nuisance, to adorn their house is not a necessity and a delight, as in less favoured climates. Again, Spanish painters themselves, habituated to link art with high associations, looked down upon these performances as trivial and earthy. The exquisite finish and elaborate detail was also too much and too business-like for a semi-oriental people, who will not be fashed, ' and who have never reached mediocrity where nicety of handcraft is required. These causes, if they have limited Spanish art, at least have maintained its peculiar features; and thus, if condemned to dwell in decencies for ever, her great schools preserved as decorous, chaste, and natural character, free alike from the paganism of voluptuous Italy, the fantasies and devil-homage of freethinking Germany, the tinsel and lubricity of artificial France, and the coarse extra vagancies of Dutch dissent and democracy. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.