Excerpt from Thomas Gainsborough
An art critic has said that no great painting can be described, and that it is not in the province of words to give an idea of colour. This, in a certain measure, is true, but since works of the highest art - whether a building such as the Parthenon, or the Taj Mahal, or the Alhambra, or statues like the Venus of Milo and the Olympian Hermes - may be brought before the mental vision by words, why also may not such consummate creations of the brush as Raffaele's School of Athens, or Leonardo's Last Supper, or Michael Angelo's frescoes on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel?
On a lower level words do not entirely fail to convey the impression of a fine portrait or a landscape painting, although the most elementary photographic reproduction of such portrait or landscape will give a better idea than pages written by a Ruskin or a Fromentin.
With the help of the illustrations, which are numerous, I hope this little book will make Gainsborough's art more familiar to those who may not have had an opportunity of seeing a collection of his works. I can only advise those who have not studied his paintings in our own National Gallery to do so. Let them pass a few moments, at least, before that wonderful half-length portrait of Mrs. Siddons, and when they have studied it sufficiently let them turn to that other half-length portrait of the Parish Clerk of Bradford-on-Avon, old Edward Orpin.
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