Excerpt from The History of Modern Painting, Vol. 1 of 3
Old and new histories of art. - Seeming "restlessness" of the nineteenth century. - To recognise "style" in modern art, and to prove the logic of its evolution, the principles of judgment in the old art-histories are also to be employed for the new. The question is, what new element the age brought into the history of art, not what it borrowed eclectically from earlier ages.
There is an entire series of books on modern art. A new one added to the list must needs prove its right to be called new.
No book, hitherto, has embraced the history of European painting in the nineteenth century. And modern art, like modern culture, is to be considered as a whole. The history of the art of our own country is not intelligible if one does not know of contemporary movements abroad. The gaze of the historian therefore must not be fixed upon one country alone, but must embrace Europe, - indeed, the whole world.
It is clear that to such a gaze, searching the whole of Europe, the land of one's birth will not loom so large as to one which is absorbed in the particular country. Great men of the second and third rank one sees, one dare see no longer, if one is treating from abroad only those of the first rank. Many famous names must be passed over when one still more famous in another country overshadows them; history dare not therefore allow itself, out of false patriotism, to place under a bushel the lights which have shone, and still shine, amongst foreign nations. Moreover, in the appreciation of those who are mentioned, a strict measure is prescribed, for not only the geographical but the historical horizon is vast.
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