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Bradantia Directory 09
Page 03
The whole academic tendency of modern painting in Germany and Austria for the past fifty years has not been favorable to the best kind of pictorial art. There is a disposition on the part of artists to tell stories, to encroach upon the sentiment of literature, to paint with a dry brush in harsh unsympathetic colors, to ignore relations of light-and-shade, and to slur beauties of form. The subject seems to count for more than the truth of representation, or the individuality of view. From time to time artists of much ability have appeared, but these form an exception rather than a rule. The men to-day who are the great artists of Germany are less followers of the German tradition than individuals each working in a style peculiar to himself. A few only of them call for mention. Menzel (1815-1905) is easily first, a painter of group pictures, a good colorist, and a powerful pen-and-ink draughtsman; Lenbach (1836-1904), a forceful portraitist; Uhde (1848-), a portrayer of scriptural scenes in modern costumes with much sincerity, good color, and light; Leibl (1844-1900), an artist with something of the Holbein touch and realism; Thoma, a Frankfort painter of decorative friezes and panels; Liebermann, Gotthardt Kuehl, Franz Stuck, Max Klinger, Greiner, Truebner, Bartels, Keller.
Considering the amount of navigation that went through, it was amazing to see how badly lighted that river was--the two lights, such as the one at Buyussu, and the one at Mandy, at the entrance of the bay of Marajo, being no bigger than and not so brilliant as the ordinary street oil-lamp in an English or French village. I understand that all ships navigating the Amazon have to pay a large tax on each journey for the maintenance of the lighthouses on that immense waterway. It is quite criminal that no proper lights are constructed in order to protect the safety of the passengers and the valuable cargoes which go by that important water route.
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