by Philip Gilbert Hamerton
with a hundred and forty-eight illustrations by Joseph Pennell and the Author and four Maps.
Here is another example of cruising as fine literature, and of art into the bargain. Hamerton spends a summer cruising on this little-known French river, a good part of it in a catamaran. Similar in its scope of art criticism to Bennetts "From the Log of the Velsa," as a painter and art critic himself, Hamerton's eye is more finely tuned than Bennett's. Hamerton an English artist and author, was born at Laneside, near Shaw, close to Oldham, on the 10th of September 1834. Discovering after a time that his qualifications were rather those of an art critic than of a painter he removed to the neighbourhood of his wife’s relatives in France, where he produced his Painter’s Camp in the Highlands (1863), which obtained a great success and prepared the way for his standard work on Etching and Etchers (1866). In the following year he published a book, entitled Contemporary French Painters, and in 1868 a continuation, Painting in France after the Decline of Classicism. He had meanwhile become art critic to the Saturday Review, a position which, from the burden it laid upon him of frequent visits to England, he did not long retain. He proceeded (1870) to establish an art journal of his own, The Portfolio, a monthly periodical, each number of which consisted of a monograph upon some artist or group of artists, frequently written and always edited by him. In 1882 he issued a finely illustrated work on the technique of the great masters of various arts, under the title of The Graphic Arts, and three years later another splendidly illustrated volume, Landscape, which traces the influence of landscape upon the mind of man. His last books were: Portfolio Papers (1889) and French and English (1889). In 1891 he removed to the neighbourhood of Paris, and died suddenly on the 4th of November 1894, occupied to the last with his labours on The Portfolio and other writings on art. The illustrations in this volume are both multiple and superb, and most of them are from that fine artist, Joseph Pennell. Joseph Pennell (1857-1926) launched his career as an illustrator by selling picturesque drawings of south Philadelphia to Scribner's Monthly in 1881. Much of his time was spent in Europe, particularly in London, where he was greatly influenced by Whistler. His subjects are chiefly landscapes and architectural views, and his art is distinguished for its simplicity, technical perfection, and illustrative quality. There are a great many of his works in this book, and every one is worthy of a frame!
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