Broader scope

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Broader scope

From Castle.Proxies.AuthorProxy

Published on before 2005


Piet Spijkers wrote: My impression is that Goodart's scope could be improved by looking outside 19th century UK and US art. GoodArt discussion participants live in LA or SF or in a north east WASP area.

I was amazed that few people had ever heard about Verspronck or Bartholomeus van der Helst. They are not on the ARC museum, strange.

Have a look at Good European Art! German, Russian, Dutch, Danish, Spanish, Hungarian and other artists have been crating beautiful works of art during many centuries.

The goodart forum is too good to be so exclusive.


Piet,

My interest in Dutch art of the 17th century goes back as far as 1956, when I first saw any of it in a museum. For many years it was my main influence as a painter. Twenty years ago I spent two weeks in Holland, every day of which was spent in art museums, including the Rijksmuseum, the Frans Hals Museum, and three museums in The Hague. I know the works of Dutch painters very well, including Verspronck, Van der Helst and many more whose names are not household words today. Honthorst is one of my favorites. In my travels I always take notes and make sketches in the museums, buy prints and slides, shoot photos of the paintings if they will let me or if I can do it without getting caught, and I have a stack of notebooks full of my written and sketched notes from these trips, as well as an extensive slide collection and a library full of books on art. I spent many years researching and writing a book on advanced oil painting techniques from the beginning to the present, as yet unpublished, and there is a section covering Rembrandt's methods in there with several others of significance. You might have overlooked my articles about Frans Hals and Rembrandt on ARC. There are links to these articles and a few others on my web site, if you care to read them.

I'm not sure on what basis you've determined that people on GoodArt have no interest in or knowledge of art other than that of 19th and 20th century UK and US art, but in my case, you could not be more mistaken. I would caution you to hold off forming too definite judgments on too little basis.

And why would where we live make any difference? I know for a fact that many of us on GoodArt travel a great deal. I have lived in five different cities in two countries (US and Germany) over the years, and travel frequently, spending more time in art museums than anywhere else when I am away from home. You seem to presume a great deal.

Virgil Elliott

Virgil Elliott is the author of Traditional Oil Painting: Advanced Techniques and Concepts from the Renaissance to the Present, published in 2007 by Watson-Guptill Publications. He is one of ARC's <u>Living Masters</u>, and an active member of the ASTM Subcommittee on Artists' Paints and Materials. Images of some of his artworks can be seen in ARC's Gallery of Living Masters and on his own web site, www.virgilelliott.com.