Great Paintings in America
Potpourri
edited by and Coward-McCann, $20.
Fiske Kimball, Director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Lionello Venturi of the University of Rome have selected, exclusively from American museums and private collections, the 101 masterpieces reproduced here in full color. Mr. Kimball has written an introductory essay and Professor Venturi supplies a detailed commentary on each picture — 108 pages of text.
The book is, in effect, an illustrated history of painting: 83 artists, extending from the Byzantine primitives to Rouault and Picasso, are represented. Of the reproductions — some from plates especially made for this volume, some from plates owned by the museums — a fairly high percentage are extremely fine, equal to or better than the best published in America (though not up to the finest made in Europe); a certain number are just adequate (for example. Titian’s “Rape of Europa,” Pissarro’s “Boulevard des Italiens”). The over-all standard is considerably higher than in any comparable volume.
Intelligent conception, painstaking craftsmanship, good taste and scholarship in the editing, make Great Paintings in America a thoroughly exceptional art book, one that is likely to have a wide appeal, price notwithstanding.