T. Leman Hare (1872–1935)

Yet another glorious work from a bygone age. This three-volume series only contains in total 100 paintings with short descriptions, but there is something about the dedication and intent behind T. Leman Hare's 1930s collection that is truly admirable.

The paintings are placed on colour plates which are attached to the book, rather than being simply printed copies. As a result, they have impeccable quality (even if some are probably a bit too small). The descriptions are quite short, just covering the basic description and artist background, as well as details of why the painting is well-known. Leman Hare explains in his introduction that there is no intent to actually choose the "greatest" paintings, or to even represent all artists or styles. Instead, he simply hopes to "gladden" the homes of interested readers, allowing them to enjoy these artworks in their own homes.

The internet - and our jetsetting society - have robbed us of the ability to appreciate dense tomes on the great artists, interests, and the like. Why fill your library with multi-volume encyclopaedias and detailed volumes that examine a variety of operas, sports, historical moments, etc, when you can simply check out Wikipedia, or a concise "Idiot's Guide to..." from Borders. I see the merit in those, I really do. But the kind of home library that Leman Hare and his ilk were advocating still should have some relevance! The sheer joy of owning these volumes is proof enough.… (meer)

EUGÈNE-SAMUEL-AUGUSTE FROMENTIN-DUPEUX was born at La Rochelle on the twenty-fourth of October, 1820. His family was a very old one and held in high honour throughout Aunis and Saintonge.
Aunis, one of the ancient provinces of France, glows languidly beneath the caresses of a humid sun, enveloped in a thin veil of ocean mists, and at times she seems to float in the midst of her waves and her sands, beneath a sky bounded by remote and indeterminate horizons, vague and immense, like some vast wreckage overgrown with gardens and oases. For more than a century, she was downtrodden by the English. But if she owes them the pain and humiliation of defeat, they at least inspired her with a passion for commercial greatness and a desire for wealth. Through her shipowners and bankers, she amassed riches that permitted her to devote a goodly share of her days to leisure and festivities, for the betterment of her material welfare and the embellishment of her mind. Thus in the midst of this industrious community, faithful to its duties, jealous of its liberty, there was slowly formed a powerful and cultured bourgeois class, eager for all forms of intellectual improvement.
Eugène Fromentin’s family was, on the father’s side, attached by ancient roots to the soil of Aunis. His ancestors were nearly all of them lawyers and judges, and as far back as they can be traced, even to the beginning of the eighteenth century, formed a part of this bourgeois class, which, in that region of ardent Protestantism, constituted a sort of aristocracy.
His father was a physician of great ability, and for thirty-three years was director of the Lafond insane asylum, which he had founded not far from La Rochelle. He had a reputation for wit, but indecision and suspicion stifled the better impulses of his nature. Fromentin’s mother, whose educational advantages had been slight, had by contrast a sensitive and warmhearted disposition. It was she whom the painter resembled in all the details of his physical nature and in all the qualities of his moral nature, while Charles, his elder brother, practical and taciturn, resembled their father, whose vocation he followed.… (meer)