雙語+MP3|美國學(xué)生藝術(shù)史29 更多的美國畫家

  
這些早期的肖像畫已經(jīng)變得非常珍貴，它們現(xiàn)在大多珍藏在博物館里。不過，有些畫仍然歸某些家族所有，因為畫的是他們的祖先。如果有人向你展示科普利、薩利、馬爾布恩、特朗布爾或皮爾家族中某某的肖像畫，你一定要肅然起敬，仔細(xì)觀看，因為這畫是出自一位美國早期名畫家之手哦。  
29 MORE AMERICANS更多的美國畫家 
  
I KNOW you’ve heard of Robert Fulton, the inventor of the steamboat. But have you ever heard of Robert Fulton the painter? Does it seem strange they should have the same name? Then this ought to seem even stranger—they were born the same year. Stranger yet—they died the same year. But—  
It’s really not strange at all, because the painter and the inventor were the same Robert Fulton. Robert Fulton’s first profession was portrait painting. He studied under Benjamin West in London.  
I know you’ve heard of Samuel F. B. Morse. Surely. He invented the telegraph. But have you ever heard of Samuel F. B. Morse the painter? Does it seem strange they should have the same name? It’s really not strange at all, because the painter and the inventor were the same Samuel F. B. Morse. Morse’s first profession was portrait painting. He too studied under Benjamin West in London.  
Both were inventors. Both were painters. Both were helped by West. And they weren’t bad painters, either. Of course they weren’t nearly such good portrait painters as Holbein or Hals or Dürer. But you’ll find them in almost any history of American art.  
I wish I could tell you more about these and the many other early American portrait painters. About Rembrandt Peale, for instance, who first provided a city in the United States with gas lights for its streets (and also studied under Benjamin West). Or about his father, Charles Willson Peale, who had a famous museum of all kinds of queer tings. Or about—  
But I’ll have to stop, for it’s time to tell you instead about the next group of American painters. These were landscape painters. First came these interesting old portrait painters, then came landscape painters.  
Most of the early American landscape painters are not quite so well–known as the portrait painters. These landscape painters tried to put into their pictures all the little details that they saw in nature. Every stick and stone and bush was painted in very carefully, and their pictures as a whole weren’t so good as if the painters had left out the little things so you could look at all the picture at once. Instead your eye sees the picture piece by piece.  
They generally painted scenes that were very impressive, like views of mountains and big rivers and valleys seen from hilltops. Finally, however, one landscape painter changed this. He painted everyday peaceful scenes, like a meadow or some trees. He left out the unimportant details so you could see a beautiful picture instead of just a copy of a piece of real country.  
I don’t mean you to think that the real country isn’t beautiful. A real scene out of doors is beautiful—more beautiful, generally, than any picture of it could be. But, you see, a painter can never make his picture look exactly like the real, beautiful scenery itself and so it’s often better for him to make his painting a beautiful thing and not try to make it exactly like a real scene. A painter has to do this mostly by trying to make you feel what he felt when he saw the scene, rather than trying to show you every little thing he saw.  
So this painter of everyday peaceful scenes, whose name was George Inness, tried to make people feel how beautiful he thought the scene was. George Inness used very beautiful colors that harmonized, or went well together. If there were some bits of color in the real scene that would not harmonize with the other colors in the picture, he left them out. If the picture looks better without having every detail clearly put in, why not paint it without the detail? This is what George Inness thought. And so his landscapes gradually became better and better pictures as he learned to leave out the things he saw that would prevent the picture from being beautiful.  
  
No.29-1　PEACE AND PLENTY（《平靜與富饒》）　　　　　INNESS（英尼斯　作）  
Courtesy of The University Prints  
Do you still know what I’m talking about? I know it is pretty hard to understand. I hope yon will go to a museum some day and see one of Inness’s paintings. Then you will be able to enjoy the colors as well as the shapes of what he painted. In this illustration of a famous picture of his called “Peace and Plenty,” for instance, you can see the shapes, but I can only tell you of the warm, glowing, golden that streams across the original painting.  
I can only tell you, too, that George Inness was one of the best American landscape painters. You will have to see some of his paintings themselves before you can really appreciate their true beauty.  
A painter very different from George Inness was Winslow Homer. Winslow Homer is famous as a painter of the sea. Boys and girls can hardly help liking his pictures. Winslow Homer didn’t care to paint quiet seas. He preferred stormy ones. His pictures of waves dashing high against the rocky New England coast have been called the best sea paintings that any artist has done. Winslow Homer loved the sea. He built his house on the rocky coast of Maine, where he could always watch the ocean.  
He loved to hunt and fish, too, and often went into the Adirondack mountains—they were really wild in those days—and there he painted hunting scenes and canoes shooting the rapids and the guides at work.  
When Winslow Homer took a trip on the ocean south toward Bermuda or the West Indies, he painted sea scenes of stormy weather there. He was fond of painting the fishermen who went in their schooners to fish on the Grand Banks out at sea. The picture shows you one of these fishermen.  
  
No.29-2　THE FOG WARNINC（《大霧警報》）　　　　　HOMER（霍默　作）  
Courtesy of The University Prints  
The fisherman is in a boat called a dory that has been sent out from the schooner. You can see the fish the man has caught. But a fog is coming up and the fisherman has to row hard and fast to get back to his schooner so as not to be caught in the fog. If the fog catches him he can only hope to get safely back by listening for the fog horn on the ship and rowing blindly toward the sound. It is dangerous business, alone in an open boat on the Atlantic, with the fog rolling in. Let’s hope he reaches the schooner.  
Now, instead of simply telling you that these two painters, George Inness and Winslow Homer, were fine painters, I’ll say it this way: The more you see of their paintings, the more, I’m sure, you’ll like them.  
And I’ll add this: You don’t have to wait till you’re grown up to understand and like their pictures. Inness and Homer painted pictures that boys and girls surely must like. That’s what I think.