Excerpt from Pictures in the Tate Gallery<br><br>In the dawning years of the nineteenth century art was not regarded as a forcible factor in the public weal. It was a period Of artistic uniformity marked by a singular want of variety of outlook. Many pictures Were painted, but there was little distinctive British art, if we understand the phrase in its full significance. Groups Of historical and genre painters clung to traditional ideals; the colour of their pictures was ruined by the use Of bitumen; their surfaces were stippled to one glossy regularity of texture, while their subjects were chosen with a finer regard for sentiment than for truth. The supreme Object Of the approved painter was to fulfil conditions that had become classic. Turner and Constable, the interpreters of landscape, alone handled their paint in such a way that they depicted Nature in a living and truthful guise.<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.