The Mentor: Painters of Western Life, Vol 3, Num. 9, Serial No. 85, June 15,

Hoeber, Arthur, 1854-1915Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.8
Word count
52K words
Chapters
6

Tags

English Originals Painting Public EducationAmerican ArtArt HistoryPortrait GalleryAdventure JourneyIllustrated GuideMagazine SelectionRegional StyleWestern Region FlavorFrontier Life

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.The Mentor: Painters of Western Life, Vol 3, Num. 9, Serial No. 85, June 15,Author: Hoeber, Arthur, 1854-1915,Language: English, Class: ND: Fine Arts: Painting, Release Date: Dec 31, 2015

Editor's review

This issue of The Mentor focuses on "painters of Western life," written by art critic Arthur Hoeber. It is an accessible primary source for understanding early twentieth-century American Western-themed painting. Its value lies in connecting the artists' work with westward expansion, Native American life, ranch and frontier landscapes; the prose is plain and reflects the perspectives of its time, accompanied by introductory descriptions of representative works. Readers can use it to observe how the art market and popular taste of the period shaped the image of "the West," and as supplementary material for American art history and periodical publishing history. It is best read with questions about visual history in mind, paying attention to the author's statements about "truth" and "romanticization." Because the original was published in English and is quite old, its terminology and views should be checked against modern scholarship; it should not be treated as the sole authority.

Who it's for

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Reading tips

  1. Begin with the issue's table of contents and list of painters, then read individual pieces according to interest; there is no need to read from beginning to end.
  2. While reading, refer to paintings or related Western visual materials, and note how the author describes scenes and figures.
  3. Place the views in the text alongside modern and contemporary American art history scholarship, and mark phrasing that carries the biases of its era.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6

FAQ

Is this book an art album or textual criticism? It is the thematic text of a popular art periodical, consisting mainly of criticism and introductions; it is not a complete art album. Readers need to find images of the relevant paintings separately to form a fuller visual reference.
Is the original English publication difficult to read? The text is aimed at a general readership and its sentence structures are not very difficult, but it involves painters' names, place names, and art terminology. It is advisable to read the introductory passages first and then use a dictionary for proper names; the overall difficulty is moderate.
Is it suitable for writing academic papers? It can be cited as a primary historical source for discussing the dissemination and reception of early twentieth-century American Western imagery. However, it is not a systematic study and needs to be cross-checked against modern academic works and the original artworks.

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About the author

Hoeber, Arthur, 1854-1915 Author · American · 1854–1915

Arthur Hoeber (1854–1915) was an American painter and art critic. He wrote art criticism for New York newspapers, using his writing to discuss painting and thus contributing to the circulation of art ideas in his time. Two of his extant works are associated with The Mentor magazine: one discusses American mural painters, and the other focuses on painters of Western life. Judging from these subjects, his writing combined an art-historical perspective with the tradition of regional genre painting, introducing painters and schools to general readers. Public information about his life is limited, making it difficult to describe his education or specific experiences in detail; yet his works and critical activity show a sustained attention to the development of American art, in which he participated through criticism and editorial writing, offering readers an introductory guide to understanding American painting.