Author Description

These Lectures are a selection from those delivered by me to the students of the Royal Academy during the term of my professorship, -that is, between the years 1876 and 1882. I have limited the selection to twelve, partly to keep the book of a modest size, and partly because many of the omitted lectures (and especially those which treat of the great masters of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries) would hardly be comprehensible without the numerous engravings with which they were illustrated at the time of delivery. I ought, perhaps, to apologize for the roughness of my explanatory diagrams, but as they only aspire to represent the rude sketches done with white chalk during the actual delivery of the lectures, let us hope they will be leniently dealt with. It is a common practice with writers who are not yet hardened offenders, to seek some excuse for rushing into print, and the excuse usually offered is the "urgent entreaty of valued friends." I certainly cannot avail myself of this customary but I fear often uncandid plea. My only reason for publishing must be looked for in the large and very attentive audiences I have always had. This evident appreciation of my teaching by the Royal Academy students, has led me to think that some of these lectures might be interesting and instructive to other students outside the Academy, and possibly even to those who do not intend to follow art as a profession, but who would be glad to have a little daylight thrown on a subject which, though much written and lectured about of late years, does not seem to have been often treated in a simple, practical manner. At the same time I am fully aware that the practical part of drawing can only be learned by real work; and I am also inclined to believe that a knowledge of the old masters and their various schools is better acquired by frequent visits to galleries where their works can be seen, than by second-hand description from a lecture. In my opinion, the special dutie