Bibliography

Works by John C. Van Dyke

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1. The American Desert. The Mentor 12.6 ( July 1924): 1-22. This article should dispel any doubt that Van Dyke was a bamboozler when he wrote about his travels in the desert. While assuring us that he is telling the truth (14), he claims that "no one" knew about the lands he explored (3), that most desert animals shun water (7), and passes on other multiple absurdities. It is a blatant performance.

2. American Painting and Its Tradition. Retrospective Exhibition of Important Works of John Singer Sargent, February 23rd to March 22nd, 1924. New York: (Grand Central Art Galleries,). 1924. 3, 12. Van Dyke's four paragraphs on Sargent in this handsome catalogue (12) are somewhat revised portions from Van Dyke's American Painting and Its Tradition [See 3, p. 245, 248-49, 253-54, and 256-57]. Back to the item at hand, note the curiously astute organization of this non-profit gallery, designed to benefit both artists and admirers (Foreword 3).

3. American Painting and Its Tradition, As Represented by Inness, Wyant, Martin, Homer, La Farge, Whistler, Chase, Alexander, Sargent. New York: (Charles Scribner's Sons,). 1919. If Van Dyke's views of art can be precise and honed to the classical when it comes to the Old Masters, they can be narrow concerning his own era. Before the arrival of the influence of French Impressionism, he says here, there is no art in the United States worth talking about. And there isn't much worth talking about after its heyday. Sadly, Van Dyke shakes his head: "in these days ... all painting seems going to the dogs" (268). So much for modern art. The youthful rebel had grown into a hidebound orthodoxy.

4. American Painting and Its Tradition, As Represented by Inness, Wyant, Martin, Homer, La Farge, Whistler, Chase, Alexander, Sargent. 1919. Freeport, New York: (Books for Libraries Press,). 1972. This modern reprint contains no new material.

5. Amsterdam, The Hague, Haarlem: Critical Notes on the Rijks Museum, The Hague Museum, Hals Museum. New Guides to Old Masters Series. New York: (Charles Scribner's Sons,). 1914. [For an overview of this failed series see the lead volume in 66].

6. Angels In Art. The Mentor 1.40 ( 1913): 1-11, 13-24. An impressive survey of the artistic treatment of angels through the centuries. "Realism rather scorns things spiritual, and besides religious feeling and sentiment in art passed out several centuries before the coming of the modern realists.... [Painters] saw things with the eye of faith" (1).

7. An Appreciation. Timothy Cole: Memorial Exhibition, November Ninth to Twenty-Eighth, Nineteen Thirty-One. Philadelphia: (The Print Club of Philadelphia,). 1931. 3. Van Dyke introduces the catalogue with generous words for the man who did the engravings for Van Dyke's Old Dutch and Flemish Masters and Old English Masters.

8. Art and Congressional Legislation. The American Architect and Building News 23.638 ( March 17, 1888): 128-30. Van Dyke turns his high dudgeon over the thirty-percent import duty on art into a white-hot piece of refined rhetoric. Wary of an ignorant Congress sticking its nose where it doesn't belong, he argues that politicians should "leave American art to follow the even tenor of its way unmolested by legislation of any kind" (130). [For further complexities See 166].

9. Art for Art's Sake: Seven University Lectures on the Technical Beauties of Painting. New York: (Charles Scribner's Sons,). 1893. Pleasure is art's excuse for being. Anticipates his next step with Nature for Its Own Sake. That's the overall theme. However, to engage the eye, then train it, in this series of lectures delivered both at Columbia and Rutgers, Van Dyke, claiming he is seeing the art of painting as painters do, concentrates on the practical, the techniques, such as color, shading, and perspective, with which artists hope to capture the beautiful.

10. Art in Primitive Greece. Review of History of Art in Primitive Greece: Mycenian Art, by George Perrot and Charles Chipez. The Dial 18.209 ( 1 March 1895): 142-44. Bringing to bear his own wide knowledge of archaeology--an aspect of Van Dyke often overlooked--he shows his generosity in praise (another Van Dyke feature, less often practiced but also often forgotten), clapping his hands that this

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two-volume work marks "the most complete and thorough history of ancient art ever written" (142).

11. The Art Students' League of New York. Harper's New Monthly Magazine 83.497 ( October 1891): 688-700. Established in 1875, when the National Academy of Design temporarily closed its doors, the League has since developed a curriculum that trains the hand without stultifying creativity. The piece reflects Van Dyke's impressive intimacy with the florescence of the New York art world of his day. In the broader picture, the League was but one of many such organizations born from America's new fascination with art. Van Dyke's The Increase in the Appreciation of Serious Art in America and Lathrop's The Progress of Art in New York are companion pieces giving the larger context of the art phenomenon [See 53 and 359].

12. Artistic Nature. The Studio 2.46 ( 17 November 1883): 219-21. An early statement that art is nature idealized; it will become a major theme in Van Dyke's writing. Charmingly written, sensitively illustrated, The Studio presents an important view into the happy ferment and openness of the fluorescing art movement during Van Dyke's youth. According to "Van Dyke, John C[harles]" in The Reader's Encyclopedia of American Literature, Van Dyke (ed.) edited The Studio 1883- 1884. I suspect otherwise.
However, precisely identifying Van Dyke's involvement with the magazine presents something of a challenge. The first The Studio piece definitely associated with him is the one above (signed, but his name misspelled). The second, published a week later (this time with his name correctly spelled), is Wanted--The Data of Criticism. Then on 22 December 1883, ‘‘J. C. Van Dyke, Editor’’ appears on the masthead, as it does the week after. It may be, as Van Dyke claims in his Autobiography, that he wrote many of the magazine's articles during this short period (56), but if he did, they went unsigned. As far as can be demonstrated, that ends Van Dyke's brief connection with The Studio. Thereafter, the best I can tell--a calculation supported by the somewhat unclear entry in the Union List of Serials-- The Studio foundered, temporarily ceasing publication. Seven months later, according to the opening pages of the 2 August 1884 issue, it was revived under new ownership and a new editor. In his Autobiography, from the perspective of old age Van Dyke modestly chided his blind enthusiasm as he plunged youthfully into editing art magazines (56-58). Sources for The Studio may be found in the Archival section, under the New Brunswick Theological Seminary, the New York Public Library, and the University of Arizona.

13. The Autobiography of John C. Van Dyke: A Personal Narrative of American Life, 1861- 1931. Introduction by Peter Wild, (ed.) editor. Foreword by Philip L. Strong. Salt Lake City: (University of Utah Press,). 1993. Helpful, indeed, in piecing together the details of Van Dyke's activities and friends but more than usually fanciful for an autobiographical work. A gallery of photographs follows 127. [See 83].

14. The Beauty of Paint. The Art Review 3.1 ( July- August 1888): 25-30. All this is a long way from celebrating nature as the highest art, but here it is. The echt connoisseur goes to galleries to gasp over the true artist's handling of paint. Gives a brief history of brushwork; Titian was the pivot, and Rubens' use of the brush points to a new element, the artist expressing "the individuality of the painter" (27). Like a cautious lover, soon to fall head over heels, Van Dyke is still hesitant about the "extravagance" of Impressionism and its "meaningless splashes of light" (30). However, something is unresolved here, for seven months earlier in the same magazine he was telling us "A painting should appeal to no other sense than sight" [See 136, p. 67]. Nevertheless, reviewing this issue of The Art Review in his column Current Literature, Kingsley has special praise for Van Dyke's The Beauty of Paint.

15. Berlin, Dresden: Critical Notes on the Kaiser Friedrich Museum and the Royal Gallery, Dresden. New Guides to Old Masters Series. New York: (Charles Scribner's Sons,). 1914.

16. Books and How to Use Them: Some Hints to Readers and Students. New York: (Fords, Howard, and Hulbert,). 1883. Van Dyke's first full-length volume. Its first sentence shows the sentimentalism he later disguised: "The true philosopher's stone, that by its magical touch converts existence into golden success, is Knowledge" (7).

17. Brussels, Antwerp: Critical Notes on the Royal Museums of Brussels and Antwerp. New Guides to Old Masters Series. New York: (Charles Scribner's Sons,). 1914.

18. Catalogue: Exhibition of the Works of Elihu Vedder at the American Academy of Arts and Letters. New York: (American Academy of Arts and Letters,). 1937. This exhibition catalogue, published five years after Van Dyke's death, presents some problems, none of them, however, of great moment. The first section, Elihu Vedder (9-17), carries Van Dyke's byline, and, with some revisions, reprints his Commemorative Tribute to Elihu Vedder. There follows a second section, also titled Elihu Vedder

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(19-26). It bears no author. The remainder of this little book is the catalogue proper.

19. A Catalogue of a Memorial Exhibition of the Works of Joseph Pennell (Kindly Lent by Mr. John F. Braun of Philadelphia) at the American Academy of Arts and Letters. New York: (American Academy of Arts and Letters,). 1927. Introducing the catalogue (5-21), Van Dyke gives a rundown of Pennell's career, hailing the artist who illustrated Van Dyke's The New New York for the conservative values he shared with Whistler and lamenting, in contrast, that "the rush and greed of modern life [has] spoiled everything" (6). [See 74].

20. The Century's American Artist Series. The Century Magazine 51.6 ( April 1896): 802, 954-55. Purist Van Dyke here generously states, "In all good portraiture the expressive and the decorative are both present, and because they are happily united in Mr. Brush's Mother and Child is sufficient reason for declaring it good portraiture" (954).

21. Change Poem. Poems of New Jersey, edited by Eugene R. Musgrove. (ed.) New York: (Gregg,). 1923. 45-46. For a further sampling of Van Dyke's poems, his Guinea Hens, The Piazetta, and Return of the Victorious Pharaoh to Thebes are listed below. Also, see Archival Sources, Rutgers University. Van Dyke was something of a closet poet, some of whose results were admirable enough, others abysmal. Nonetheless, the poetic ink was not to be staunched; my Van Dyke's Little Trick analyzes such efforts and gives sources for still further poems [See 624]. Nevertheless, Van Dyke published relatively little verse under his own name; given his waywardness, I suspect, but cannot prove, that he might have published further poetry under a pseudonym.

22. Commemorative Tribute to Elihu Vedder. New York: (American Academy of Arts and Letters,). 1924. Van Dyke knows how to make a sermon over a grave resound and in the course of things expresses his own romantic sentiments. Despite their popular, narrative content, he praises the works of Vedder, an artist who reveled in rhythmical lines used in the service of telling a story. Van Dyke considers Vedder's drawings for Omar KhayyÁm's RubÁiyÁt the painter's masterpiece. Putting a more complex edge to judgment, Vedder biographer Edward Dewey calls the illustrations "ponderously beautiful" (245).

23. The Court of Last Resort: A Department of Authoritative Answers to Questions. Ladies' Home Journal. During the early years of the twentieth century, The Ladies' Home Journal ran this question-and-answer page, with Van Dyke, who was also writing articles on painters for the Journal, fielding the issues on art. He does so admirably, responding to queries about Impressionism and the pronunciation of artists' names directly and authoritatively and without the tinge of condescension found in his books. See, for example, 21.3 ( February 1904): 17; 21.5 ( April 1904): 20; and 21.6 ( May 1904): 19.

24. Desert Animals. Pathway to Western Literature, edited by Nettie S. Gaines. (ed.) Stockton, California: (Nettie S. Gaines,). 1910. A teacher in the Stockton school system, hoping her students not only will "gain power in reading" but also achieve a love for California and its "local color" (vii), reprints an excerpt (235-37) from Van Dyke's The Desert (151-55). The anthologist had a good eye to the future, for many of the selections--from Jack London, Bret Harte, Helen Hunt Jackson, and Van Dyke's brother Theodore--are by writers today securely in the region's literary canon.

25. The Desert: Further Studies in Natural Appearances. New York: (Charles Scribner's Sons,). 1901. Second volume of his Natural Appearances Series. In Van Dyke's most famous book, one sees "the most decorative landscape in the world ... a dream landscape" (56). The many reprints during Van Dyke's lifetime bear only slight revisions. Those changes likely were due to the sting of a complaint letter from a professor of agriculture with a good deal of knowledge about the desert. [See 524, p. 6-7 and Van Dyke's squid-like reply p. 59-61]. [For more on the complex publishing history of The Desert, see 524, p. 42 and p.42-43 note 8; and 30, p. lvi-lviii note 15]. The following editions of The Desert are the most worthy of note.

26. The Desert: Further Studies in Natural Appearances. 1901. Photographs by J. Smeaton Chase. New York: (Charles Scribner's Sons,). 1918. Although the inclusion of photographs violated Van Dyke's aesthetic principles holding realism in contempt, the author applauded the addition of photographs as likely increasing sales. [For this and what appears to have been the rather bad usage of the penurious photographer, see 524, p. 11-12, 14, 43-53].

27. The Desert: Further Studies in Natural Appearances. 1901. Photographs by J. Smeaton Chase. Notes by Dix Van Dyke. New York: (Charles Scribner's Sons,). 1930. In his notes in the back matter (235-57), Dix, a rancher who knew the desert well, skirts challenging the many errors in natural history made by his imperious uncle. (See Dix's handwritten comments on his own printed notes in his personal copy of this edition, in the private collection

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of Mr. John C. Van Dyke, of La Jolla, listed in the Archival Sources.) Revenge would come later [See 539, p. 106, 135]. More telling is Dix's hilarious manuscript The Cynic in the San Bernardino Public Library's Norman F. Feldheym branch (Folder U-281).

28. The Desert: Further Studies in Natural Appearances. 1901. Introduction by Lawrence Clark Powell. Tucson: (The Arizona Historical Society,). 1976. The Introduction applauds Van Dyke's book as "a love poem ... distinguished by precise observation and profound knowledge" (no pagination).

29. The Desert: Further Studies in Natural Appearances. 1901. Introduction by Richard Shelton. Salt Lake City: (Peregrine Smith,). 1980. As to Van Dyke as a traveler through the desert, the Introduction takes its cue from Powell's admiration, stating that Van Dyke: "was in love, and the book is a by-product of that love affair" (Introduction xxvii).

30. The Desert: Further Studies in Natural Appearances. 1901. Introduction by Peter Wild. Baltimore: (The Johns Hopkins University Press,). 1999. "Neither the man nor his much-praised book are what people popularly have imagined through a century of reading" (Introduction xxviii). Note that the pagination in Van Dyke's Preface-Dedication differs from that of the original imprint. This edition contains the first index ever printed to The Desert.

31. Desert Sky and Clouds. Broadside. Flagstaff, Arizona: (Northland Press,). 1979. Quotes four paragraphs from The Desert (102-04). According to Van Dyke, desert clouds form "Great bands of orange, green, and blue that all the melted and fused gems in the world could not match for translucent beauty" (104). A note below the quotation on the broadside, to bottom right, reads: "This passage from The Desert, 1901, was chosen by Lawrence Clark Powell and designed by Ward Ritchie as Northland Press Occasional Broadside Number 1, Flagstaff, Arizona, 1979."
Travelers through the Southwest will wonder that the skies there often fall far short of Van Dyke's moving fantasia in prose. In any case, this broadside is extremely rare. I located it in only two holdings. See Archival Sources, Indiana University and Yale University.

32. The Development of the History of Art. Congress of Arts and Science, Universal Exposition, St. Louis, edited by Howard J. Rogers. (ed.) Boston: (Houghton Mifflin,). 1906. 3: 577-88. Wielding his two-handed broadax, Van Dyke charges forth, bloodying art historians from Furtwä#x00E4;ngler to Berenson who make the facts fit their theories. There is a noble place for the imagination in art history, but it "has by continuous abuse become little short of a vice."
The hope lies in people, such as himself, who practice ‘‘impartial investigation’’ (586) and thus can tell the ignorant public ‘‘what is good and what is bad, what is to be admired, and what is to be shunned’’ (587). But Van Dyke is a complex man. Counterbalancing this noble goal was Van Dyke's rascality, for Professor Furtwä#x00E4;ngler was in the audience, a delicious moment for Van Dyke [See 13, p. 85, 130].

33. Dutch Masterpieces. The Mentor 1.17 ( 9 June 1913): 1-10, 12-24. Analyzes works by Rembrandt, Hals, and others. "The pictures are valuable to the present generation because of their style, their spirit, their truth to a point of view, and most of all for their superb workmanship" (3).

34. Editor's Note. Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie, edited by John C. Van Dyke. (ed.) Boston: (Houghton Mifflin,). 1920. vii-viii. Van Dyke says that he did "little more than arrange" Carnegie's notes (vii). This is doubtful, witness Van Dyke's retelling in his own words of the McLuckie story (236-39). [See also 13, p. 96-97]. My The Homestead Strike and the Mexican Connection contradicts the above stories, follows McLuckie's activist career after the strike, and states the case why neither Carnegie nor Van Dyke are to be trusted on this vicious case of vengeance. Always worried about maintaining a positive public image, after this bloodiest of American strikes Carnegie was at pains to wash the stains of it from his hands for the rest of his life.

35. The Education of Teachers: Memoranda Prepared for the State Board. Trenton: (State Board of Education,). 1913. "The New Jersey State Schools for the training of teachers need enlargement, coordination and systematizing" (1). This rare little monograph, buried in Van Dyke's own library, shows the other side of the romantic writer, the earnest public servant who spent many unpaid years laboring to improve education for the masses. Backing himself with ample statistics, Van Dyke sounds downright progressive in lobbying to expand the school system and provide special courses for farmers and handicapped children. It's hard to believe that the same man also could write with hot, damaging bile elsewhere, as in The Money God.

36. An Exponent of Pre-Raphaelites. Review of Tuscan Songs. Translation and Illustrations by Francesca Alexander. The Dial 24.282 ( 16 March 1898): 177-78. Reviewing this collection of peasant

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songs, Van Dyke concentrates on the illustrations and turns his review into an attack on the Pre-Raphaelites and their "prophet," Ruskin. The movement has its charms, but they are small ones because adherents misunderstood the early Italian painters, imitating their faults rather than their virtues. So, too, with these illustrations, done by one of Ruskin's "disciples" (177). With their fixation on detail, they catch "the leaves upon the tree" but miss the "significance of the forest" (178). That is, basically, Van Dyke's complaint with Ruskin; fidelity to Nature's truths by an overweening recording of realistic details can turn into a hodge-podge missing Nature's greater, and far more satisfying, unities.

37. Florence: Critical Notes on the Galleries of the Uffizi, the Pitti, and the Academy. New Guides to Old Masters Series. New York: (Charles Scribner's Sons,). 1927. An effort to complete the series even after the bulk of it, published in 1914, had foundered.

38. Genre Painting in Literature. The Critic ( 4 October 1884): 157-58. In the modern day, both painting and literature have abandoned ideas in favor of technique. Van Dyke argues for a fusion of the two. Here is delicious sarcasm involving frogs and cans of sardines. Yet it seems a spate, Van Dyke's pen running away from him with the glory of its words, for he is countering his own bold advocacy elsewhere of beauty for its own sake and his often rough put-downs of realism, as in his Principles of Art (176).

39. George Inness. Outlook 73 ( 7 March 1903): 534-44. "He was very fond of moisture-laden air, rain effects, clouds clearing after rain." (539). A sympathetic appreciation of the landscapist's task and a keen evaluation of how he accomplished it.

40. The Grand Canyon of the Colorado. The Southwest in Literature: An Anthology for High Schools. eds. Mabel Major (ed.) and Rebecca W. Smith. (ed.) New York: (Macmillan,). 1929. 321-26. This anthology reflecting the growth of regional pride reprints the first chapter of The Grand Canyon of the Colorado (1-10). Van Dyke's good company includes Mary Austin, John A. Lomax, and Charles F. Lummis.

41. The Grand Canyon of the Colorado: Recurrent Studies in Impressions and Appearances. Fifth volume in his Natural Appearances Series. New York: (Charles Scribner's Sons,). 1920. Likely with an eye to the recent establishment of the national park and the increased tourism in the American West during World War I, Van Dyke arrives pen in hand. The resulting book is something of an outlier in the series for combining rosy aesthetic passages with practical suggestions for viewing the Canyon. Modern aficionados praise Van Dyke for objecting to the alien names imposed upon canyon features (13-17) [See 179; 244; 263].

42. The Grand Canyon of the Colorado: Recurrent Studies in Impressions and Appearances. 1920. Foreword by Peter Wild. Salt Lake City: (University of Utah Press,). 1992. "[O]ne of Van Dyke's fortes was the ability to adjust his prose to fit the subject" (xviii). The Foreword goes on to discuss Van Dyke's peculiar personification of nature as a Great Goddess (xxii) and urges a comparison of Van Dyke's 18-21 with Dutton's 140-56 (xxvi) for their curious similarity.

43. Great Galleries of the World: The Louvre. The Mentor 3.14. ( 1915): 1-11, 13-24. Surveying The Louvre, Van Dyke shows delicate discrimination by placing this treasure in the context of Europe's other great collections.

44. Great Galleries of the World: The National Gallery, London. The Mentor 4.4 ( 1916): 1-24. From this exploration of a great gallery one senses Van Dyke's excitement at viewing genius.

45. Grimm's 'Michael Angelo'. Review of The Life of Michael Angelo, by Herman Grimm. The Book Buyer 13.11 ( December 1896): 737-39. This obscure book review shows Van Dyke capable of bright and generous intelligence, with fetching yet revelatory turns of phrase thrown into the bargain. The fine holiday edition confirms the excellence of a study published thirty years earlier: "It gives the period and the civilization that made Michael Angelo a possibility; it shows his intellectual atmosphere and his artistic elbow-room" (739).

46. Guinea Hens Poem. The Autobiography of John C. Van Dyke. Salt Lake City: (University of Utah Press,). 1993. 215 note 3. One of Van Dyke's less successful poetic efforts:

The guinea hens would run each day

Into the field of clover,

Pattering, chattering on their way

47. The High Alps. Scribner's Magazine 43.6 ( June 1908): 669-89. In this miniature of The Mountain, Van Dyke is at his sure ease in analyzing aesthetic seeing. The wonder we perceive in mountains springs from physics but exists independently of it, an arbitrary wholeness of pleasure divorced from its origins. So, once again, the "appearances" theme. Declares the alpenglow of morning the "perfect" picture (686). This fits with the influence of Turner.

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One can only wonder what daemon there at Scribner's impishly delighted in following this flight reveling in beauty with a short story by Van Dyke's archenemy Edith Wharton. The Verdict opens with an artist who has married a rich widow and ‘‘established himself in a villa on the Riviera (Though I rather thought it would have been Rome or Florence)’’ (689).

48. The Holiday Art Books. The Book Buyer 10.10 ( November 1893): 493-95. When he chose, Van Dyke overrode his stout dictum against the human element in art. In this exquisite piece on books for Christmas, he shows himself bibliophile, linguist, and art critic with nice tastes all at once. Emphasizing books whose illustrations illuminate the text, he doesn't ignore the text itself, commenting on the fluidity of translations from Hugo and Daudet, yet recommending (alas!) with good heart several volumes of his fellow poets, forgotten with great justification today.

49. How to Judge of a Picture: Familiar Talks in the Gallery with Uncritical Lovers of Art. New York: (Chautauqua,). 1888. Van Dyke holds forth with considerable technical detail on "the difference between pictures good and bad" (3). [For a note on some confusion surrounding the date of publication, see 13, p. 64, 224-25 note 3].

50. In Egypt: Studies and Sketches Along the Nile. New York: (Charles Scribner's Sons,). 1931. Van Dyke ends his tour of Egypt by cooking up, almost surely out of his imagination, a preposterous but engaging drama. Threatening gunplay, he compels his Arab guides to take him off the tourist track and into the wilds of the Egyptian desert (187-90). There, the seventy-five-year-old writer has a vision; a prepubescent peasant girl becomes a lute-strumming beauty (197-202). This second desert book makes an interesting comparison with his first [See 611].

51. In Java: And the Neighboring Islands of the Dutch East Indies. New York: (Charles Scribner's Sons,). 1929. Approves of Dutch colonialism, the lush tropical scenery, and the beautiful native women.

52. In the West Indies: Sketches and Studies in Tropic Seas and Islands. New York: (Charles Scribner's Sons,). 1932. His last book. Contrasting with In Java, Van Dyke criticizes exploitation of the natives (39-41, 90-92). Although his Autobiography growls about Winslow Homer's tropical palette (183), here Van Dyke nonetheless uses a Homer, The Coconut Palm, for his frontispiece.

53. The Increase in the Appreciation of Serious Art in America: A Paper Read before the Rembrandt Club. Brooklyn: (The Club,). 1889. In this printed speech, here he is, the gently witty and informative lecturer on his mission to uplift people through art, making a sharp distinction between art as clever entertainment and art that moves by speaking from the very soul of the artistic genius. However, be careful not to misunderstand Van Dyke here. He is not praising, as might first appear, realism or representational art per se but the artistic profundity expressed by a painting. In this, Van Dyke makes a good case, as reflected in his later American Painting and Its Tradition, that there was no true art in America before the European influence of his own day (15) caused an "awakening" (23) of the "present art-spirit" (25). Interestingly, Van Dyke takes a shot at Wilde and Whistler (15). [See 387 to compare with F. D. Millet's What Are Americans Doing in Art? published two years later. See 182 for Baldwin's happy notice of this presentation.]

54. Introduction. A Grammar of the Arts, by Sir Charles Holmes. New York: (Macmillan,). 1932. vii-xi. Introducing a glossary of artistic terms, Van Dyke takes the opportunity to huff about the traditional values of craftsmanship: "The old masters! They were not great because they were old but because they were masters" (ix). And now that he has his tie loosened, he gives us a special treat. Now he lets us know what he really thinks of modern art, as seen in the works of Modigliani and Picasso--names so horrid he rarely allows himself to utter them (x).

55. Introduction. Memoirs of Benvenuto Cellini. Translation by John Addington Symonds. New York: (D. Appleton,). 1899. iii-xi. The spirit of this swashbuckling Renaissance sculptor was "more fiery than Hotspur's, and he was always dropping tools and taking to horse to escape the consequences of some fatal fight" (v). Yet, as the bodies piled up, Cellini was proud of his deeds, never once thinking himself "a common rascal or sneak." In fact, "He told the truth as he knew it" (vii)--and there's virtue in that (and perhaps some of Van Dyke's rationalization of himself as well?).

56. Italian Painting. Boston: (A. W. Elson,). 1902. "This short monograph was written to accompany a series of fifty-nine large carbon photographs illustrating the progress of Italian painting, and is intended to be used as an introduction to the study of the pictures" (Publisher's Note, unpaged). The pictures appeared two years later in the gallery Renaissance Painting in Italy.

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57. The Jaws of the Desert. Unpublished manuscript. In yet another Van Dyke mystery, his Autobiography claims that The Jaws tells the "truth" about his desert travels and that he put the manuscript "in a table drawer" (139). No amount of opening table drawers in New Brunswick, however, has led to the manuscript; one wonders if Van Dyke was fabricating its existence.

58. John Ruskin. Library of the World's Best Literature, edited by Charles Dudley Warner. (ed.) New York: (International Society,). 1897. 32: 12509-16. Although Van Dyke went beyond Ruskin's fidelity to nature, he writes an even-tempered and informed appreciation of Ruskin, praising his "stimulus and hopeful inspiration in many fields" (12516).

59. Joseph Pennell. Commemorative Tributes of the American Academy of Arts and Letters: 1905- 1941. New York: (American Academy of Arts and Letters,). 1942. 200-07. Illustrator and Van Dyke's long-time friend, Pennell advocated "a bettering of that which had been received from the past" (200).

60. The Last Will and Testament of John C. Van Dyke. Dated 8 April 1932. Proved 12 December 1932. (Surrogate Court of Middlesex County,). New Brunswick, New Jersey. Although the powerful Van Dyke family is assumed to have been well-off, he must have garnered a good income from his vigorous book sales, and the course of Van Dyke's life certainly indicates little concern for finances, his will does not enumerate his wealth. Van Dyke bequeaths $1,000 to his housekeeper and the same sum to each of his five nephews and nieces. Beyond that, the rest of his estate, "real and personal," goes to "god-child" (daughter) Clare Van Dyke Parr. This important hint, however, has not panned out in tracing the whereabouts of the bulk of Van Dyke's personal papers. Some years ago, an elderly Van Dyke relative, now deceased, told me that after Van Dyke died Clare arrived with a truck and hauled off his possessions, supposedly to Yonkers, New York, where she lived. [See 414 and 415 for more of this trail, leading to at least one fruitful discovery, in the wills of Clare Van Dyke Parr and of her husband, Harry L. Parr.]

61. Letter. Bulletin of the College Art Association of America 4 ( September 1918): 75-83. Not without his own humor, Van Dyke thunders back to iconoclast Dana: "There are plenty of principles of art. Didn't I write a whole book full of them" (76)?

62. Letter. New York Times ( 30 January 1924): 18. In response to Van Dyke's Who Painted This Old Woman?, Bryson Burroughs claims in the Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art that the Old Woman Cutting Her Nails was not repainted by an unknown restorer as Van Dyke asserts. Not to let a target slip him by, Van Dyke shoots back by enclosing a letter from Maximilian Toch, a specialist in the chemistry of painting, supporting Van Dyke's case.

63. The Life and Times of Correggio. Review of Antonio Allegri da Correggio: His Life, His Friends, and His Times, by Corrado Ricci. The Dial 20.230 ( 16 January 1896): 41-43. Although no brilliant breakthrough, Dr. Ricci's work sums up past scholarship, producing "the best [book] yet published" about the Renaissance painter (41). The review's sympathy for the subject's fascination with "form and color" and his tendency toward sentimentality perhaps correspond with the reviewer's own bent? (43). Note on this page the echo of the "lover" theme from Van Dyke's The Desert (xi).

64. Life of the Sea. The Mentor 9 ( August 1921): 24-28. Two poles of Van Dyke's thought, science and aestheticism, are seen here as not necessarily in conflict. In at least implying that he believes life sprung from "an opalescent mucus" in the sea (24), Van Dyke signals his acceptance of evolution (24, 26); yet this does not diminish the mystery with which he regards the oceans (26).

65. Lincoln's Reading and Modesty. Century Magazine 81.4 ( February 1911): 597-98. Contrary to the myth of the book-starved young Lincoln, Van Dyke asserts "there were plenty of books in Illinois in Lincoln's day" (597). Although perhaps he would object to the word "plenty," Western historian Wallace Stegner generally seconds Van Dyke. In any case, both agree that Lincoln was a relatively well-read young man.
The piece also reflects Van Dyke's pride in his family's association with Lincoln. [See 13, p. ix, x, 11-15, 31-32, 40, 213 note 3]. Here, Van Dyke notes Lincoln memorabilia owned by the family and that rancher brother Theodore owned a Lincoln letter (13). It likely went up in one of the several fires that plagued the isolated ranch. [For a tour of the ranch with Theodore's grandson and a discussion of these issues, see 602, Addendum of 1996, p. 96-118].

66. London: Critical Notes on the National Gallery and the Wallace Collection, with a General Introduction and Bibliography for the Series. New

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Guides to Old Masters Series. New York: (Charles Scribner's Sons,). 1914. This is the flagship volume in a series of handy, pocket-sized guidebooks to some of Europe's most famous art museums. In this series, Van Dyke scrutinizes "every picture from Madrid to St. Petersburg" [See 13, p. 155]. The guides' concise and powerful comments direct American tourists, their numbers increasing but their eyes unschooled, toward the special features of each painting. As fate would have it, Scribner's published the bulk of the series in 1914, just as World War I began, thus creating Van Dyke's worst publishing failure. The pain of it was too great even for Van Dyke to hide (155-56).

67. The Lotto Portrait of Columbus. Century Magazine 44 ( October 1892): 802, 818-22. Van Dyke rushed manfully and gleefully into public disputes over art. Here, while being "shot at," he argues for the authenticity of a portrait of Columbus, by Italian Renaissance painter Lorenzo Lotto. For some reason, Van Dyke had gotten it into his head to push the portrait to be the emblem of the upcoming Chicago World's Fair of 1893. Years later, Van Dyke gloated at his success. At his urging the image was put "on all the tickets, diplomas, medals, and coins of the Fair" [See 13, p. 83]. Regarding such triumphs, Van Dyke both disdained the crowd and gloried in its applause. As he put it, he liked "the shout of the man in the street" (181). [As to the Lotto tempest, see 13, p. 82-83. See also 192; 232; 233; 295; 391; 428; 525; and 639. The listing in the Archival Sources for the James W. Ellsworth Papers at the Chicago Public Library provides further background. Together, they reflect the uncertainty surrounding the adamancy of Van Dyke's stance].

68. The Madonna in Art. The Mentor 5.4 ( 1917): 1-11, 13-24. Assesses the various artistic treatments of the Madonna down through history.

69. The Madonna in Italian Art. The Ladies' Home Journal 21.1 ( December 1903): 32-33. Six months after "The Story of ..." series he wrote for this popular magazine ends, Van Dyke appears again, this time with a big splash--a two-page spread of ten Italian Madonnas by Italian masters, captioned and illustrated with wreaths of holly for the Christmas season.

70. Madrid: Critical Notes on the Prado. New Guides to Old Masters Series. New York: (Charles Scribner's Sons,). 1914.

71. The Making of Library Catalogs. The Library Journal 10.6 ( June 1885): 126-27. Mounting the pedestal of the enlightened iconoclast, Van Dyke storms against catalogs using ramifying classifications. Instead, he promotes an encyclopedic system arranged alphabetically by author, title, and subject. This way the holdings of a library, he assures us, will be accessible even to "the veriest dunce" (127).

72. The Meadows: Familiar Studies of the Commonplace. Sixth and final volume in his Natural Appearances Series. New York: (Charles Scribner's Sons,). 1926. Pleasant strolls with the aging professor over the fields and hilly woodlands surrounding the spires of Van Dyke's beloved college town. A book of winning modesty and aesthetic grace. [For modern changes visited upon Van Dyke's idyllic landscape, see 598].

73. The Meaning of Pictures: Six Lectures Given for Columbia University at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: (Charles Scribner's Sons,). 1903. "The 'real' is nature itself, and 'truth' is merely the report of nature made by man" (4).

74. Memorial Exhibition of the Works of the Late Joseph Pennell: Held Under the Auspices of the Philadelphia Print Club and The Pennsylvania Museum, in Memorial Hall, Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, from October 1st to October 31st, 1926. 15-20. Van Dyke praises Pennell for his precocious admiration of Martin Rico, a fascination setting the young artist on the right course (16-17). Of Pennell's prodigious output, Van Dyke tips his hat as one who knows: "Almost anyone can do one thing fairly well if he hammers at it long enough, but to do a thousand things and do them well,--that is quite another story" (19).

75. Modern Art and Isms. The Mentor 9 ( October 1921): 32-33. A brief but important article because it shows that Van Dyke, despite his ignoring them almost completely elsewhere in his writings, studied such new movements as Cubism and Futurism and at least partially understood their techniques while not grasping the impulses behind them. "Attempts to follow the recent movements in painting lead nowhere, because the movers themselves do not quite know where they are moving. There is Babel and discord" (32).

76. Modern Art Criticism. Review of Masterpieces of Greek Sculpture, by Adolf Furtwängler. The Dial 19.219 ( 1 August 1895): 70-74. As would a wrathy parent, Van Dyke praises one moment, damns the next. Professor Furtwä#x00E4;ngler's revisionist study changing the attributions of some Greek sculptures is pretty good, but it should be better. The problem is that in using the "scientific method" to identify artists, critics swell up until they're blinded by their

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own "vast superfluidity of arrogance" n="41"/> own "vast superfluidity of arrogance" (71). Commanding far more virtue, Van Dyke will show us how to do it right, avoiding such personal failings when he applies the same method in his Rembrandt studies.

77. The Money God: Chapters of Heresy and Dissent Concerning Business Methods and Mercenary Ideals in American Life. New York: (Charles Scribner's Sons,). 1908. If The Meadows is one pole of Van Dyke, this is the other. In his embarrassing tantrum, Van Dyke rends his garments over people's stupidity and greed and in the process manages to damn just about every race, class, and occupation--all except Andrew Carnegie, presented as a model of tolerance and generosity. The magnate gives his full-blown ideas about the purpose of money in The Gospel of Wealth.

78. The Mountain: Renewed Studies in Impressions and Appearances. The fourth volume in his Natural Appearances Series. New York: (Charles Scribner's Sons,). 1916. A treatise on the aesthetics of mountains around the world. Stretching the bounds of the book's scope, the first chapter is a fictional, if colorful and convincing, account--actually, the best I've ever read--of hunting buffalo across the great plains with a band of Sioux Indians (1-19). [For a Van Dyke article offering The Mountain in miniature, see 47].

79. The Mountain: Renewed Studies in Impressions and Appearances. 1916 Foreword by Peter Wild. Salt Lake City: (University of Utah Press,). 1992. The Foreword explores how Van Dyke "manages to write whole books about the aesthetic pleasures of viewing oceans or mountains without boring his reader" (xii).

80. Mr. Sargent's Most Popular Picture. The Ladies' Home Journal 21.6 ( May 1908): 25. Want to know which painting Van Dyke thought was "the very last word in skill, style and learning"? It's Sargent's Carnation Lily, Lily Rose. The execution perfectly fits the subject, two little girls lighting Japanese lanterns at dusk in a garden of flowers. More abstractly, the canvas is "a tale of light and color". Rightly so, Van Dyke's exuberation knows no bounds. And don't miss the rare reference in Van Dyke to music, here to the Götterdä#x00E4;mmerung(Is this telling?).

81. Munich, Frankfort, Cassel: Critical Notes on the Old Pinacothek, the Staedel Institute, the Cassel Royal Gallery. New Guides to Old Masters Series. New York: (Charles Scribner's Sons,). 1914.

82. My Experiences on the Desert: Extracts from an Unpublished Autobiography. Progressive Arizona 11.11 ( October 1931): 3-5, 18, 19. Excerpt from the manuscript of My Golden Age, appearing long after Van Dyke's death as his Autobiography (118-23) but first published here, somewhat curiously, in a rather obscure magazine. One wonders if for some reason Van Dyke was having difficulty finding a publisher for My Golden Age. On the other hand, about this time Scribner's continued to issue his travel books, such as In Egypt ( 1931) and In the West Indies ( 1932), certainly a risk as the Great Depression lengthened and few people could afford to travel. In any case, this magazine publication follows the handwritten revisions on the original, holograph manuscript of My Golden Age.

83. My Golden Age: A Personal Narrative of American Life from 1861 to 1931. Manuscript published in 1993 as The Autobiography of John C. Van Dyke: A Personal Narrative of American Life, 1861 to 1931. The manuscript exists in various forms and may be found in several places. The original, holograph manuscript is at the New Brunswick Theological Seminary's Gardner A. Sage Library. The original typescript is owned by a Van Dyke relative. Photocopies of the typescript are at the New Jersey Historical Society and at the Western Theological Seminary. A photocopy of the original holograph manuscript and a partial transcription in typescript made from it are in the holdings of the University of Arizona. See also Archival Sources. [For the history and editing of the manuscript see the editor's Introduction in 13, p. xxiv-xxvii. See also 615].

84. Nature for Its Own Sake: First Studies in Natural Appearances. The first volume in Van Dyke's Natural Appearances Series. New York: (Charles Scribner's Sons,). 1898. Echoing his Art for Art's Sake, yet going beyond it, Van Dyke celebrates nature's beauty as the highest good. By stating that "The forms and colors of this earth need no association with mankind to make them beautiful" (x), Van Dyke establishes a fruitful contradiction running throughout his life. On the one hand, the beauty of nature is sufficient to itself; on the other, art consists of the artist's modifications of what he sees. Given Van Dyke's later track record, one does wonder, at least in passing, if by this stage of his life the author had, indeed, visited all the exotic places around the world whose beauty he hails in these pages.

85. The New New York: A Commentary on the Place and the People. Illustrated by Joseph Pennell. New York: (Macmillan,). 1909. From New Brunswick Van

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Dyke had a convenient commute by train to New York City, where he spent considerable time socializing and politicking in the arts. Somewhat startlingly, from this volume one would think traditionalist Van Dyke had become a neoteric. While including some frank discussions of the city's urban problems, the lovely book compares the picturesqueness of skyscraper New York City with the glories of Constantinople--quite a leap, but Van Dyke is convincing nonetheless in his aesthetic achievement. I have often suspected, but cannot prove, that this book was a lovely sop thrown to those, many of them living in New York City, upset by the savagery of The Money God, published the year before.

86. Notes on the Sage Library of the Theological Seminary at New Brunswick. Reformed Church Seminary Publication, No. 1. New Brunswick: (The Reformed Church in America,). 1888. Two years after he was appointed director of the august Gardner A. Sage Library, young Van Dyke shows that he has hit the deck running by issuing this pamphlet celebrating the collection and asking for donations. At the time, the library's holdings were remarkable, ranging from hermeneutics through the fine arts, from the Egyptian Book of the Dead on papyrus to a copy of the double-elephant folio of Audubon's The Birds of America. And don't miss Van Dyke's inimitable humor (25). An activist librarian and the greatest fundraiser the Seminary has ever seen, Van Dyke would turn the Sage into a wonder of light, installing stained-glass windows and completing the original architectural plan of the Library by adding its transept [See also 112 for his later The Sage Library]. But not everyone, including Rev. Daniel Meeter, has been pleased with Van Dyke's aesthetic drive and secular emphasis. Much more on Van Dyke and his surprising relationship with the Reformed Church is in the first and second installments of my Interviews and Notes Regarding John C. Van Dyke [See 602].

87. Of Truths and Beauties. The Critic 10 ( 28 July 1888): 37. Taking the issue quite seriously, a young Van Dyke argues that artistic truth is not the singular possession either of the realists or the idealists but particular to each individual artist. Each should act upon "the truth of his own impressions and convictions." This slippery stance illustrates at once the appeal and the sogginess of Art for Art's Sake. It also shows why Van Dyke shrugs in The Desert that all he can do is give his "impression" of what he sees (xi)--an impression which, contradicting all this, he came to believe was finer than anyone else's. Some animals are more equal than others.

88. Old Dutch and Flemish Masters, Engraved by Timothy Cole. New York: (Century,). 1895. The artists discussed range from Frans Hals to David Teniers, the Younger. Van Dyke knew about grace. As with the following, this volume is a delight to hold and leaf through.

89. Old English Masters, Engraved by Timothy Cole. New York: (Century,). 1902. Successfully applies the approach of the earlier Old Dutch and Flemish Masters. Artists discussed range from Hogarth to Landseer. In this achievement of comprehensive art criticism, Van Dyke treats most of his subjects with Apollonian equanimity. However, the nearly dithyrambic chapter on Turner (173-87), of anything anywhere else, best reveals Van Dyke's excited way of seeing when writing The Desert [See 601].

90. Old Masters that Are Not Old Masters (Part 3 of the series, Plain Talks about the Old Masters). The Ladies' Home Journal 23.12 ( November 1906): 23. For the bewildered ladies of the Journal, now all is as shifting sand. They can't trust the labels in museums, many of them harboring works falsely attributed to the Greats, at times deceptions purposefully continued to maintain the institutions' prestige. For an alexipharmic, Van Dyke in particular recommends Bernard Berenson's guides. All this foreshadowing the upset years later of Rembrandt and His School [See 106].

91. The Opal Sea: Continued Studies in Impressions and Appearances. Third volume in his Natural Appearances Series. New York: (Charles Scribner's Sons,). 1906. The beauties of the world's seas described with a painterly eye.

92. The Open Spaces: Incidents of Nights and Days Under the Blue Sky. New York: (Charles Scribner's Sons,). 1922. Showing how he got the drop on bandits and rode wildly over the plains with the toughest of cowboys, Van Dyke would lead his readers to believe that he was a stalwart frontiersman. He likely was embroidering stories told him by brother Theodore, a true outdoorsman, and offering them as his own in print. Consult the Archival Sources for copies of correspondence between the two in the Mojave Desert Heritage and Cultural Association.

93. The Open Spaces: Incidents of Nights and Days Under the Blue Sky. 1922. Foreword by Peter Wild. Salt Lake City: (University of Utah Press,). 1991. "The achievement of Van Dyke's books is not so much that they inform us as that they change us, teaching us to see and hear more and in ways that ever after enrich our own experiences in nature" (Foreword xiii).

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94. Painting at the Fair. Century Magazine 48.26 ( July 1894): 439-47. In this remarkably enlightened and balanced essay, Van Dyke surveys the art at the Chicago World's Fair of 1893. His conclusion: If we only can get past the impulse for decadence, a bright future lies ahead for American art.

95. Paris: Critical Notes on the Louvre. New Guides to Old Masters Series. New York: (Charles Scribner's Sons,). 1914.

96. Philadelphia Art Exhibition. New York Evening Post ( 6 January 1896): 7. Van Dyke's even-tempered and mostly favorable review of the exhibit especially praises Winslow Homer for his Northeaster, a marine. Van Dyke also likes a canvas by a Mr. Deming, of Indians on horseback, for "the feeling of night and danger in it."

97. The Piazetta Poem. The Autobiography of John C. Van Dyke. Salt Lake City: (University of Utah Press,). 1993. 153-54. In this piece of moving nostalgia in the Ubi sunt? mode, the aging poet wanders the streets of Venice remembering old friends and more gracious days:

I walk alone, I am the last.

I know not this new ebb and flow,

But--was that wrinkled hag that passed

The flower girl of long ago?

[See 313; 314; 322; 420; 535; and 587 for more on Van Dyke's infatuation with Venice and Italy].

98. Plain Talks about the Old Masters (Part 1). The Ladies' Home Journal 23.10 ( September 1906): 6. Galleries often are responsible for our false viewing of pictures. The Old Masters created canvases to be hung in specific places and under specific conditions in churches and palaces. Now gathered in museums, the paintings exist in a great jumble, at war with one another, often under the wrong lighting, and not seen from a sufficient distance. On this affliction to art, some progress is being made, as at the Louvre.

99. Plain Talks about the Old Masters (Part 2). The Ladies' Home Journal 23.11 ( October 1906): 23. "Many of the noblest and the best of pictures have been almost destroyed by time and bad restoration. The Mona Lisa... is only a pale ghost of its former self. All the carnations of the face have flown and given place to leaden hues... almost scrubbed out of existence by cleaners' hands and a whatnot of chemicals." There follows a short course on the dangers and benefits of restoration.

100. Principles of Art. New York: (Fords, Howard, and Hulbert,). 1887. In this discourse on art history and theory, Van Dyke thumps that realism is "the lowest and most contemptible form of art" (176).

101. Raphael. The Mentor 4.14 ( 1916): 1-11, 12, 13-24. Raphael "appeared in the noontide of the Renaissance, drew all eyes by his radiant genius, and then, before twilight had set in, passed out in splendor as a star in the blue" (1). Van Dyke explains the why of all this.

102. The Raritan: Notes on a River and a Family. New Brunswick: privately printed, 1915. A family history rich with moving sentiments about how generations of Van Dykes lived close to the land. Essayist, poet, and Van Dyke cousin, Henry van Dyke, however, politely questioned its accuracy [See 524, p. 58-59]. In any case, don't miss the surprisingly frank self-portrait. Although "Nature has proved the most lasting love of all" (86), Van Dyke and his brothers inherited "a nervous morbidity," "a bleak pessimism," and a sense of failure (87). Interestingly for a family history, the dedication is "To C. V. D. P., With Much Love," that is, to Clare Van Dyke Parr, Van Dyke's daughter out of wedlock.

103. Recent American Sculpture. The Century Magazine 52.1 ( May 1896): 89, 158-59. Considering all his storms against representational art, it's a little unsettling to behold Van Dyke here praising the execution of a monument presenting the figures of Poetry and Patriotism flanking the dour form of Mother Ireland. What to make of it? Recall his own clichéd poetry? Or perhaps, as in Old English Masters, he bent his theories when convenient to accommodate popular taste [See 20 for his more sophisticated analysis, emphasizing the abstract beauties, in The Century's American Artist Series].

104. Rembrandt. The Mentor 4.20 ( 1916): 1-11, 13-24. In this appreciation of the Master, Van Dyke gives inklings of his stormy Rembrandt book to come: "Northern art has not had a critical search-light turned upon it. . . . When it does, the present catalogue of Rembrandt's will crumble" (11).

105. Rembrandt Again. Review of Rembrandt: His Life, His Work, His Time, by Emile Michel. The Dial 16.185 ( 1 March 1894): 139-41. The biography reminds Van Dyke of Agassiz, who reconstructed a rare fish on the evidence of a single bone. "Unfortunately, M. Michel's historic method is not so satisfying" (139). Nonetheless, Van Dyke separates the metal from the dross, pointing out the book's areas

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of usefulness. Again, a reflection of Van Dyke? He honors Rembrandt for his wayward individualism and his beauty-creating distortions (140).

106. Rembrandt and His School: A Critical Study of the Master and His Pupils with a New Assignment of Their Pictures. New York: (Charles Scribner's Sons,). 1923. The book caused the greatest public furor of Van Dyke's writing career by greatly reducing the number of works by Rembrandt, thus not only wounding critics' pride but collectors' pocketbooks. Van Dyke took the heat well, all but rejoicing in the stir he'd created [See 13, p. 174-79]. Van Dyke may have been wrong in a number of the particulars but right in his main thrust. The debate over Rembrandt's oeuvre continues [See 160, 181].

107. The Rembrandt Drawings and Etchings, with Critical Reassignments to Pupils and Followers. New York: (Charles Scribner's Sons,). 1927. A companion volume to the above. "It was received with hostility like its predecessor," but "I had...set people thinking" [See 13, p. 178].

108. Renaissance Painting in Italy: A Catalogue of Carbon Photographs with Descriptions by John C. Van Dyke, L.H.D. New York: (A. W. Elson,). 1904. This gallery of illustrations is intended to be introduced by Van Dyke's monograph Italian Painting. Here, the famous paintings of the Italian Renaissance printed one to a page, each with Van Dyke's one-page comment opposite. These would be handy for the courses in art history then appearing in college curricula. Consequently, the publisher offers the photographs for sale enlarged in "A and B sizes, at $10 and $5 respectively" (xi). The idea is to "raise the public appreciation of the best in art" (v), although, despite this high aim, Van Dyke had a sharp eye out for schemes to turn a few extra shekels now and then to supplement his two regular incomes. For example, see The Frick Art and Historical Center, in the Archival Sources.
Van Dyke held no earned academic degree. The L.H.D. (Doctor of the Humanities) attached to Van Dyke's name here is the honorary degree conferred on him by Rutgers.

109. Return of the Victorious Pharaoh to Thebes Poem. The Critic 23 ( August 1884): 91. A valiant poetic effort:

In a cloud of dust, in a brazen flame,

The conquering monarch of Egypt came!

Yet to be fair, although the poem fails to explore any new intellectual or aesthetic territory, once it warms to its subject the piece begins rumbling, gaining power, stretching the reader's vision out to see--almost in anticipation of a Cecil B. DeMille film--a vast panorama of soldiers advancing until "the earth and the sky seemed one helmeted rim."

110. The Romance of Rembrandt's Life. The Ladies' Home Journal 23.8 ( July 1906): 20. With a powerful opening paragraph, Van Dyke shows that romance is an illusion, although a sustaining one, even when imposed on past figures. Thus, our humanity deepened, we follow the trajectory of Rembrandt's life, from the whirl of his great love, Saskia, and through her early death to the painter's sad and bankrupt closing years. A moving piece revealing a glimpse of human comprehension not often seen in Van Dyke's writing.

111. Rome: Critical Notes on the Borghese Gallery, the Vatican Gallery, the Stanze and Loggie, the Borgia Apartments. New Guides to Old Masters Series. New York: (Charles Scribner's Sons,). 1924. Another attempt to revive the failed series.

112. The Sage Library: Its Books, Manuscripts and Portraits. Special issue of New Brunswick Seminary Bulletin 6.1 ( April 1931). A history of the library from the beginning of the Seminary of the Reformed Church in America in 1784 through Van Dyke's tenure. He took the Gardner A. Sage Library, originally a rather dour affair, and converted it into a cathedral of airy light, its statuary and fine paintings bathed in the colored glow streaming down from high, stained-glass windows. And so it remains today.

113. Sargent the Portrait Painter. Outlook 74 ( 2 May 1903): 31-39. "Mr. Sargent's whole style is more Parisian than anything else .... He has never been led away by new movements, nor has he sympathized with mere fads" (39).

114. The Silent River That Runs Through the American Wonderland. Los Angeles Times ( 1 January 1905): 10. Reprints Van Dyke's powerful The Silent River chapter from The Desert (63-76). Whoever wrote the brief introduction to the piece expresses a popular attitude of the day by having it both ways. The Colorado River is a noble giant, and although we may shed a tear for its passing, this exemplum of wild nature must give way to something better, the "throb and hum ... that accompany civilization and progress."

115. St. Petersburg: Critical Notes on the Hermitage. New Guides to Old Masters Series. New York: (Charles Scribner's Sons,). 1914.

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116. Still Waters. The Living Age ( 13 August 1898): 492-94. This excerpt of a few pages from Nature for Its Own Sake (188-96) shows the richness of Van Dyke's prose, how bravely it can stand up on its own. Includes a discriminating comparison of the canals of Holland and Venice.

117. The Story of Corot and the Orpheus. The Ladies' Home Journal 21.3 ( February 1904): 19. Picking up on his piece in the issue from the month before, Van Dyke compares the dour, earth-stained Millet with the airy Corot, who painted "a dreamland of Olympian groves." However, Van Dyke might thump his critical dicta elsewhere, he now impresses with his generosity in wide taste and the depth of his background knowledge.

118. The Story of Correggio's Holy Night. The Ladies' Home Journal 20.7 ( January 1903): 19. Besides the usual aesthetic analysis, Van Dyke gives us the tang of intrigue. The picture was so envied that the reigning family in the area tried to get its clutches on the altarpiece, but the clergy resisted. Finally, a conniving duke had it stolen and spirited off to Modena. The previous month's issue announced this article as the last of the series.

119. The Story of Leonardo's Mona Lisa. The Ladies' Home Journal 20.3 ( February 1903): 4. Contrary to the legend, Leonardo was not the dreamy, dilatory artist of painting lore who took four years to complete this picture. Rather, he "saw much of the fair lady and .. .painted her in those four years not once but many times." Explains the wonder of the Mona Lisa's hands and why she has lost her lovely coloring.

120. The Story of Millet's Gleaners. The Ladies' Home Journal 21.2 ( January 1904): 18. America's housewives aspiring to "culture" receive instruction on the fine points of art. Surrounded by ads for radiators and Amour's Extract of Beef, Van Dyke shows that he will do so without condescension. Using a famous painting as his subject, in this first lesson he makes careful distinctions between everyday and artistic truths and trains unschooled eyes how to perceive the niceties of color and composition.

121. The Story of Rembrandt's Night Watch. The Ladies' Home Journal 20.6 ( May 1903): 17. Van Dyke straightens us out on a number of points concerning this well-known work. The painting neither takes place at night nor is it of a watch but of "a group of portraits of the Civic Guard of Amsterdam," for which Rembrandt received sixteen hundred florins. Even at that fee, however, he botched the job. As "the slave of his own method," he could not make his usual handling of light, successful in single portraits, work in this larger canvas of many figures. For all that, his brilliant textures and sense of dashing men would in themselves "make the reputation of a dozen artists."

122. The Story of Rubens's Descent from the Cross. The Ladies' Home Journal 20.4 ( March 1903): 19. American tourists in Europe's museums walk past "miles and miles of canvases" without understanding them. Van Dyke will be our corrective. First, viewers need to appreciate the religious impulse of the time. Paintings were meant to inspire holy awe in illiterate peasants. Second, the technical aspects affecting this: "Rubens planned the long diagonal line in this group that you might feel the fall of the body."

123. The Story of the Pine. New York: (Authors Club,). 1893. As is true of many a cynic, the later Van Dyke hid, but did not overcome, a thick swatch of sentiment in his heart. This brief early tale is about a love affair between a pine tree and a birch tree. Note the dripping sentiment of his childhood memory in the Autobiography [See 13, p. 26]. For how he curbed, but never conquered, this streak in his writing [See 13, p. 225-26 note 5].

124. The Story of the Sistine Madonna. The Ladies' Home Journal 20.2 ( January 1903): 6. Not "one person in a hundred fully understands" this eminent oil by Raphael. Therefore, Van Dyke instructs us, telling how (so it is said) Raphael saw the painting in a dream; how it was designed to fit its place as an altarpiece, the Child held high by the Madonna so that the congregation could see Him; why Santa Barbara is there and why she is kneeling, etc. A clear and thorough exegesis.

125. The Story of Titian's Entombment. The Ladies' Home Journal 20.5 ( April 1903): 4. The cover for this Easter issue features a huge rabbit looking out with a magisterial eye, but Van Dyke has serious business at hand. The Entombment seems dull, offering little of story interest. But "Look at the figures merely as figures, and have you ever seen, aside from Greek sculpture, grander, fuller, more imposing forms than these? Note the strong heads and necks and shoulders, the firm hands and arms and feet."

126. The Story of Watt's Love and Death. The Ladies' Home Journal 21.12 ( November 1904): 26.

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Sawing back and forth on the issue of realism versus pure asethetics, Van Dyke contradicts his candescent statements elsewhere by asking Why not have both? The he does a second radical thing. For the first time in the series, he offers negative words for the subject before the article, in this case a work of clumsy skills--as clunky as a poem by Walt Whitman!

127. Studies in Pictures: An Introduction to the Famous Galleries. New York: (Charles Scribner's Sons,). 1907. A guide for unschooled tourists to European galleries, educating them to see the paintings "truly," "adequately," and "justly" (v).

128. Suggestiveness in Art. The New Englander 14.1 ( January 1889): 29-42. Science is fine enough in its own realm, but its successes have led "the masses" to honor factualness in art, too. Arguing to the contrary, Van Dyke points to broken fragments of Greek statuary that lead the mind on beyond the actual. His reminder: "the expressive arts have to do with the realm of the imagination, and their province is to please by stimulating the imagination of the beholder" (29).

129. Syllabus of Lectures on Old Italian and Modern French Painting, Historically and Critically Considered, Delivered during the Second Session, 1891- 1892. New York: (Columbia College,). 1892. A study in contrasts, Van Dyke created tensions both in his life and work by opposing a hyperactive romanticism with a compulsion for order. The latter clearly is evident in the details of this twenty-three-page syllabus for a course in art history. Many tables of contents in his books exhibit the same drive. Interestingly, from the outline of the last lecture it seems that Van Dyke saw much of art as a back-and-forth battle between romanticism and classicism.

130. A Text-Book of the History of Painting. College Histories of Art Series. New York: (Longmanns, Green,). 1894. A textbook discussing hundreds of painters throughout the centuries of Western art. In addition to writing this volume on painting for the series, Van Dyke served as editor for two related studies, one on architecture by Hamlin, another about sculpture by Marquand and Frothingham. In his Autobiography Van Dyke rejoices over the success of the three books and tells how it inspired the idea for putting together Modern French Masters [See 13, p. 108-10].

131. The Times Home Study Circle. The World's Great Artists. Rubens. Los Angeles Times ( 19 April 1899): 7. The Times invited authorities in the field to contribute articles in a series on famous artists. In this two-part discussion Van Dyke shows his keen way with words and thought. By Rubens' time pietism was out, exuberance in: "There was no more of painting soul well by painting body ill."

132. The Times Home Study Circle. The World's Great Artists. Rubens. Los Angeles Times ( 26 April 1899): 7. Van Dyke concludes the Rubens lecture with a drum roll. Rubens' colors are "radiant with light and will make the hues of any other master look washed out."

133. The Times Home Study Circle. The World's Great Artists. Rembrandt. Los Angeles Times ( 3 May 1899): 7. In this second two-parter, Van Dyke explores how culture and economics shaped Rembrandt's work. For instance, because of their Protestant misgivings the Dutch did not decorate their churches with paintings. Without that income enjoyed by many of his Italian brethren, Rembrandt turned to the business of portraiture and income from taking on students.

134. The Times Home Study Circle. The World's Great Artists. Rembrandt. Los Angeles Times ( 10 May 1899): 7. Concluding his comments on the Great Master, Van Dyke shows himself the romantic by arguing that Rembrandt's paintings reflect the emotional changes of his life. "[A]s he advanced in years he kept growing more profound in his thoughts, his emotions, his art."

135. Titian's Flora. Century Magazine 51.2 ( December 1895): 318-19. A splendid example of Van Dyke's scalpel-knife seeing.

136. Two Private Collections in Paris. The Art Review. 2.4 ( December 1887): 61-73. This is, bar none, the best art criticism by Van Dyke, showing his keenness of vision, primitive strength, and catholic comprehension. And all this at the age of thirty-one!
He may say that ‘‘A painting should appeal to no other sense than sight’’ (67), but his emphasis points to a profundity beyond mere optical excitements. A painting may be realistic, but its sentimental story or technique aside, what really counts is that a canvas reverberate with the essence of the subject and/or with the passion of an artist's soul worthy of being revealed. (Such was his approach in The Desert.) With this liberality he praises what matters in painters as different as Millet, Delacroix, and Constable. Van Dyke's sweet generosity here almost has us forgiving his slipperiness elsewhere.

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137. Venice, Milan: Critical Notes on the Venice Academy, the Brera Gallery, the Poldi-Pezzoli Museum. New Guides to Old Masters Series. New York: (Charles Scribner's Sons,). 1924.

138. Vienna, Budapest: Critical Notes on the Imperial Gallery and Budapest Museum. New Guides to Old Masters Series. New York: (Charles Scribner's Sons,). 1914.

139. Wanted--The Data of Criticism. The Studio 2.47 ( 24 November 1883): 232-35. Even as a youth, Van Dyke could be a volcano blowing its top. Critics, "knights of the order of the grey goose quill," sling their unfounded opinions about at will, while the public is "quite willing to have the critics suggest what it should think" (232). There is a humorous aspect to this blustering, since Van Dyke staunchly saw himself--not as a volcano--but as a fount whose truths should be accepted simply on the authority of their source.

140. What a Burne-Jones Picture Means. The Ladies' Home Journal 21.5 ( April 1904): 23. Usually on hair trigger for the Pre-Raphaelites, Van Dyke here eases up a bit for a painter of medieval romance whose sentimentalism likely struck a chord with Van Dyke's own maudlin streak. Then, too, Burne-Jones took reality as a departure point for the imagination, a reminder of words from The Desert: "The reality is one thing, the appearance quite another" (109).

141. What Do These Old Pictures Mean? (Part 4 of the series, Plain Talks About the Old Masters). The Ladies Home Journal 24.2 ( January 1907: 21. The frequent question, "What does this picture mean?", often may be the wrong one. We may well not share the religious significance a canvas had for its time, or, indeed, the significance may be entirely lost. What counts is our pleasure at its artistry. And there's another benefit. The Old Masters painted the scenes and people they knew and loved. The glowing angel's face may be that of the artist's mistress. Hence, we have not only an historical record of dress and furnishings but vibrant, human portraits. Also knocks the Pre-Raphaelites: "The grasp at the little things of fact is a gain in trifles." Yet in the next month's piece, The Workmanship of the Great Artists, he praises crafted detail as "art in its very best sense."

142. What Is All This Talk About Whistler? The Ladies Home Journal 21.4 ( March 1904): 10. Only when "goaded by ignorant criticism ... as by Ruskin" did Whistler turn from a "sensitive man" into a "waspish character." So says Van Dyke. The public also has misunderstood Whistler's paintings, ingeniously contrived to transform a realistic subject into the different reality of "a harmonious scheme of color."

143. What Is Art? Studies in the Technique and Criticism of Painting. New York: (Charles Scribner's Sons,). 1910. In his defense of Art for Art's Sake, Van Dyke scowls on "anything that is of popular interest" (87) and seems to be responding to Tolstoy's book of the same title.

144. Who Painted This Old Woman? New York Times ( 16 December 1923), Section 4: 3. The Rembrandt painting most familiar to New Yorkers in Van Dyke's time was the Old Woman Cutting Her Nails, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Coolly, steadily, point by point, in this large spread with photographs illustrating the details, Van Dyke expl