Page:Dictionary of Artists of the English School (1878).djvu/19

 PREFACE. information has been sought in out-of-the-way places, and has been the result of private and personal enquiries.

The aim of the Compiler has been to include the name of every artist whose works may give interest to his memory, whether to the lover of art, the art-collector, or the antiquary. The limitation to the Artists of the English School has not heen followed so strictly as to include only those born in this country. Many foreign artists who came to England in their youth, learnt their art here, practised it here, and died here, could not be omitted; nor could, indeed, some others whose title to insertion may not be so clear. But in every case foreign artists who held any public appointment or employment here, or who have been connected with the art institutions of the country, have been included; though, in taking this course, it is not necessarily intended to claim such artists as of the English School.

Regarding the scope of the work, it may be objected that the names of artists have been inserted who have left little by which they merit remembrance. Possibly so. But, on the other hand, it is not the artist alone of whose works and memory there are ample records, so much as the obscure and forgotten, whose works are rarely met with, of whom information is desired, and frequently sought in vain. Also in the scale of the memoirs, of an indifferent artist information may abound; of one of eminence, concerning whom every fact would be valued, the particulars which exist are meagre in the extreme. The time seems past when they could be supplied, and the few facts given are all that in many such cases it appeared possible to save from oblivion.

Of the early architects, the names of the chief of those are included which appear in many documents under the title of 'Devisor,' 'Supervisor,' 'Director,' 'Master Mason,' 'Clerk of the Works,' &c., some of whom held high Church preferment. But the doubts often expressed are fully shared by the Author as to how far such officers may claim the distinction of architect, as the name is now applied, of many of the noble early works which have been attributed to them.

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