The Collected Works of William Hazlitt, Vol. 09 (of 12)

William Hazlitt, the great English essayist and critic, brings his luminous prose to bear on the visual arts in this volume of his collected works. Here we find him wandering through the principal picture galleries of England - beginning with Mr. Angerstein's celebrated collection - and later jotting observations from a journey through France and Italy. But these are not mere catalogues of paintings. Hazlitt uses each encounter with canvas and color to explore something far deeper: the mysterious transaction between viewer and artwork, the way a genuine painting canlift us out of ourselves and into communion with beauty that has survived its creator. He mounts a passionate defense of original works against reproductions, arguing that the physical presence of a painting carries an irreplaceable charge that no copy can replicate. Written in Hazlitt's characteristically eloquent and philosophically restless style, these essays reward anyone who has stood before a masterwork and felt language fail them. They capture the Romantic era's conviction that art matters enormously - not as decoration or status, but as a form of knowledge unavailable through any other means.