In his first course of lectures at the École des Beaux-Arts, Taine sets out what a work of art is and how it comes to be. He argues that art imitates the essential character of things and that, as climate shapes plants, the moral temperature of an age shapes its painters, sculptors and poets, so that great art grows from a whole society.
The foundational statement of Taine’s influential theory of art and environment. Download the free EPUB.