Scan 339
The violin: its famous makers and their imitators, 1884
2 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 263. See the scan on archive.org.
1cellent an artist visited Italy in his youth, as reported, there would have remained but the faintest trace of its origin. That men of less ability should be unable to entirely sever themselves from their national style of work, even under the most favourable circumstances for such a release, I can readily understand; it is an incapacity which has been exemplified over and over again; but Jacob Stainer was not one of these ordinary men; he had not his superior in the school of Cremona as a finished workman, with the single exception of Antonio Stradivari. I believe, therefore, that the German style was deeply rooted within him when he ceased to be young, and that if he went to Cremona or Venice it was not until he recognised the inferiority of the school in which he had been bred, as compared with that of Cremona or Venice. That he did not go far enough in his "second thought," is pretty well acknowledged on all sides. His originality was conceived in the German school, amid the worst examples, and it was too late to undo what had gone before. Here, then, lies, I consider, the key to the seeming anomaly that so great a maker as Stainer should have adopted and clung to so clumsy a model. That he became acquainted with much of the best work of the Italians is evidenced by his improved style. The varnish he used furnishes even stronger evidence of his having possessed a knowledge of the subject equal to that of the Cremonese makers. Whether he acquired this knowledge in Cremona or Venice, cannot be
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