Talk:Scottish art in the eighteenth century

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Scottish art in the eighteenth century/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: CaroleHenson (talk · contribs) 20:11, 13 September 2014 (UTC)

- I'll be working on this over the next couple of days.--CaroleHenson (talk) 20:11, 13 September 2014 (UTC)

Overview

The article is generally well-written, most of the comments concern minor copy edits, clarifications or linking. It complies with Manual of Style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch and other GA well-written criteria. The sources are verifiable and there is no evidence of original research. Generally, I don't have access to the source and/or the specific cited pages so I spot-checked several sentences from the article. I did not find any issues and assume good faith regarding c­lose paraphrasing or copyright violations. It is broad in its coverage, but generally does not go into excessive detail. It is written in a neutral point of view. Based upon review of the history and talk pages, the article is stable. The article is well-illustrated, with a good ratio of images to content. There are questions regarding content, a potential copyright infringement, citation approach, and a couple of other issues mentioned below.

I'm familiar with American-English, so if I any of my comments are at odds with British-English (or Scottish-English?), please correct and excuse me.

Content

Some of the comments or questions are suggestions (s) for clarification.

Introduction

• (s) What does "This period saw increasing professionalisation of art." mean? If this is the point that is being made, what do you think about combining it with the second sentence, like: "This period was one that led to professional development of artists, including the establishment of academies in Edinburgh and Glasgow."?
• (s) Were there "attempts" to establish academies, or were academies established? (perhaps covered by the resolution of the first bullet)
• Regarding Italy becoming the major centre of Scottish art - does this mean that it became the major centre of influence?

changing to centre of influence--CaroleHenson (talk) 14:33, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

• "extending his range to leading figures of the Enlightenment" - does this mean "becoming a leading figure of the Enlightenment"? Or, that he influenced leading figures of he Englightenment?

Not a big deal, passing on this one--CaroleHenson (talk) 14:33, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

• (s) increasing / increasingly is used several times - perhaps use of expanding, developing, growing, etc. -- depending upon the context
• "Commissions of new statuary tended to in relatively cheap lead" is this meant to include something like "tended to be made in"

Background - professionalism

• (s) the Nories... "painted the houses of the peerage with Scottish landscapes that were pastiches of Italian and Dutch landscapes" - does this mean paintings were made of the houses with Scottish landscapes? Or, Scottish landscapes including houses of the peerage?

Not a big deal, passing on this one--CaroleHenson (talk) 14:33, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Intellectual trends

• (s) Heading "Intellectual trends" - I understand why the heading was chosen, but I wonder if "Movements" is more apt since that's primarily what the section covers

Not a big deal, passing on this one--CaroleHenson (talk) 14:33, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

• (s) "All the major painters of the period were to varying degrees influenced by forms of Neoclassicism and an attempt to revive Greek and Roman form of artistic expression." What do you think about something like: "Greek and Roman forms of artistic expression were revived in the Neoclassicism movement, which was embraced by the major painters of the period." (i.e. Greek and Roman forms of expression are part of Neoclassicism, not something apart from it) - made a much simpler edit "...influenced by forms of Neoclassicism", which revived...
• Rome - third academy. Does third academy need to be explained? Or, is it resolved through a link, like this one: New Academy (aka Third Academy)?

Added link.--CaroleHenson (talk) 14:33, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Forms: Landscape

• "...saw a shift in attitudes to the Highlands and mountain landscapes in general, from viewing them as hostile, empty regions occupied by backward and marginal people, to interpreting them as aesthetically pleasing exemplars of nature, occupied by rugged primitives, who were now depicted in a dramatic fashion" was also the last sentence of the previous section.

removed the first instance.--CaroleHenson (talk) 14:33, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

• Regarding the name of the Trustees/Trustee's Academy, I made an edit to "Trustees Drawing Academy" in both places, taken from the Edinburgh College of Art article. The wikilink to existing redirect for Trustees Drawing Academy is so that if someone creates an article from this link its doesn't require an edit, done--CaroleHenson (talk) 14:33, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Portraiture

• I'm not understanding the start of this section, it seems like a biography and veers from the approach or flow as the other sections.
  • Potential options:
    • Set the tone by stating "John Alexander, a noted portrait painter from this period,..." - or whatever would be appropriate here
    • Add an introductory sentence, like a version of "Aberdeen-born John Alexander and William Mossman were the leading portrait artists of the first half of the century" from the intro
    • Or whatever would help set the context

Added sentence from the intro.--CaroleHenson (talk) 14:33, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

• I see most instances in books as "Early Enlightenment" then Scotland or Edinburgh, but I see the Scottish Enlightenment article has one instance which is "early-Enlightenment". I have zero idea what might be right.

passing on this, not a big deal--CaroleHenson (talk) 14:33, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

• I see that Principal Painter in Ordinary is in capitals. Generally I would assume that titles are only in caps if they are used as part of the person's name. See MOS capitalization of titles of people. Is there a reason why this time they're capitalishhed (i.e., a UK type of guideline), whereas there is varying capitalisation of titles in the King's painter and limner?

Seeing PPinO generally capitalised in articles.--CaroleHenson (talk) 14:33, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Neoclassicism and genre art

• (s) "Gavin Hamilton spent almost his entire career in Italy and emerged as a pioneering neo-classical painter of historical and mythical themes, including his depictions of scenes from Homer's Iliad, as well as acting as an informal tutor to British artists and as an early archaeologist and antiquarian" how about ".... including his depictions of scenes from Homer's Iliad, as well as being an informal tutor to British artists, early archaeologist and antiquarian

Sculpture

• "By the middle of the century were being preferred to painted portraits among the aristocracy"... is the word "sculpture" or another word missing here?

inserted statuary--CaroleHenson (talk) 14:33, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

• "As in England, commissions of new statuary tended to in relatively cheap lead and even more economical painted or gilded plaster." is there a word or two missing, like "be made"

added "be made"--CaroleHenson (talk) 14:33, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

• In "Much cheaper than carved stone, Coadstone...", should "Coadstone" be capitalised

From the article, Coade stone, it looks like it should be capitalised.--CaroleHenson (talk) 14:33, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Citations

• There seems to be a combination of use of long and short citations + a bibliography. If you're going to use a long citation for the first use of a source, then you don't need a bibliography - and vice versa. See WP:Citing sources.
  •  Done using author, title, page short citation format--CaroleHenson (talk) 05:09, 16 September 2014 (UTC)
• Regarding use of Encyclopædia Britannica as a source, the following is a summary from The summary of the issue from Archive 115 - Is Encyclopedia a reliable source?:

Whereas the EB articles authored by reputable scientists or scholars can be used as a source for Wikipedia in the absence of better sources, it would be desirable to replace them with references to reliable secondary sources when such possibility exists.

• There's another tertiary source, The Laws of Scotland: Stair Memorial Encyclopaedia,--CaroleHenson (talk) 05:09, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

Images

• The File:Allan Ramsay, Selbstportrait.jpg image states that there is a potential copyright infringement with this image. I assume that an alternate image can be found as a replacement.

I removed this file.--CaroleHenson (talk) 19:28, 17 September 2014 (UTC)

• For formatting captions, please see Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Visual arts#Image captions. "Jacob More's, The Falls of Clyde: Corra Linn, c. 1771" is close, you don't need the "'s". The captions should be consistently formatted throughout, using the MOS/Visual arts guidelines. One example of a change is "James More, Self-portrait from "Self-portrait of James More".

 Done--CaroleHenson (talk) 14:45, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

--CaroleHenson (talk) 03:59, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

General comments

I know that this is particularly long and may be overwhelming. It might be best to skip the items with (s) to start with - which hopefully helps reduce the initial approach. If I can help, please let me know how. I'm happy to take care of the citations.--CaroleHenson (talk) 04:03, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

Hi. Thanks for undertaking this review. Unfortunately I am very busy in real life at the moment, but hope to get time to look at this at the weekend.--SabreBD (talk) 19:23, 17 September 2014 (UTC)

Ok, sounds good. I took care of the minor edits. If you want to see the full list of my comments, it's at this version. I did a strike out of the minor edits I made (found in this version)- and then thought best to remove the simple ones to make this page easier to read, since you haven't started yet.--CaroleHenson (talk) 20:12, 17 September 2014 (UTC)

The items were all pretty minor, I just went ahead and made the changes and pass the article.--CaroleHenson (talk) 14:45, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Citation format

Trying to get sfn to work for the MacDonald books. Won't link to the citation of the book. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 16:22, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

This should do the trick. {{Sfn}} needs a special anchor; it won't work without the "ref=" parameter. Huon (talk) 17:03, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. I thought I had done that already. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 19:56, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

Why are you changing a perfectly valid reference system without any discussion on a talkpage?--SabreBD (talk) 20:20, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

Wow! I'm really sorry. Certainly not what I expected. That it was potentially controversial wasn't on my radar. It did not occur to me that it was a matter of controversy at all. There is more than one way to skin a cat. I thought it was a better way. It was intended to be my long term contribution to your newly promoted GA, for which you deserve thanks and congratulations. I also spent considerable time on it. But hey, you created the article. So revert it all if that will make you happy. I have no ego in this at all. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 20:30, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

The main advantage of {{sfn}} over the previous system is the built-in link to the correct bibliography entry, and it's less typing for future references, with a guaranteed unity of style compared to manually-created references. I don't see any disadvantages. A bold improvement should not require prior discussion. Huon (talk) 20:52, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

No offense is taken, but I would like to change the system back. The disadvantage of the sfn system is that it is much harder work to transfer material to other articles, either for a summary or expansion, and I do a lot of that. For future reference, changes to existing citation systems are mentioned at WP:CITEVAR. Thanks.--SabreBD (talk) 22:43, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

I obviously don't have a stake in this article's citation style, but I don't quite see how {{sfn}} is more difficult to transfer to different articles than a manual reference to, say, "MacDonald, Scottish Art, p. 64." In both cases you'd need to also add a bibliography entry, wouldn't you? In fact, I'd assume that use of sfn would make consistency across articles easier, since chances are whatever article content is to be transferred from or to doesn't use exactly the same manual system as this one, unless you wrote both of them. As an aside, there was even an inconsistency in this article's references. Huon (talk) 23:15, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

So we are clear, I didn't start out with the intent to change the citation system. It grew incrementally. Apparently you honestly think this article is better with this system that you reverted back to? About tastes one does not argue. I am not interested in edit warring over this, but I diverge from your view. I recognize that you have pride of authorship, and nobody is trying to diminish your vast contribution. Enjoy the article, even as you have made it smaller. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 00:12, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

I agree about bringing the article back, I don't quite understand what all the fuss is about, and what the issue was with the previous citation style.--CaroleHenson (talk) 00:14, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

The complete revert Threw out the baby with the bath water. No reason why the Bibliography can't have complete authors' names, for example. I put that back. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 00:25, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

Citations / bibliographies do not need to be formatted with citation templates. The bibliography was fine.

I used them a lot myself, but there's a kind of good citizenship that if there's a style in place in an article, then contributors follow that style.--CaroleHenson (talk) 00:30, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

Suggestion: How about if we restore to this version by Huon... and then I'll be happy to update the first names where they were provided in the citation templates, since there's already been a lot of work to gather than info. Does that work?--CaroleHenson (talk) 00:35, 6 October 2014 (UTC)