“Gaslight the way we knew it just before the arrival of the electric light was rather nice. But the gaslight of the [eighteen] thirties and forties was a terrible comedown after the candles of the Baroque and Rococo. It tried to make an impression of something very progressive but only succeeded in creating an atmosphere of flickering uncertainty, an atmosphere which quickly penetrated into every department of life.”
– Hendrik Willem von Loon, The Arts, 1937
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