ance with their countrymen, and undoubt- | in Boston, where he seems to have been edly contributed to suggest one of the most characteristic traits of American art, that is, the tendency to make art a means for telling a story, which has always been a prominent feature of English art. May we not also trace to English literature the bias which unconsciously led our artists to turn their attention to landscape with a unanimity that has until recently made our best art distinctively a school of landscape painting? Cowper, Byron, and Wordsworth introduced landscape into poetry, and undoubtedly impelled English art in the same direction, and it was exactly at that time that our own poet Bryant, influenced at the turning-point of his character by Wordsworth's solemn worship of nature, was becoming the pioneer of American descriptive poetry, while Irving was introducing the picturesque into our literature, and Cooper, with his vivid descriptions of our forests, was, like Irving, creating a whole class of subjects which were to be illustrated by the American art of this period.

The influences cited as giving direction to the struggling efforts of art in our country during the early part of this century are illustrated with especial force by five portrait, figure, and landscape painters who may almost be considered the founders of this period of our art-Harding, Weir, Cole, Doughty, and Durand.

taken up with the characteristic enthusiasm which the modern Athens bestows on the favorites she delights to honor. On going to England, Harding, notwithstanding the few advantages he had enjoyed, seemed to compare so favorably with the other portrait painters there that he was patronized by the first noblemen of the land. Although belonging also to the latter part of the period immediately preceding that under consideration, yet Harding was, on the whole, an important factor in the art which dates from the founding of the National Academy, and was one of the strongest of the group of portrait painters naturally associated with him, such as Alexander, Waldo, Jarvis, and Ingham. There was something grand in the personality of Harding, not only in his almost gigantic physique, but also his sturdy, frank, good-natured, but earnest and indomitable character, which causes him to loom up across the intervening years as a type of the people that has felled forests, reclaimed waste places, and given thews and sinews to the republic that in a brief century has placed itself in the front rank of nations.

While Harding, with all his artistic inequalities, fairly represented the portrait art of Boston at that period, Inman may be considered as holding a similar position in New York. As a resident of that city and a pupil of Jarvis, he enjoyed advantages of early training superior to those of most of our painters of that day. Exceedingly versatile, and excelling in miniature and genre, and doing fairly well in landscape, Inman will be best known in future years by his admirable oil portraits of some of the leading characters of the time. He was a man of great strength and symmetry of character, who would have won distinction in any field.

Chester Harding was a farmer's son, who after an apprenticeship in agriculture took up the trade of chair-maker at twenty-one, the time when the young Parisian artist has already won his Prix de Rome. After this he tried various other projects, including those of peddling and the keeping of a tavern, and then took his wife and child and floated on a flat-boat down the Alleghany to Pittsburgh, then a mere settlement, in search of something on which to earn a bare living. There he took to sign painting, and it was not New York became the centre for a until his twenty-sixth year that the idea number of excellent and characteristic of becoming an artist entered his head. portrait painters soon after Inman estabAn itinerant portrait painter coming to lished his reputation, such as Charles Lorthe place first suggested art to Harding, ing Elliott, Baker, Hicks (a pupil of Couwho engaged him to paint the portrait of ture), Le Clear, Huntington, and Page, Mrs. Harding, and took his first art lesson the contemporaries of Healy, Ames, while looking over the artist's shoulder; Hunt, and Staigg, of Boston, and Sully and his first crude attempts so fascinated and Nagle-all artists of individual styles him that he at once adopted art as a pro- and characteristic traits of their own. fession, and in six months painted one Sully belonged also to the preceding perihundred likenesses, such as they were, atod of our art, owing to his great age. twenty-five dollars each, and then settled | In Elliott we probably find the most im

early part of this period was William Sidney Mount, the son of a farmer on Long Island. Associated first with his brother as a sign painter, he eventually took up genre in 1828. Mount lacked ambition, as he himself confessed; he was easily influenced by the rapidly won approval of the public to rest from improving his style, and early returned to his farm on Long Island. Mount was not remarkable as a colorist, although it is quite possible he might have succeeded as such with superior advantages; but he was nevertheless a man of genius, who in that respect has not been surpassed by the numerous genre artists whom he preceded, and to whom he showed by his example the resources which our native domestic life can furnish to the genre painter. This American Wilkie had a keen eye for the humorous traits of our rustic life, and rendered it with an effect that sometimes suggests the old Dutch mascuted by American painters, at least until ters. "The Long Story" and "Bargainvery recently. "The Judgment of Paris" ing for a Horse" are full of inimitable is certainly a clever if not wholly original touches of humor and shrewd observawork, and the figure of Venus a fine piece tions of human nature. F. W. Edmonds, of form and color. Daniel Huntington, who was a contemporary of Mount, and a the third president of the National Acad- bank cashier, found time from his busiemy of Design, is a native of New York ness to produce many clever genre paintcity, and has enjoyed advantages and suc-ings, showing a keener eye for color, but cesses experienced by very few of our early artists. A pupil of Morse and Inman, he is better known with the men of this generation as a pleasing portrait painter; but the most important of his early efforts were in what might be called a semi-literary style in genre and historical and allegorical or religious art, in which departments he has won a permanent place in the annals of American art by such works as "Mercy's Dream," "The Sibyl," and "Queen Mary signing the Death-Warrant of Lady Jane Grey."

While portraiture has been the field to which most of our leading painters of the figure have during this period directed their attention, genre has been represented by several artists of decided ability, who, under more favorable art auspices, might have achieved grand results. Inman was the first of our artists who reached any satisfactory results in genre. If circumstances had allowed him to devote himself entirely to any one of the three branches he pursued, he might have reached a still higher position than he did. But the most important genre artist of the

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less snap in the drawing and composition, than Mount.

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In other departments of the figure at this period of our art, Robert W. Weir holds a prominent position as one of our pioneers in the distinctive branch called historical painting. Of Huguenot descent, and gaining his artistic training in Italy, after severe struggles at home, his career illustrates several of the influences which have moulded American art. though not a servile imitator of foreign and classic art, and showing independence of thought in his practice and choice of subjects, Weir's art is pleasing rather than vigorous and original. It shows care and loving patience, as of one who appreciates the dignity of his profession, but no great force of fancy, nor does he introduce or suggest any new truths in art. Such a massive composition, however, as the "Sailing of the Pilgrims," while it arouses no enthusiasm, causes us to wonder that we should so early have produced an art as conscientious and clever as this. portrait of Red Jacket and the elaborate painting called "Taking the Veil" are also

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