voted himself to a similar class of sub- | by prejudice. His foreign studies have in jects successfully. He is, however, very no wise narrowed his intellectual sympathies. His small genre compositions, especially of child life, and often combined with landscape, have been carefully finished-latterly with an especial regard to the Professor John F. Weir, who ically attractive as those of Paris, and a girl wandering by our sea-shore is as winsome as if on the beach at Nice or Scheveningen, and an old fisherman at Grand Menan as pictorial as if he were under the cliffs at Etretât. Fault is sometimes found with the fact that the street lads painted by Mr. Brown have always washed their faces before posing, which is according to the commands of St. Paul, but not of art canons, if we accept Mr. Ruskin's dictum regarding the artistic value of dirt. Bating this apparently trifling difficulty, however, it must be admitted that he often gives us a very characteristic and successful bit of genre. Gilbert Gaul and J. Burns, pupils of Mr. Brown, merit a word of praise in this connection, for giving us reason to hope in time for some satisfactory work from their easels. he has attempted such novel compositions | him the gamins of our cities are as artistas "Yankee Doodle" and "Jim Bludsoe." They suggest in color the literature of Artemus Ward and Walt Whitman. At the same time we recognize in such thorough individuality a very promising attempt to assert the possibilities of certain phases of our national genre. These traits have been treated with less daring but with more artistic success by two of our bestknown genre painters-T. W. Wood and J. G. Brown. Mr. Wood, who is president of the Water-color Society, and employs both oil and water colors, spent several of the first years of his career at the South, and discovered of what importance our colored citizens might prove in our arttheir squalor, picturesqueness, broad and kindly humor, and the pathos which has invested their fate with unusual interest. This artist's first successful venture in genre was with a painting of a quaint old negro at Baltimore, and since then he has given us many characteristic compositions suggested by the lot of the slave, although he has not confined himself to this subject, but has also picked up excellent subjects among the newsboys in our streets, and amid the homespun scenes of rural life. Mr. Wood's style is notable for chiar-oscuro, and his drawing is careful, correct, and forcible. Mr. Brown has also found that success and fame in genre can be obtained without going abroad to seek for subjects. To Child life finds a warm friend and delineator in Mr. S. J. Guy, who has made many friends by the kindly way in which he has treated the simple pathos and humor of childhood. He is an admirable draughtsman, and finishes his work with great nicety, sometimes to a degree that seems to rob the picture of some of its freshness and piquancy; but it can not be denied that Mr. Guy has often struck a chord in the popular heart, not merely by his choice of subjects, but by legitimately earned success in his art as well. Scenes of domestic life have also been treated. sometimes very interestingly by Messrs. | foreground, entitled " Waiting for the B. F. Reinhart, Ehninger, Satterlee, How- Bathers." land, Frost Johnson, Ryder, and Kappes. Mr. Oliver J. Lay, although not a prolific artist, has executed some thoughtful and refined in-door scenes, which show a thorough appreciation of the fact that art, for itself alone, is the only aim the true artist should pursue. E. L. Henry surprises one by the elaboration of his work, and is sometimes open to the charge of crudeness in color and hardness in his outlines; but occasionally he gives us a wellbalanced composition, like the beach scene, with horses and a carry-all in the The historic art of the period has been neither prolific nor attractive, with a few exceptions. The late war has given rise to some important works, like Winslow Homer's notable "Prisoners to the Front;" and Julian Scott has been measurably successful in such paintings as "In the Corn Field at Antietam," representing a charge in that memorable battle, and which belongs to a class of pictures of which we hope to have more in the future. There is a striving after originality in his pictures that is in the right direction. um between the high and low keys of dif- | less action, less fire, less brilliance of color, ferent schools-fresh, cool, and crisp-and in Mr. Thompson's works, but they possess his work is thoroughly finished, and yet many admirable qualities that entitle them broad in effect. He evidently has no to much respect. Among the most notable hobbies to ride. As a designer of horses is an elaborate composition representing he has few equals in this country. If we the Continental army defiling before Genhave a fault to find with him, it is in a eral Washington and his staff at Philadelcertain lack of snap, of warmth, of enthu- phia. The group of officers and horses in siasm in the handling of a subject, which the foreground is one of the best pieces of renders it less impressive than it might artistic work recently painted by an Amerotherwise be. ican, and the picture might be worthily placed by the side of those by Trumbull. Mr. Thompson in his Mediterranean wanderings gathered material for a number of attractive coast scenes, effective in atmosphere and in the rendering of figures, feluccas, and waves, all tending to illustrate his versatility. But he deserves to be most widely known on account of scenes taken from Southern life, and historic compositions suggested by the late George Fuller, of Boston, is another artist in whom we see an additional proof of the growing importance attached to the painting of the figure in our art. His paintings indicate the presence among us of an actual distinct personality, that is, of a genius striving for utterance. They are incomplete, rarely altogether satisfac |