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 Etretat. 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 success 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 art-ful bit of genre. Gilbert Gaul and J. their 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 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. 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. of domestic life have also been treated Scenes 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 his work is thoroughly finished, and yet broad in effect. He evidently has no hobbies to ride. As a designer of horses he has few equals in this country. If we have a fault to find with him, it is in a certain lack of snap, of warmth, of enthusiasm in the handling of a subject, which renders it less impressive than it might otherwise be. 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 his toric compositions suggested by the late in Mr. Thompson's works, but they possess many admirable qualities that entitle them to much respect. Among the most notable is an elaborate composition representing the Continental army defiling before General Washington and his staff at Philadelphia. The group of officers and horses in the foreground is one of the best pieces of artistic work recently painted by an American, and the picture might be worthily placed by the side of those by Trumbull. 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 since the days of William Mount. By this, especially as the evidences of promthis we mean the identification of the art- ise are also less prominent than in landist with his subject, which renders it dra-scape and genre. Not only has the nummatic, and inspires it with that touch of nature that makes the whole world kin. In this respect he occasionally suggests the inimitable humanity which is the crowning excellence of the paintings of Millet. In passing from genre to our later portraiture we do not find the same proportionate activity and intelligent progress that we see in other departments of our art, although some very creditable painters in this department can be mentioned. Mr. Harvey A. Young, of Boston, has shown a good eye for color, and seizes a likeness in a manner that is artistically satisfactory, while he does not so often grasp the character of the sitter as his external traits. Mr. Custer, of the same city, charmingly renders the infantile beauty of childhood, its merry blue eyes, the dimpled roses of the cheeks, and the flaxen curls that ripple around the shoulders. There is, however, too much sameness in his work, a too apparent tendency to mannerism. Mrs. Henry Peters Grey has a faculty of making a pleasing likeness. She has executed some portrait plaques in majolica that are remarkable evidences of the progress ceramic art is now making in the United States. Mrs. Loop is at present one of our successful portrait painters. Her works are not strikingly original, but they are harmonious in tone and color, and poetical in treatment. Mr. George H. Story should be included among the most important portrait painters of this period. His work is characterized by vigor of style and pleasing color; he seizes a likeness with out any uncertainty in technique. William Henry Furness, of Philadelphia, who died in 1867, just as he reached his prime, was allied in genius to the great masters of portraiture of the early stages of our art. He matured slowly. His first efforts showed only small promise, but he had the inestimable quality of growth, and he has been equalled by few of our painters in the study and rendering of character. When he had a sitter he would give days to a preliminary and exhaustive study of the mental and moral traits of the individual. When we come to a consideration of natural history in this period of our æsthetic culture, we find that it is the most barren of good results of any branch of our art. We are at a loss to account for ber of the artists who have pursued animal painting been proportionately small, but the quality of their work has been of a low average, and lacking in the originality elsewhere apparent. In the painting of pastoral scenes, with cattle, Peter Moran, of Philadelphia, probably shows the most originality and force, and Mr. Robinson, of Boston, has displayed exceptional vigor in painting the textures of cattle, but without much invention in composition. Mr. James Hart for the past twelve years has made a specialty of introducing groups of cattle into his idyllic landscapes. They are often well drawn and carefully painted, and are in general effect commendable, although, like most of our animal painters, Mr. Hart does not seem to have got at the character of the animal as Snyders, Morland, or Landseer would have done. Mr. Dolph has painted some creditable cats and pugs in combination with interiors, and two young artists, Messrs. George Inness, Jun., and J. Ogden Brown, have executed some promising cattle pieces. Our continent is not so plentifully stocked with wild beasts and game as some parts of the Old World, but we have the panther and the bison, now fast fading into a mere traditionary existence before the rifle of the pioneer. Mr. R. M. Shurtleff has a pleasant fancy for catamounts and deer, and has made a special study of them, of which the results appear in dramatic bits of the wild life of the woods introduced into effective paintings of forest scenery; and Mr. A. F. Tait has devoted his life to rescuing from oblivion species which are fast becoming extinct, unless our game laws are better enforced than they have been hitherto. There is often too finished a touch to the art of Mr. Tait, which deprives it of the force it might otherwise have; but he has, on the other hand, painted game with remarkable truth, and he brings to the subject an inventive fancy that greatly adds to the variety and interest of his works. We might add in this connection an allusion to the ingenious carvings of Alexander Pope, a young artist who not only cuts out groups of game from a block of wood with much cleverness, but also truthfully colors the grouse and teal his skillful knife carves out of pine. |