class="caption">JOHN QUINCY ADAMS

By Copley, in Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

In England, Benjamin West, who had gone there about his twenty-fifth year, was painting biblical and mythological subjects, inspired by his stay in Italy; for Italy was yet the field for art inspiration. He received extended patronage from King George, and succeeded Reynolds as president of the Royal Academy. “Christ Healing the Sick,” in the Philadelphia Hospital, and the “Death on the Pale Horse,” in the Pennsylvania Academy, are two of his best known works in America. The latter is an immense canvas, melodramatic in character, and carrying no direct message to modern observers. West seems to have wished to impress by size and industry. In regard to color he always remained a Quaker.

THE GENEROSITY OF WEST

Perhaps West’s best contribution to the art development of America was the splendid generosity of his welcome to his young compatriots when they came to London to study. His was the hand that gave them greeting, his the studio and the home that were at their service, and his the mind that directed their work. To him came Matthew Pratt of Philadelphia, though his senior, and stayed four years, returning then to his native place and carrying on his profession there. The Peales, father and son, were indebted to him for their training. Dunlap and Trumbull and Stuart all studied under his tutelage. Allston sat at his feet as a devout disciple, becoming a veritable legatee of his mode of thought and of his manner. This manner was evolved from a contemplation of grand subjects, allegorical, religious, mythical, and historical. Neither he nor West was an observer of the life of their day; though West did a radical thing, a great service to natural art, when he painted the Death of Wolfe with all the figures therein clad in the regimentals they then wore, and not in classic garb, as historic happenings had hitherto been painted. His work had little beauty of color, little atmosphere, and no spontaneity. It has not held its appreciation as have other more natural paintings of that time. To Boston, in 1725, had come John Smybert, from London, a protégé of Bishop Berkeley. He there painted many portraits until his death in 1751; though his work had little merit. He was the forerunner of Copley, the first able native artist.

THE DISTINCTION OF COPLEY

MRS. DANIEL DENISON ROGERS

By Copley.

MRS. FORD

By Copley, in Hartford Athenæum.

In his youth Copley had the slight advantage of some instruction from his stepfather, Peter Pelham, the engraver; but early acquired a style of his own. His technic was not very fluent; but his design was good, his drawing remarkably true, and his characterization unusual. A dignified formality pervaded his canvases, as befitted the sitters of his native Boston. It is said that a Copley portrait in a New England family is a certificate of aristocracy and social standing. He painted textures well, though somewhat laboriously. “Large ruffles, heavy silks, silver buckles, gold-embroidered vests, and powdered wigs are blent in our imagination with the memory of patriot zeal and matronly influence,” writes Tuckerman. But those adjuncts to the personality would not be so associated with the patrician Colonials had not Copley rendered them so well. None of the early painters so accurately gave the spirit of their time as he. As we can glean from Lely’s portraits of the beauties of the Carolean Court the free and easy manners that were its atmosphere, so from Copley’s portraits we get the moral