Pennsylvania Academy, is comparable to Raeburn. He painted Wordsworth, Macaulay, Dr. Chalmers, and other men of mark in England, on commissions from their American admirers. Though Sully was a pupil of Stuart, he entirely lacked the master’s authority of manner. His was a timid technic, without freshness of color or firm characterization. His life was a long and successful one, spent chiefly in Philadelphia, and he had many celebrities as sitters,—Queen Victoria, Fanny Kemble, and General Jackson are among his best known canvases. Of the work of Sully the Pennsylvania Academy has, besides several portraits of the artist himself, a large number of his canvases. This policy of the chief galleries of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, of acquiring works of the several worthy artists of the older time, has become a more difficult one to follow as the years go on, and the ancestral portrait, the family heirloom, becomes precious beyond price.

THE BEGINNING OF AMERICAN MINIATURE PAINTING

WASHINGTON ALLSTON

Miniature by Malbone, Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

DEAD MAN RESTORED TO LIFE BY TOUCHING BONES OF PROPHET ELISHA

By Allston, Pennsylvania Academy.

Treasured with even greater reverence is the old time miniature. There was no production of this form of art in the Colonial days, but its practice developed after the Revolution, and had its chief exponent in Malbone, who, though living but from 1777 to 1807, is to this day one of the very best artists of the portrait in little. Excellent draftsmanship as well as good coloring gave his work a structural firmness unusual even in Cosway’s productions. His best known picture was an imaginative composition entitled “The Hours,” which is now in the Athenæum at Providence, R. I. Through his friendship with Allston, Malbone accompanied him to Charleston in 1800, and there painted miniatures of prominent South Carolinians, including Mrs. Ralph Izard, the beautiful Alice Delancey, who had been previously pictured by both Copley and Gainsborough. Other beautiful women he painted were Rachel and Rebecca Gratz of Philadelphia, the latter being the inspiration for Rebecca in Sir Walter Scott’s “Ivanhoe.” Allston wrote of Malbone, “He had the happy talent of elevating the character without impairing the likeness. This was remarkable in his male heads, and no woman ever lost beauty under his hand.” In Charleston at that time was Charles Fraser, a miniaturist of much ability, whose work is now sought by collectors. As the nineteenth century progressed the portrait gradually lost its preëminence, and the landscape, the story telling picture subject, and later the composition painted for its own sake became the chief expressions of the American artist.

JOHN VANDERLYN

Painted by himself, Metropolitan Museum, N. Y.

EDWARD G. MALBONE

SUPPLEMENTARY READING