felines and canines in life and art

"The Society Lion," by 
John Henry Dolph,
1835-1903

      Cats and dogs, as the companions of the daily life of the human race, have played no small part in art. There are mousers and dogs depicted in the genre paintings of all nations, ancient and modern. In the ancient art of Japan the quaint native cat frequently appeared as an ornamental accessory. There is a Japanese picture in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, in which the interesting Japanese cat adorns the boudoir of a lady. Another Japanese painting in the same building, which belongs to the grand old school of Tosa, represents all the animals gathered about the death-bed of Lord Buddha to go mouse-hunting, and when she returned he was dead.
      Quite famous were the cats of ancient Egypt which were consecrated to the worship of Bubastis (Pasht), known as the mythical goddess of cats. This ancient adulation of cats was handed down to the followers of Mahomet, and to this day one of the features of the annual pilgrimage to Mecca is the father or mother of cats, and old man or woman mounted on a camel surrounded by baskets filled with cats. It is stated by some authorities that cats did not enter Europe until the Middle Ages, but this fact seems doubtful, in view of the large number of felines found at the time in the East. The Italian painters introduced cats into their compositions, and so did the Dutch, who were particularly happy in the delineation of composed and stolid tabbies. Sir Joshua Reynold's cats were remarkably knowing, and his kitten-faced girls still please posterity. Hogath's cats, with their long bodies and thin, pointed faces, have a character of their own.
      The leading cat-painter of America is Mr. J. H. Dolph, whom everyone knows, for his works appear constantly at exhibitions. He has worked and studied much abroad, at Paris, Antwerp, and Rome. Mr. Dolph excels in the delineation of feline and canine character. Observe the ingenuous admiration of the four feline young ladies for the stolid pug who allows himself to be the object of their hero-worship. Mark the look of dawning intelligence and observation on the faces of the three puppies in their basket home.
      Lambert, Henriette Ronner, and Mr. Dolph are the most successful cat-painters of the time. They all show fondness for the Angora type, with its delicate grace and exotic sentiment. The Dutch masters were fond of hunting-dogs of various breeds, and did justice to them in their works. Landseer set the fashion of his generation in England for pictured dogs. Other English painters of the domestic genre school have handled dogs ably. The study of the canine race in art is always valuable. As for Mr. Dolph, he has proved himself an able painter of dogs, and the paintings from which these reproductions were made speak for themselves as proofs of his ability. by Charlotte Adams, 1894 for the Quarterly Illustrator

• See More Photos of The Article Here
• Read More About John Henry Dolph
• NYPL Digital Gallery

a field for the connoisseur

by illustrator Edgard Farasyn

      The correspondent of the New York Tribune gave Holland its due when he said, "The exhibit of that country in the Art Building here is in the very forefront of contemporary painting. The three rooms full of oil-paintings, and the two alcoves hung with water-colors, are among the places at the Fair where there is most pleasure of an artistic sort to be encountered."
      Among the most prominent of Dutch modern painters are Josef Israels, Mesdag, Blommers, Mauve, Artz; among the famous Belgians, Jan Van Beers, Courtens, Jan Verkas, and Edgard Farasyn.
The artists of the Netherlands have inauguarated a new movement so full of color and tone that the tide of art students is turning form France and setting toward the Low Countries.
      But it is not alone in color that the Dutch and Belgian artists excel. The lines of character which interested Rembrandt are repeated in the faces of the people to-day, and their painters are noted for their sympathy and sentiment as well as for their forceful rendering of character. One of the noblest and most touching paintings at the Fair was Israels' "Alone in the World" -- a peasant seated, grief and wonder-stricken, beside his dead wife. Neuhuys, from his love of child-life, might be called the Edward Frere of Holland. Blommers has as much sympathy, though perhaps not so much sentiment, as Mauve, who was the Dutch Millet.
       Belgium is nearer to Paris, her artists are more influenced by the Parisian leaven, but Edgard Farasyn is both original and true to his nationality. His Antwerp types are very chracteristic, and form the illustrations for this article. His "Old Sailor" recalls the fact that many of his pictures have been suggested by scenes at the wharves of Antwerp. His World's Fair picture, "Emigrants Embarking at Antwerp," was a noble painting. The bustle, the confusion of departure, the shouting sailors, the dazed look in the faces of the emigrants, the pathos of grief in the parting of a husband and wife, are all depicted with a masterly hand. The young workman leaning on the trestle in another of our sketches might have been standing on the quay watching this embarkation, for his face is full of unutterable things, the desperation of life of toil predominating. They are all toilers; the milk-seller, with her bright brazen can, the stolid market-woman, and the patient donkeys.
      These last remind us of the same subject painted by Verhas, and entitled "The Martyrs of the Watering-Place."
      Farasyn resides in Antwerp, but he has been a wide traveler and has won honors in foreign lands, having been twice medalled in Australia and at the Exposition Universelle of 1889.Visitors to Antwerp may remember his "Fish Markets of Antwerp" in the museum of that city. In view of these suggestive facts have we not, in the modern art of the Netherlands, a field which Americans generally have not sufficiently studied and enjoyed? by Elizabeth Champney, Quarterly Illustrator

by illustrator Edgard Farasyn

by illustrator Edgard Farasyn

• See more illustrations from this article
• Paintings by Edgar Farasyn, 1858 - 1938
• Slide show of paintings by Edgar Farasyn

american art & foreign influence by w. lewis fraser

by Sterner

   It is as difficult to define our individual art creeds as it would be, without the aid of the theologians, to define a religious one. I suppose art, as in religion, one "ought to be able to give a reason for the hope that is within"; but art has not had its colleges, its assemblies of doctors to dogmatize, to settle just what one ought or ought not to believe in.  This is fortunate or unfortunate according to one's individual temperament.
     It is an axion that he who thinks deeply thinks well. Unfortunately, in matters of art, this does not always apply; for Art is a fickle goddess, who smiles upon whom she will--the "b a n a l" sometimes more sweetly than the serious; the untaught boy often times more willingly than the advanced student.
     Are there then, no canons in art in which we may trust? No exponents of its true principles to whom we may look? Plenty, if we accept the "fads," the fashions of the passing moment. I am sure the Byzantine painters had them, and I doubt not that the cognoscenti of their time bowed down before them and worshipped them. But away off in central Italy there lived a shepherd's boy, who drew pictures of his sheep on stones and fences, and with Giotto the canons of the Byzantines were forgotten, and later, with his new methods, there came new canons. So it has been since. The heretic of to-day becomes the canonized saint of to-morrow, to be set aside by new heretics and new saints.
     We are fortunate in our country in having in art no past, and therefore few traditions, or traditions so recent that they have not had time to crystalize. They are still in the waters of crystallization, and are therefore apt, by the addition of a strange substance , to crystallize into a new, a strange shape. Our Copleys, Stuarts, Allstons, Turnbulls, and what has been sneeringly characterized as "the Hudson River school," were all waters of crystallization. They had their half-formed canons based on English models; but the soil of new world introduced the new substance, for it is not favorable, by dint of its indigenous growth, to the propagation of old world plants in old world forms. And before these had time to properly root, the indegenous had, happily for us, choked them.
     It is the fashion to bewail the lack of Americanism in our art. I wonder what is meant by this. American art is intensely American. Our nation has grown by assimilating the best that the whole world afforded--the making of it our own, the pruning and trimming of it, and then incorporating it into our system--and our art has grown on these lines.
     It would be an insult to those who bewail the non-national character of our art, to suppose that because our artists have not yet painted Jersey barns with "Use Brown's Liniment," or "Smith Salvation Oil," on their roofs, they are not American. The truth is, that where the picturesque is to be found our painters have painted it. If this is not the case, then what of our Innesses, our Davises, our Tryons in landscape, our Homers, Kappes, and others in figure? Surely these are as individual as it is possible to be in this age of steam and electricity.
     Is it not barely possible that we are apt to take too seriously in our exhibitions, the tentative efforts of the student just from Paris, and, because they echo the master under whom he has studied, raise the cry, that American art is un-American?
     Our country is a large one, cosmopolitan in its population and customs. When Albert E. Sterner made the charming pictures which accompany the Balcony Stories, lately published in The Century, he drew types of Americans--the Americans of New Orleans. These are as untrue to New England as they would be to Timbuctoo; but yet New Orleans and New England are both American. In "Prue and I," types which would have been utterly false for New Orleans. But it may be said that in the handling of these drawings he is not American. This is equivalent to saying that Sterner has learned his trade--that he can handle his medium without the restraint of imperfect knowledge, without that imperfection which characterized much of the American art of thirty years ago.
     Sterner is a type, and an excellent one, of the American artist--not fashioned by France--but properly directed by French precept and example. He had secured a footing in our art ranks before he went abroad; and while his place in those ranks was but that of a private, we knew that he was certain of promotion. He came back wearing the epaulettes and with the brevet of the Salon. The artist had been awakened in him. He saw things wit wide-open eyes--eyes not dazzled by the glitter of the yellow and the blue of impressionism, yet profoundly impressed by the spirit of modernity. He was a stronger draughtsman, a better colorist, a more artistic artist, a conservative radical in art. His later visits to Paris have but strengthened these qualities.
     Artists do not, save with rare exceptions, arrive at the maturity of their powers at Sterner's age, thirty. He at present thinks better than he does; his works are sometimes faulty in drawing, occasionally show impatience of their subject, and now and then are worried and teased in execution; but, whatever their faults, the artist is apparent, and possessing this quality, they are always valuable.
     Sterner is a keen observer of character, as is well shown in the note-book sketches which accompany this article. What could be more admirable than the thumb-nail sketches which surround page 5, or the head of the French ouvrier on page 7. Unfortunately his quality in composition is suggested rather than shown in the unused sketch for ''Prue and I," one of the most charming illustrated books ever issued form the American press. He is an admirable painter, a soft, rich, and brilliant colorist. This quality of color finds its way into his black and white. But when he is thus characterized, it yet remains to be said, that his chief quality is his artisticness; a quality which cannot be defined or formulated, but without which not great art work was ever accomplished. By W. Lewis Fraser,1894, The Quarterly Illustrator

by Sterner

Note.-- Albert E. Sterner, whose work is reviewed so gracefully in the foregoing paper, is a Londoner born, with a Parisian temperament and an American earnestness of character. He first saw the sun on March 8, 1863, and came to America when he was eighteen years of age. He lived in New York for a while, studying the line of picture-making mostly by himself-until one fine day he pulled up his tent stakes and sailed for Paris. There he studied under Lefebvre and Boulanger. Since this time he has forged to the top of his studious vocation. Mr. Sterner is a member of the New York Water Color Society, and has frequently exhibited at the Academy and the American Fine Arts Society. His picture of "The Bachelor" received honorable mention at the Salon in 1891. Mr. Sterner's draughtsmanship is distinguished by a nervousness of handling and an economic directness of touch. He goes to his subject clear-headed and free-handed, and tells his story simply. He is a vigorous objector to the catch-penny frills of ''popular"picture-making, and even in his earlier days tried to be conscientious in his simplest work.

• American painter, etcher and lithographer
• Albert Edward Sterner, 1863 - 1946
• Sterner in the encyclopedia

a cattle painter from france by henry eckford

      Character in beasts and birds--the bovine in cattle, the swinish in pigs, the self-complacency betrayed by geese in their waddle--is one of the traits of Japanese art. It is largely due to the glad, unfettered study of external nature by artists of Japan that men of the West have taught themselves to see character in animals. At the same time, the great movement of philosophy on the track of evolution has made the public more tolerant and observant of our humble fellow-creatures in fur. feather, and scales. Artists have helped in this work by showing that beast, bird, and fish are beautiful and worthy of deep study for their colors and forms.
    Among the French artists at the World's Fair new to Americans was the maker of "The Road to Vaudancourt," a cattle-piece with the herd coming forward by the dusty road. Realism is at its best in the varied groups of kind by M. Aymar Pezant. Cows prone and standing, cows in movement and sluggishly chewing the cud, fetlock-deep in water. The lively gait of steer and heifer, the slow, sagacious look of udder-bearing kind, the menace in the uplifting muzzle and wide-spread ears of bull-or ox--all these traits he knows how to give in summary scratches of the crayon and to paint in oils. M. Pezant is a worthy successor of Troyon and Van Marcke. By Henry Eckford, Quarterly Illustrator

• Alexander Pezant at Ask ART 
• See more of Pezant's drawings 

sailor life from catalan by c. s. montgomery

      In Onofre Gari Torrent we have another exponent of the pathos of the sea, the hard lives of those who live upon it, and the heroic ending of those lives. The artist, though he was born in Charleston, S. C., is the son of a Spanish sailor, and his choice of subject shows influence of heredity. After study at the Academy of Barcelona, and in Paris and Madrid, he has settled on the coast of Catalonia, and there he finds material that is new, at least to Americans. In his sporting children, his toiling men and women, and his sailor returning the kit of a lost shipmate to his family, he shows types that in sturdiness and settled gravity are like those which the French and Dutch painters have introduced to us; but the costumes, surroundings, and ethnologic cast give to them a character of their own. He is original in composition, and his figures have both movement and fixity. The "Drawing of the Net" is especially able in pose, the men and women of heavy frame tugging at the ropes with ox-like persistency and resignation. There is, in the pictures of this painter, an absence of the pessimism that makes a bitter strain in the work of so many of the painters and writers of Europe who have taken the ocean for their theme. His grave, but never despairing. A current of warmer blood seems to pulse through his veins than the blood of Breton and his followers. Mr. Torrent was one of the exhibitors at the World's Fair, and he holds the United States in affectionate remembrance. By C. S. Montgomery, Quarterly Illustrator

• View more from this article by Onofre Gari Torrent 
• Onofre Gari Torrent exhibited at the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893

an american wilkie by clarence cook

by Howard Helmick

      It is, from one point of view, an amusing fact, that in forming our judgment as to the merits of a picture, we need take no account of what artists say about it. Broadly speaking, we may divide the artist-body into two camps, always, however amiably, at war with one another: the men of anecdote and subject, and the men of art-for-art's-sake: who view with silent disapprobation, or with clearly expressed contempt, and attempt on the artist's part to excite an interest in his picture beyond what is due to his way of painting. It may be said, without exaggeration, that, for these men, not a few of them really worthy of distinction for the skill they have attained--not only a goodly number of artists of our own day, but a goodly number of artists of old times who are reckoned famous by a no doubt ignorant world, do not exist at all as artists. They painted subjects, anecdotes: they were themselves interested in the the story they had to tell, and they hoped to interest others in it: this is enough to condemn them with the artists for art's sake.
     For these men an artist like Howard Helmick, whose repertory consists entirely of pictures painted to please his fellow-men by showing them scenes from the drama of actual life, would have no interest whatever. They would class him with our own Mount, with Wilkie, with Defregger, with Smedley-all clever men, no doubt, but outside the sacred pale. We wish, for our part, that the public here at home had had better opportunities for judging Mr. Helmick's merit for themselves. He has too long been one of the army of the expatriated-charmed-and who shall blame him!--by the ease and comfort of life abroad, and finding there all the success he needed and all the appreciation he could desire; and he has not sought the suffrages of his countrymen by the ordinary methods of the exhibition-gallery of the dealers' sales-rooms. His student-days were passed in Paris, where he and Henry Bacon were pupils of Cabanel; and when the Franco-Prussian war fluttered the studios of Paris and sent the artists adrift, he with others went to England, and after some stay in London wandered over to Ireland, where he found, in that land of changing lights and shadows in human life, as in nature, so many picturesque subjects, that before long he had all he could do to supply the demand for his pictures. It was a field till then almost undiscovered--another American, Mrs. Anna Lea Merritt, had found and brought away some nuggets from the mine; but other fields of work had more attraction for her, and Mr. Helmick was left in almost undisturbed possession of the quarry he had opened. To enjoy his pictures it does not need that we should have read Miss Edgeworth, or Charles Lever, or Samuel Lover, or the latest delightful comer in the field of Irish tragedy and comedy, Jane Barlow--they tell their own story. Even the smaller of the specimens we give, "On his own Ground," with the characteristic head "A Blind Man," are evidently true to Irish life; but it is in his larger pictures of family groups and scenes that he shows the most original vein. Artless nature, free and happy with the happiness that only poverty can know, laughs in our "Irish Apollo piping to the Graces;" and a collection of his Irish scenes would show us the same penetrating observation and directness of statement. Helmick is one of the few artists we know who could be trusted to illustrate such books of Irish life as those we have mentioned: his pictures would be as unforced and as free from artificiality as the books themselves.
     And yet, why should an artist of such cleverness neglect his own country-life for that of another people? Why, in fact, should the greater part of our artists be doing one of two things: either painting foreign scenes and manners, or else painting home-scenery and home-scenes in such a fashion that they would never be suspected for our own? by Clarence Cook, The Quarterly Illustrator

• Slide presentation of 9 paintings by Howard Helmick
• A Visiting Party, 1893 at the Smithsonian American Art Museum  
• At Auction on MutualArt.com

illustrating american scenery by james h. chapman

by Charles Lanman

      It was when Washington Irving was speaking of Charles Lanman as an author, many years ago, that the latter was designated as the "Picturesque Explorer of the United States." It was that compliment, undoubtedly, that caused the author to utilize the pencil as well as the pen, and to produce a set of one thousand works of art which have attracted the attention of the public. They are attractive as works of the pencil, and unique as illustrating the scenery of the United States and a large part of Canada and New Brunswick. He was a lover of art from his childhood, and during a sojourn of ten years as a clerk in New York he began the use of the pencil as an amateur, and his friendly intercourse with Cole, Durand, Huntington, Church, and Kensett did much to make him a landscape-painter by profession. It was at that time that he conceived the idea that an elaborate collection of sketches of American scenery ought to be produced, and appointing himself to that duty he travelled extensively into all the interesting regions of the country. His plan was to produce pictures of characteristic scenery, painted at one sitting, directly from nature. They were executed in oil, on tablets of oiled paper.
     Among the pictures of his own painting which Mr. Lanman takes pleasure in exhibiting to his friends, because of certain incidents connected with them, are the following: "Indian Cabin at St. Paul, Minn.," which was painted when the artist could only secure for his supper a young raccoon which he had killed within the limits of the great city of to-day; "The Sague-nay River in Canada," painted when the bark canoe was the only means of transportation on that river, and about which the artist was the first to publish a full description in a successful volume; "Home of a Hermit Woman," which was painted on the South Potomac, in Western Virginia, the occupant being an old woman one hundred and twelve years of age, whose nearest neighbor was twenty miles away, who had herself built the rude fence around her cabin, and who claimed that she had frequently driven bears from her door with the handle of a broom; "Going West"-this was a prairie scene in Western Minnesota, with a train of cars crossing the plain and also a herd of buffaloes pursued by Indian hunters; when painted, this domain was inhabited by Indians, while to-day it is covered with highly cultivated farms; "Home of a Mississippi Planter"--this was a large log cabin on the borders of a primeval forest, the owner of which was worth $200,000, yet lived here with a large family.

• Read more about Charles Lanman
• Charles Lanman, Trip Along the Mississippi River, 1846
• Paintings by Charles F. Lanman, 1819-1895

a versatile artist

("Luxembourg Garden, Paris." by Blenner)

      Carle J. Blenner belongs to that interesting group of American artists which we sometimes vaguely describe as "the younger me," or as vaguely again as "the rising men." A Virginian by birth, an alumnus of Yale, he has, within the space of a very few years, exhibited a capacity to be cosmopolitan in style to a degree such as only Americans, perhaps, ever can. He received his art education--or perhaps, in the case of a student so indefatigable, we should say the academic part of this education--at Paris, under Bouguereau, Schenchk, and other masters, from whom he returned with a firmly individual style

     His work displays a great deal of versatility, ranging from the most delicate forms of landscape to spirited portraiture. At the World's Fair he exhibits "Contentment," and a portrait of Senor Don Roderigo de Saavedra of the Spanish Legation, both admirable examples of his style. That Mr. Blenner will always be effective in portraiture is hinted in the force and character of his figure studies, which contain subtle draughtsmanship and wholesome phases of color. The head of an old woman reproduced in one of the illustrations to the present article is a piece of clever realism in which there is a keen reading of the human nature lying beneath the surface. "Country Life" tells the simple yet always freshly eloquent story of the farm and its unexciting routine. The elements of the picture are skillfully brought together, and the work through-out is sincere and direct. How neatly Mr. Blenner manages sentiment may be indicated by "Afternoon Tea," which belongs to the vers de societe of painting, and which makes no attempt to give to the old romance anything more than its natural charm. This is one of the stories that always are told best when they are told without flourishes--though, after all, it might be difficult to fancy a subject of which this could not be said.
     During his residence in Paris, Mr. Blenner appears to have become acquainted with many phases of French life and character. Certainly his studies of Parisian scenes and people are marked by a quite evident appreciation of something more than the shell of things. The "Luxembourg Garden," for example, strikes a truly Parisian note, and the same may be said of the glimpse into the grounds of the Musee de Cluny. Mr. Blenner enters with zest into the treatment of subjects nearer home. He has put real poetry in his "Old Fashioned Garden," one of those quaint, inartistic but delightful nooks of Connecticut, where there are stone walls for vines to grow on, and nature has a strongly distinctive cast. These nooks are so often neglected that it becomes a real pleasure to find them well treated by a discerning artist. "In the Cabbage Field" carries the eye across a stretch of cultivated country. These subjects are not fantastic; they do not bid for that dangerous adjective "ingenious." They deal with the fundamentals, and deal with them without sensationalism of any kind.

"Afternoon Tea" by Carle J. Blenner

     As an illustrator, Mr. Blenner has shown highly favoring gifts. The facility with which he eliminates unnecessary detail gives pertinence and clearness to his work. Illustrators are perhaps particular under the necessity for studying the element of proportion in the use of detail. Too many of our ambitious illustrators are missing the essentials of the art by overloading their pictures. Mr. Blenner appears to be in no danger of hampering himself by making this radical error. During the past summer he had charge of the Yale art school, and is now settled again in his New York studio in the Sherwood, where the winter days will be too brief to work up the thousand and one sketches treasured in his well-worn note-book. In his wide range of subjects, Mr. Blenner will easily avoid sameness of execution.  by Alexander Black, Quarterly Illustrator

• Floral Still Lifes by Carle J. Blenner
• Carle John Blenner, 1862 - 1952
• Portraits by Blenner here

with pencil and paper, 1897

Love Of The Child For Drawing.

      In reality it is well to teach every child certain of the rudiments of the various arts, and the very effort may burst the shell inclosing the germ of some capacity for them, especially in this very matter of drawing, since an impulse toward the imitation of shapes, the representation of outlines, and the expression of thoughts by means of a picture, is instinctive with us all, and an inheritance from the primitive man, whose only writing it was; and it is a further whim of our that, strange as it may at first appear, a great deal of preliminary instruction may be given by the mother or teacher who can not herself, perhaps, draw either straight line or circle. Every child has some inclination in this direction; the margins of all his school books are scratched over with his favorite designs, and if he has been so fortunate as to posses a shilling box of colors, the pages of his atlas and of his history bear witness to his aspiration, and perhaps not only to his aspiration, for it is to be doubted if Turner's "Carthage" ever gave the artist such joy as the well daubed prints of the "Landing of the Pilgrams," or "Georgian Girls in the Slave Market," in the geography book, have given to most of us in our childhood. It is no instruction, now, to take the pencil and paper and draw the line for the child to see and then to copy; he would be copying the line, not representing the object to be drawn. But it is real instruction to make the child actually see the object, and then set down on paper the lines that answer to what he sees. William Hunt used to say that the reason we do not draw an object correctly is because we do not see it correctly, or see it but partially; we think we see it, and see the whole of it; but if we do, there is nothing in the world to hinder our setting down its fac-simile. And thus the first thing to do is to teach the child to see, to see shape, relation of lines, shadow, mass, relief, dwelling first upon proportions and not till afterward on details. All that can be done before the child has taken a pencil in hand, and his eye may be in process of training a long time first, and a long time afterward on details. All that can be done before the child has taken a pencil in hand, and his eye may be in process of training a long time first, and a long time afterward, even while he is practicing on simple strokes and free lines before an object is put up for him to copy; but when his eye is somewhat trained, and one is satisfied that he has seen the shape of a thing, its projection and its proportion, and its light and shade, there is no reason why he should not represent it if there is any skill in his fingers, and he then will learn by his mistakes, each one of which to the right gazer is a step on the upward ladder. There are some, it is to be acknowledged, who have no finger knack, who can but copy, and that laboriously, by line and rule, for whom form has no attraction, who can not interpret color in black and white, and can not be drilled into the appreciation of masses and values; who, caught early, may be enlightened to some extent only sufficient to show the futility of the effort so far as any great results are concerned, yet doubtless the instruction relative to shape, proportion, and shade has opened their eyes to what would never have been seen by them without it, while within a limited degree the effort to do more has been of real benefit.
      Whether or not one is going to make pictures that will stir the heart with dreams of beauty, and live when the hand that created them is dust, it is exceedingly desirable from a utilitarian point of view, that one should be led to look carefully and see clearly, leaving imagination out of the question. A drawing is but a report of what one sees, hand and eye working together; if one can execute it, so much the better; but if that is not to be, even the verbal report will be the more accurate for any such early training as may have been given the eye. Just as a matter of business the advantage of the instruction is easily seen; the traveler, whose eye has been early taught its functions and who would write the story of his sight-seeing, needing no other hand than his own to illustrate his work, doubles his profits; and if unable to do so much as that, is yet able to write with a sharpness of outlines that bites into the memory, while the report of the traveler who sees all things but vaguely and pleasantly is blurred and forgotten; and so of the mechanician who needs no duller brain with apter fingers to stand between him and the model of his machine, and is able to sketch his own ideas as they come to him; of the naturalist whose specimens can not evade his pencil and vanish altogether, and of countless others. Thus in the light of the relations of money-getting, of science, of convenience, apart from any considerations of a possible genius to be developed, of a talent not to be wrapped in a napkin, it were well to give every child instruction in the art of drawing, encouragement to his endeavors, and praise to his success; not that unjust and indiscriminate praise which, not being deserved, makes a fool of one, but that praise which obligates a person to live up to its standard, remembering that while if the talent really exists, it is there for a purpose and to be fostered toward an end, and that, not existing, it would be a forgery upon nature to pretend that it was there. By Harriet Prescott Spofford.

• Who was Harriet Elizabeth Prescott Spofford?