Part 5 (1/2)

Copley was a laborious and painstaking crafts sincerity He worked very slowly and many stories are told of how he tried the patience of his sitters

The result was a series of portraits which preserve the very spirit of the age--serious, self-reliant and capable, po humor

His later work has an atmosphere and repose which his early work lacks, but it is less i on the walls of so many Boston homes, and which Oliver Wendell Holmes called the titles of nobility of the old Boston families, are priceless documents of history

Copley was an artist fro because it assured hi craftsman His life was serene and happy; he ithout the tribulations, as he seereat artist Not so with his most famous conte with the contrast and picturesqueness which Copley's lacked

West was born in 1738 at a little Pennsylvania frontier settleor and simplicity of frontier life were added those of that sect But even these handicaps could not turn the boy aside from his vocation, for he was a born painter, if there ever was one At the age of six he tried to draith red and black ink, a likeness of a baby he had been set to watch; a year later, a party of friendly Indians, amused by soht him how to prepare the red and yellow colors which they used on their ornao, brushes were secured by clipping the faust--and with these crude materials he set to work

His success won him the present of a box of paints from a relative in Philadelphia With that treasure the boy lived and slept, and hisaway froarret with a picture before him which she refused to let hi was preserved to be exhibited sixty-six years later

The boy's talent was so evident, and his determination to be a painter so fixed, that his parents finally overcaainst an occupation which they considered vain and useless, and sent hially as possible, saving his e of twenty-two, set sail for Europe

His success there was iained friends in the most influential circles, spent three years in study in Italy, and going to London in 1764, received so many commissions that he decided to live there permanently He wrote ho with him a Miss Shewell, to who that his father would sail at a certain ti her to join him The letter fell into the hands of Miss Shewell's brother, who objected to West for soirl in her rooe upon true love was not to be endured, sot her out of the house and safely on board the vessel These three friends were Benjamin Franklin, Francis Hopkinson and William White, the latter the first Bishop of the American Episcopal Church, and the exploit was one which they were always proud to remember Miss Shewell reached London safely and the lovers were happily iven a sudden ie III The two ave hi in a command to decorate the Royal Chapel at Windsor His first reverse caan to fail His commissions were cancelled and his pensions stopped He was deposed from the Presidency of the Royal Academy, which he had founded, and was for a time in needy circumstances; but the tide soon turned, and his last years were s He died at the age of eighty-two, and was buried in St Paul's Cathedral with splendid ceremonies So ended one of the most remarkable careers in history

West was, perhaps, more notable as a man than as an artist, for his fareatest service to art was the exaroups in the costume of the period instead of in the vestments of the early Romans, as had been the custom This innovation was made by him in his picture of the death of General Wolfe, and created no little disturbance His friends, including Reynolds, protested against such a desecration of tradition; even the King questioned him, and West replied that the painter should be bound by truth as well as the historian, and to represent a group of English soldiers in the year 1758 as dressed in classic costume was absurd

After the picture was completed, Reynolds was the first to declare that West had won, and that his picture would occasion a revolution in art--as, indeed, it did

It is difficult to understand the habit of thought which insisted on clothing great arments they could never by any possibility have worn, yet it persisted until a comparatively late day The h's statue of Washi+ngton, just outside the Capitol One looks at it with a certain sense of shock, for the Father of His Country is sitting half-naked, in a great ar over one shoulder

We shall have occasion in the next chapter to speak of it and of its maker

Another of West's services to art was the wholehearted way in which he extended a helping hand to any who needed it He was alilling to give such instruction as he could, and a his pupils were at least four men who added not a little to American art--Charles Willson Peale, Gilbert Stuart, John Trumbull, and Thomas Sully

Peale was born in Maryland in 1741, and was, as, a saddler, a coach-maker, a clock- to his other acco materials and a book of instructions and set to work In 1770, a nuh land, a loan which he promised to repay with pictures upon his return West received hiave out, as it soon did, welcomed him into his own house Peale re to Aton as a captain of volunteers, and to take part in the battles of Trenton and Ger, but, in 1801, his mind, always alert for new experiences, was led away in a strange direction The bones of a mammoth were discovered in Ulster County, New York, and Peale secured possession of them, had them taken to Philadelphia, and started a museum It rapidly increased in size, for all sorts of curiosities poured in upon hian a series of lectures on natural history, which, whether learned or not, proved so interesting that large and distinguished audiences gathered to hear him In 1805, he founded the Pennsylvania Acade institution of the kind in the country He lived to a hale old age, never having known sickness, and dying as the result of incautious exposure Like West, his life is ood portraits, they were the work rather of a skilled craftsman than of an artist

[Illustration: STUART]

The second of West's pupils e have reatest of the earlier artists He was born near Newport, R

I, in 1755, his father being a Jacobite refugee froe, worked faithfully at drawing, and finally, at the age of nineteen, began portrait painting in earnest One of his first pictures was a striking example of a remarkable characteristic, the power of visual randmother had died five or six years before, but he painted a portrait of her, producing so striking a likeness that it irown distasteful to hiot there is not certainly known, but get there he did, withouteither, and for three years lived a precarious life, earning a littlewhat he could, twice iay and brilliant and talented that those he wronged most loved him most Finally, he was introduced to Benjamin West, and found in him an invaluable friend and patron For nearly four years, Stuart worked as West's student and assistant, steadily i merit, and, more than that, one that was all his own

His portraits soon attracted attention, and at the end of a few years, he was earning a large income But he squandered it so recklessly that he was finally forced to flee to Ireland to escape his creditors

They pursued hiend is that he painted most of the Irish aristocracy in his cell in the Dublin jail

At last, in 1792, he returned to America, aniton Arrange were h he had painted many faely eton's presence The President was kindly and courteous, but the portrait was a failure He tried again, and produced the portrait which remains to this day the accepted likeness of the First American You will find it as the frontispiece to ”Men of Action,” and it is worth exa closely, for it is an example of art rarely surpassed, as well as a remarkable portrait of our most remarkable citizen

Gilbert Stuart still holds his place areatest of American portrait painters His heads, painted siination, are unsurpassed; they possess insight, they accoreatest of all tasks, the delineation of character