equality. In spite of the quiet pose, the lack of strongly contrasted
light and shade and all of the clever tricks and forced accents of
Lawrence and his followers, they are alive and alert. The
characterization is excellent. The young people were not of so profound
or complicated a nature as the Father of his Country, and the faces are
not wrought out with the delicate subtlety of the Gibbs-Channing
Washington which hangs between them, but they are clear-cut, compelling
belief in their truth. The execution, too, has all of Stuart's skill.
Others may have attempted higher things, but none did what he attempted
with such perfect ease and sureness. In neither of the canvases is there
a sign of uncertainty, hesitation, or alteration. Each touch is put
exactly where it should be and left. There is none of the scumbling and
glazing and re-working so common in the English portraits of the time.
It is to this that the canvases owe their admirable freshness which
makes them look as if painted yesterday. The heads have all of Stuart's
pearly gray and rose tones unimpaired by ill-usage or restoration. The
clothes and accessories are more swiftly and summarily done, the silver
lace and the high lights being touched in with amazing sureness and
cleverness. The composition and arrangement is pleasing, and Stuart's
besetting fault of putting his heads too low on the canvas is excused
and justified in the case of Don Josef by the necessity of having his
portrait correspond with that of his wife, whose elaborate and stylish
head-dress fills the top of her picture. In short, New York is to be
congratulated on the winning back after a sojourn abroad of more than a
century of these two most important and charming paintings executed here
in the early days of the Republic.

At this point this article might well end, but there may be some who
recall that last summer for a week or so there appeared in the papers
articles headed "Fakes at the Museum" or "The Metropolitan Gets Lemons,"
which assailed the genuineness of these portraits. The discussion did
not get far beyond the daily press, which, after its habit, registered
the charges as picturesquely and vehemently as it could, but attempted
no serious investigation of them. They were brought by a critic whose
position as a special student of Stuart entitled them to respectful
consideration, but after giving them that they do not seem conclusive or
even important. They were based on the fact t