e he painted a portrait with force and
with truth. He was a pupil of Alexander, a Scotchman, and afterward an
assistant to West. He settled in Boston, and during his life painted
most of the great men of his time, including Washington.

[Illustration: FIG. 104.--W. M. HUNT. LUTE PLAYER.]

Vanderlyn (1776-1852) met with adversity all his life long, and
perhaps never expressed himself fully. He was a pupil of Stuart,
studied in Paris and Italy, and his associations with Aaron Burr made
him quite as famous as his pictures. Washington Allston (1779-1843)
was a painter whom the Bostonians have ranked high in their
art-history, but he hardly deserved such position. Intellectually he
was a man of lofty and poetic aspirations, but as an artist he never
had the painter's sense or the painter's skill. He was an aspiration
rather than a consummation. He cherished notions about ideals, dealt
in imaginative allegories, and failed to observe the pictorial
character of the world about him. As a result of this, and poor
artistic training, his art had too little basis on nature, though it
was very often satisfactory as decoration. Rembrandt Peale
(1787-1860), like his father, was a painter of Washington portraits of
mediocre quality. Jarvis (1780-1834) and Sully (1783-1872) were both
British born, but their work belongs here in America, where most of
their days were spent. Sully could paint a very good portrait
occasionally, though he always inclined toward the weak and the
sentimental, especially in his portraits of women. Leslie (1794-1859)
and Newton (1795-1835) were Americans, but, like West and Copley, they
belong in their art more to England than to America. In all the early
American painting the British influence may be traced, with sometimes
an inclination to follow Italy in large compositions.

THE MIDDLE PERIOD in American art dates from 1825 to about 1878. During
that time, something distinctly American began to appear in the
landscape work of Doughty (1793-1856) and Thomas Cole (1801-1848). Both
men were substantially self-taught, though Cole received some
instruction from a portrait-painter named Stein. Cole during his life
was famous for his Hudson River landscapes, and for two series of
pictures called The Voyage of Life and The Course of Empire. The latter
were really epic poems upon canvas, done with much blare of color and
literary explanation in the title. His best work was in pure landscape,
which he pictured with