Mellville several months now. The first
month I painted fences, and gave general satisfaction. The next month I
white-washed a barn. The third, I was doing tin roofs; the forth, common
signs; the fifth, statuary to stand before cigar shops. This present
month is only the sixth, and I am already in portraits!

The humble offering which accompanies these remarks (see figure)--the
portrait of his Majesty William III., King of Prussia--is my fifth
attempt in portraits, and my greatest success. It has received unbounded
praise from all classes of the community, but that which gratifies me
most is the frequent and cordial verdict that it resembles the GALAXY
portraits. Those were my first love, my earliest admiration, the
original source and incentive of my art-ambition. Whatever I am in Art
today, I owe to these portraits. I ask no credit for myself--I deserve
none. And I never take any, either. Many a stranger has come to my
exhibition (for I have had my portrait of King William on exhibition at
one dollar a ticket), and would have gone away blessing ME, if I had let
him, but I never did. I always stated where I got the idea.

King William wears large bushy side-whiskers, and some critics have
thought that this portrait would be more complete if they were added.
But it was not possible. There was not room for side-whiskers and
epaulets both, and so I let the whiskers go, and put in the epaulets,
for the sake of style. That thing on his hat is an eagle. The Prussian
eagle--it is a national emblem. When I say hat I mean helmet; but it
seems impossible to make a picture of a helmet that a body can have
confidence in.

I wish kind friends everywhere would aid me in my endeavor to attract
a little attention to the GALAXY portraits. I feel persuaded it can be
accomplished, if the course to be pursued be chosen with judgment. I
write for that magazine all the time, and so do many abler men, and if
I can get these portraits into universal favor, it is all I ask; the
reading-matter will take care of itself.

COMMENDATIONS OF THE PORTRAIT

There is nothing like it in the Vatican. Pius IX.

It has none of that vagueness, that dreamy spirituality about it, which
many of the first critics of Arkansas have objected to in the Murillo
school of Art. Ruskin.

The expression is very interesting. J.W. Titian.

(Keeps a macaroni store in Venice, at the old family stand.)

It is the neatest thing in still life I have seen