work. It
recalls in a contrary sense that saying of the sculptor Puget: "The
marble trembles before me." Mr. Hunt trembles before his new-born idea.
His swift nature has allowed him in the first hour of work to put into
his picture the tenderness or rapture, the unconscious grace or
tempestuous force, which he despaired at first of ever being able to
express. In the flush of success he stops: he has it, the idea; the
chief interest of the subject is portrayed before him; the delicate
presence (and what can be more delicate than the thoughts he has
delineated?) is there, and may vanish if touched in a less fortunate
moment. But is this lack of fulfillment in the artist entirely without
precedent or parallel? Had not Sir Joshua Reynolds a studio full of
young artists who "finished off" his pictures? Were not the very faces
themselves painted with such rapidity and want of proper method as to
drop off, on occasion, entirely from the canvas, as in case of the boy's
head, in being carried through the street? Hunt is of our own age, and
would scorn the suggestion of having a hand or a foot painted for him,
as if it were a matter of small importance what individual expression a
hand or a foot should wear; but who can tell for what future age he has
painted the wise, abrupt, kind, persistent, simple, strong old Judge in
his Yankee coat; or the genial, resolute, hopeful, self-sacrificing
governor of Massachusetts; and the Master of the boys, with his keen,
loving, uncompromising face? These are pictures that, when children say,
"Tell us about the Governor who helped Massachusetts bring her men first
into the field during our war," we may lead them up before and reply,
"He was this man!" So also with the portraits of the Judge, of the
Master of the boys, of the old man with clear eyes and firm mouth, and
that sweet American girl standing, unconscious of observation, plucking
at the daisy in her hat and guessing at her fate.

Hurry, impatience and a worship of crude thought are characteristics of
our present American life. Hunt is one of us. If these faults mark and
mar his work, they show him also to be a child of the time. His quick
sympathies are caught by the wayside and somewhat frayed out among his
fellows; but nevertheless one essential of a great painter, that of
_Verity_, will be accorded to him after an examination of the pictures
we have mentioned.

But truth, character, skill, the many gifts and great labor which mus