urned naturally to
painting and began to produce pictures after only two weeks'
instruction. At first, he was a disciple of Kensett, with brown shadows
and artificial high-lights, but study of nature soon cured these
mannerisms, and he grew steadily in skill and power, until he succeeded
in imparting to his pictures the deep, grave and sobering sentiment,
which is the keynote of his work. His coast views, with their swirl and
almost audible thunder of billow, are considered his crowning
achievements.

This culmination of the Hudson River school brings us fairly to our own
times and to the work of men still living, for the period just preceding
and following the Civil War was marked by no new impulse in American art
and by no work which demands attention. But in the early seventies,
there were a number of Americans studying at home or in Europe who have
since won a wide reputation for inspiring achievement.

Foremost among these is Elihu Vedder, born in New York City in 1836, and
following, in his manhood, the manifest bent of his childish years. He
went to Paris before he was of age, and from there to Rome, where he
spent five years. The five succeeding years were spent in America, and
finally, in 1866, he settled in Rome and has since made it his home. He
represents a revival of the classical quality of Raphael or Michael
Angelo, though he belongs to no school, and his work has from the very
first possessed a distinct originality. He has held to the old
simplicity, which minimized detail and exalted the subject. General
recognition came to him in 1884, when he published his illustrations to
the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam--the most sympathetic and beautiful
pictorial comment which has ever been given any book of poetry. Since
then he has executed much decorative work of a high order, though the
mastery in this branch of the art is held by another.

That other is John LaFarge, admittedly the greatest mural painter the
world has seen in recent years. His life was a fortunate one. His
father, an officer of the French marine, came to this country in 1806,
married, and purchased a great plantation in Louisiana, from which he
derived a large revenue. His son, born in 1835, grew up in an artistic
atmosphere of books and pictures, and was early taught to draw. When,
after some study of law, he visited Paris, his father advised him to
take up the study of art as an accomplishment, and he entered one of the
studios, merely as an