Quadroon and Winifred
Dysart do his habit of thought. He painted innumerable landscapes,
portraits, and ideal heads, and in figure compositions produced, among
others, two works of great and permanent value, the And She Was a Witch,
and The Gatherer of Simples, to whose absorbing interest all who have
studied them closely will confess. The latter, particularly, is of
importance as showing how carefully Fuller studied into the secret of
expression, and of nature's sympathy with human moods. This poor, worn,
sad, old face, in which beauty and hope shone once, and where
resignation and memory now dwell; this trembling figure, to whose
decrepitude the bending staff confesses as she totters _down_ the hill;
the gathering gloom of the sky, in which one ray of promise for a bright
to-morrow shines from the setting sun; the mute witnessing of the trees
upon the hill, which have seen her pass and repass from joyful youth to
lonely age, and even her eager grasp upon the poor treasure of herbs
that she bears,--all these items of the scene impress one with a
sympathy whose keenness is even bitter, and excite a deep respect and
love for the man who could paint with so much simplicity and power. It
is not strange that when the news of his death became known, many who
had never seen him, but had studied the pictures in his latest
exhibition, should have come, with tears in their eyes, to the studios
which neighbored his, to learn something of his history.

Such works are not struck out in a heat, but grow and develop like human
lives, and it will not surprise many to know that most of them were
labored on for years. With Fuller, a picture was never completed. His
idea was constantly in advance of his work, and persisted in new
suggestions, so that the Winifred Dysart was two years in the painting,
the Arethusa five, and The Gatherer of Simples and the Witch, after an
even longer course of labor, were held by him at his death as not yet
satisfactory. The figures in the two works last mentioned have suffered
almost no change since first put upon the canvas, but they have from
time to time appeared in at least a dozen different landscapes, and
would doubtless have been placed in as many more before he had satisfied
his fastidious and exacting taste.

The artist found as much difficulty in naming his pictures when they
were done as he did in painting them. It is a prevalent, but quite
erroneous, impression that his habit was to select a