subject from some
literary work, and then attempt to paint it in the light of the author's
ideas. His practice exactly reversed this method: he painted his picture
first, and then tried to evolve or find a name that would fit it. The
name Winifred Dysart, which is without literary origin or meaning, and
yet in some strange way seems the only proper title for the work to
which it is attached, came out of the artist's own mind. His Priscilla
was started as an Elsie Venner, but he found it impossible to work upon
the lines another had laid down without too much cramping his own fancy;
when half done he thought of calling it Lady Wentworth, and at last gave
it its present name by chance of having taken up The Blithedale Romance,
and noting with pleased surprise how closely Hawthorne's account of his
heroine fitted his own creation. The Nydia was started with the idea of
presenting the helplessness of blindness, with a hint of the exaltation
of the other senses that is consequent upon the loss of sight, and
showed at first merely a girl groping along a wall in search of a door;
and the Arethusa was the outgrowth of a general inspiration caused by a
reading of Spenser's Faerie Queen, and did not receive its present very
appropriate name until its exhibition made some designation necessary.

I have devoted this study on of Mr. Fuller to his quality as an artist
rather than to his character as a man, but shall have written in vain if
some hint has not been given of the loveliness of his disposition, the
modesty of his spirit, the chaste force of his mind. A man inevitably
paints as he himself is, and shows his nature in his works: Fuller's
pictures are founded upon purity of thought, and painted with dignity
and single-heartedness, and the grace of his life dwells in them.

* * * * *

[GEORGE FULLER was born in Deerfield, Massachusetts, in 1822. He was
descended from old Puritan stock, and his ancesters were among the early
settlers of the Connecticut River valley. He inherited a taste for art,
as an uncle and several other relatives of the previous generation were
painters, although none of them attained any particular reputation. He
began painting by himself at the age of about sixteen years, and at the
age of twenty entered the studio of Henry K. Brown, of Albany, New York,
where he received his first and only direct instruction. His work, until
the age of about forty years, was almost entirel