him to learn engraving-from which he, like several other painters of note, have found it but a step to the brush. After a time this was set aside for free-hand drawing. Harper's Weekly was now in its beginnings and accepted some of Homer's first work. So promising did its promoters find him that a place on the staff was offered him, but this he declined, not wishing to bind himself to routine labor. However, when the war opened and the new magazine rallied its forces to meet the arduous demands now laid upon it, Homer was asked to go to the front and keep the paper supplied with scenes of the conflict. For two years he sent pictures from the battlefield, camp and hospital. Of all these sketches Prisoners from the Front is best known. It is said that many of the faces are portraits. The response it awakened is to be explained by the excitement of the times.

Besides his war illustrations, Winslow Homer made a study of the colored people and even aroused the antagonism of the more rabid by his genre pictures of them. The Visit from the Old Mistress, wherein the lady from the plantation house bestows a gracious call upon her former slaves, deferential in attention; The Carnival, representing several members of the family getting another ready for the festivity, and Sunday Morning in Virginia, wherein colored children with difficulty spell out their lesson, are best among them.

Homer never married, nor did he assume the slightest obligation that might even remotely interrupt his work. He was bound to his art with the most powerful ties of his life, leaving civilization and living for years at a time on the rocky, storm-swept coast of Maine. Some of his finest productions are pictures of the sea-found in all its moods among his canvases. He painted just what he saw, holding his canvas near the rocks to judge of its truthful colorings. No artist ever spent less time inquiring into the nature of art and its proper methods of expression. He simply painted prolifically. Some of his pictures tell a story-which critics would have us believe no artistic picture should do. But they tell it subtly and well; the story gives significance to the whole and is whatever one remembers when he views it. The Fog Warning, for example, depicts an old rugged fisherman in his dory; two or three large halibut are already beside him. A fog is rising over the

waters, bringing a forecast of an enshrouding mist which ere long will endanger the little craft unless it puts in for shore.

The Life Line is a masterly production, showing little, but telling much. A strong cable, which holds the lifebuoy suspended from the invisible wreck to the shore, a sturdy old salt bearing a fainting woman in his arms, and the angry sea are all that is shown. Neither the water-tossed wreck nor the rescuers are included, yet the presence of both is felt. The Undertow shows a fortunate rescue just before it was too late. The Gulf Stream is a picture of horror. A waterspout is sweeping in from the distance. A colored man lies on the deck of a helpless craft, already disabled by the tempestuous sea. Frightened sea creatures have come to the surface because of the unusual conditions and the sharks are almost exulting over the impending misery. A vessel some distance away, which at first sight suggests hope, is found upon closer examination to be receding. High Seas, Eight Bells, West Wind-these and many others bring vividly before us the vast waters in their limitless extent, or the waves as they break upon the rocks. Homer spent months together in lighthouses, persuading the keepers to take him in, experiencing all the moods of the ocean and growing to understand its mysterious voice.

Few painters have ever shunned publicity more than Homer. He neither valued nor enjoyed the effusive praise which is lavished upon the successful artist. Strongly attached to his brothers and his friends, generous to everyone, he preferred solitude for the greater portion, emerging from it sometimes, but slipping back into it again without warning. Letters sent to his summer home after he returned to the city for the winter were found by him the following year-for he never troubled to have mail forwarded. Six months often passed before a friend might receive a reply to a matter of some special concern. His pictures were turned over to his dealer, for he would not suffer the annoyance of visitors around his studio. Few members of the Academy knew him even by sight. He founded no school, yet his influence upon American painting cannot be disputed.

John La Farge (1835-1910) was as thoroughly American as Winslow Homer. Here in America his life was largely spent and his fame established. His father as a young French soldier

went to San Domingo, where he was made lieutenant. By dint of good fortune he escaped impending destruction in the island and took passage to the United States. Belonging to a wellestablished family, he soon found his place with the French colony in New York, composed of émigrés seeking safety from the horrors of the French Revolution and refugees from San Domingo. He married the daughter of a former San Domingo planter and settled in comfort in the growing metropolis, where his son was born.

As the boy grew older his grandfather, Binsse de St. Vistor, a miniature painter, instructed him in the rudiments of painting, although there was no thought of his pursuing the subject further. After finishing his law course he was sent abroad to visit his father's people and gain what he could from travel. While in Paris his father suggested his taking lessons in painting, and for a few weeks he went regularly to one of the studios. Upon his return he opened a law office in New York, but shortly after met William Hunt, then returning from extended art study abroad. La Farge was influenced by his enthusiasm to abandon law and go with him to the coast of Rhode Island. He soon discovered that his own ideas were broader than those of his teacher and he began to experiment for himself. Years after he explained his reluctance to undertake painting as his life-work, because he thought he might be better adapted to other work, and settled upon it only when he found it more appealing than anything else.

After a serious illness he went again to Europe, now meeting Rossetti and Burne-Jones. However, he was more interested in mural painting and in the study of stained glass windows.

When he returned to America he was commissioned to decorate a Boston church. He found it necessary to train painters to carry out his plans, and, wall decoration being wholly new in this country, was hampered on every hand. About this time he set up a furnace and began to manufacture opalescent glass. Battle Window, in Memorial Hall, Harvard, first called the attention of the general public to his skill in this direction. Later he produced the Watson Memorial Window in Trinity Church, Buffalo. This was exhibited in Paris in 1889 and won for him the insignia of the Legion of Honor.

This was especially gratifying to the artist, because it was an expression of appreciation from his father's countrymen.

Failing health led him to travel, first to Japan, later to the South Sea Islands. Often he was confined to his bed and frequently his burning genius impelled him to work when he was far from well. His fresco in the Church of the Ascension, New York, was executed immediately after his return from the Orient, and the refreshment of the voyage gave him unusual vigor for the undertaking, which is generally acknowledged as being his finest mural painting.

His work in the State Capitol of Minnesota is characteristic of his style and treatment.

Among mural decorations done for private persons, his Music and Drama, commissioned by Whitelaw Reid for his New York home, are excellent.

La Farge produced more than one thousand windows, the famous Peacock Window being most splendid; he painted flower pieces and figures as well as mural pictures. Furthermore, he is known for his writings concerning art and the ancient masters. He was a deep and insatiable scholar and surprised Chinese students by his acquaintance with Confucius and his teachings. In his treatment of Socrates he revealed his familiarity with Greek life and thought. More than most men he tried to analyze his opinions and the methods by which he reached them. He was an innovator and inventor, whose originality was remarkable. While his work was somewhat experimental, he has done much to give force to the doctrine of William Morris: that beauty might and should surround us. The recollection of bare walls in American churches led him to press on in his study of mural paintings. He discovered that decadence in mediæval windows was simultaneous with the separation of artist and his workmen. He saw that unless he would have the charm of individuality eliminated from his designs, he must remain with the work in its execution, imbuing those entrusted to do it with his spirit.

James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) is classified with American painters simply from the fact that he happened to be born in this country. His art was developed in Europe, where his life was spent and his reputation won.

His father was a skillful engineer, who was commissioned

by the Russian government to lay out a railroad in that country. As a boy of nine Whistler was taken thither by his family, where he remained for some years. He received some instruction in drawing at St. Petersburg, and at the Hermitage had opportunity to study paintings of Velazquez and other artists of note. After his return to America he was sent to West Point, but was ill-fitted by Nature for the routine of a cadet's life. Even in his youth many of his eccentricities were manifest. He had grown up in the midst of luxury and was as sensitive as a girl about his appearance and apparel. He was uniformly late, regarding exact time as much too hampering for his temperament. Any rule was an intolerable restraint. Favor brought him an appointment in the office of the United States Coast Survey, but he adorned government sheets with heads and during the two months he remained, was fined by deducted time for constant tardiness and frequent absence. At the age of twenty-one he went abroad, never to return.

For years Whistler wrestled with poverty that hampers the average art student and struggling painter. His life was one prolonged protest and the world gives its ear grudgingly to messages set in this key. Realism was in the ascendancy: paint things as you see them; do not idealize; do not throw a haze about an object to enhance its beauty; paint all as it appears. This was the spirit of the day. Whistler believed that beauty might be everywhere seen, but not in all objects at all times. The attitude of the naturalist, that it is wrong for the painter to seek beauty, but rather that he should portray reality-the object as it is-was torture to this delicately poised genius. He felt that there are moments when Nature and men are at their best; those are the supreme moments that only the true artist sees and can portray.

Much has been made of Whistler's idiosyncrasies, and there is no doubt but that he was individual both by nature and cultivation. He liked to feel that he was the cynosure of all eyes. He denied the artificial demands of time as something too galling to his nature. When a director of an art association set a meeting for "four-thirty, precisely," Whistler replied that he never had nor ever would be able to attend any meeting at fourthirty, precisely. He never hesitated, after he became a lion, to keep dinner parties waiting hours at a time, if he became