painting, and as it was understood among ancient Italian painters. It does credit to Mr. Huntington's study of some of the old masters, and is remotely suggestive of Titian and Vandyke; in fact, it shows great dependence upon the examples of the two masters of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. A certain degree of nobility in the types, more or less conventional, an impression of repose and size, and the dignity of the Samaritan, render this a respectable example of a style of art that belongs to the past.

My gentle reader's face has darkened. Let me hasten to add that American art has no better specimen of this kind of painting save in the works of Allston. The color is rich, the tone deep; the expression and character of the young woman's face sympathetic and pure; that of the mother fussy and incredulous and surprised; that of the Samaritan commanding, perhaps a little exaggerated, and therefore overbearing. This is an example of religious art not much appreciated outside of the pulpit's immediate influence; it is not equal to Flandrin's art, nor could it well be so, for Flandrin was a pious, and convinced, and submissive mind-pious and submissive to a degree hardly possible in an American Protestant with a sense of beauty and of art comparable to the devout French Catholic religious painter.

There are other examples of Mr. Huntington's talent in Mr. Roberts' gallery-several landscapes that show a natural sense of color, but a sense that seems to me not sufficiently cultivated, or rather, seems hurt by too much studio-work, and not stimulated enough by close and frequent reference to nature. But Mr. Huntington appears in all his serious and gracious qualities of an agreeable and cultivated painter in Mr. Roberts' gallery. His aim as an artist is now shared by few, perhaps by no American painter of equal ability. It is an aim that made him scrupulous to repeat something of the glories of the great Italian masters in a form which they have illustrated according to the suggestions of their own spirits. So far

as the art of painting is concerned,qualities of color, harmony, tone, depth, handling,-Mr. Huntington may be said to have attained much. But the sweetness and grace of his nature, instead of making a wholly personal expression, have been too easily contented with conventional forms, and this fact detracts from the merit of his work as an artist. But enough.

We are before a charming head of a young girl, sweet and pearly in color, of a delicious simplicity in expression, refined in form and tint,-refined like the lip of a sea-shell, soft as a petal,a face that is individual enough to be a portrait, and which is yet representative enough for a type. Well, it is only a little girl, a half-length by Mr. Henry Peters Gray, and, without exception, it is, to us, the most refined and wholly charming example of his talent that we know of a picture to covet and remember, it is so fine, so delicate, so delightful in suggestion, so artless. This little maiden with her little ring upon her little finger; a little bud of a girl dressed in the simplest fashion, without a single detail, owing its whole charm to the positive painting of the face, to the unobtrusive painting of the figure and background, is really a work of art, precious in fact, and better than larger and more pretentious pictures. This picture represents a rare attainment in arta personal and lovely sentiment of a particular form of life. The mechanic, the mere picture-maker, had little to do here; the artist, pervaded with a sense of his subject, has done every thing; and yet the man who painted this picture is often in complete subjection to the very ideas which, inherited with his time, have cheapened the work of Mr. Huntington. We mean ideas of imitating-or, if not so frankly avowed, ideas of repeating the historic and religious art created by the painters of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This aim is, and these ideas are, it is but just to say, the common object and property of every school of academic art: dominating the life of an artist, he is lifted above the vulgar and trivial by them; yet as often

they take him away from reality, and then he but feebly touches our feelings, while to a Wilkie, a Frere, a Millet, a Rousseau, belongs the honor of creating an individual if not a national form of art, destined to outlive the more exclusive, the less robust, the less natural, often the feebler, forms of art, consecrated by the reverence of schools and repeated only for the profit of the unthinking in such matters. We cannot help regretting that both Mr. Huntington and Mr. Gray do not oftener content themselves with the simple fact of nature; that they do not care more for actual men and women and children, and less for story and symbol or allegory, which make illustrative puppets of human beings. But to do this they must resist the taste of picturebuyers who covet a fancy picture, a composition, a story illustrated by conventional types, and are stupid or insensible before the finest example of art in the unpretentious form of a study of a head, of a figure, not knowing that the greatest achievement in the art of painting is a simple man, woman, or child, at the best or most pathetic moment of their existence. And yet this is a conclusion which must seem ill-advised in the gallery of Mr. Marshall O. Roberts, before so imposing an example of his torical art as the late Mr. Leutze's Washington Crossing the Delaware" -a picture more widely known than any other American picture-a picture which commands respect in Paris, is admired in Germany, and doubtless is highly thought of by the artists of the English Royal Academy; for, viewed from the standpoint of a school, its art is on a level with its subject-it is heroic and effective. Most of us recollect the depreciation to which injudicious and envenomed critics subjected the painter of this picture but a few years ago: the reaction against his art was violent and inconsiderate of personal feelings; but after all is said, we must admit that Leutze the painter was on the same plane as Bancroft the historian, and that this historical composition is a clever and vigorous piece of work, expressive as an oration, and if not profound, if not

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precious, certainly intelligent, a pictorial witness of good sense; as a composition, notwithstanding the tableau vivant look of the figures, comparable to Vernet, and, in point of drawing and action, but little short of the merit of the best examples of retrospective historical painting, which necessarily fall short of the quality of contemporary historical art.

It is natural enough to be brusque and positive before the works of living painters that are outside of our sympathies; but before what remains vivid and tangible, with sign of weakness or of strength, of a hand now stilled forever, we must think and speak gently: and so we think of poor Leutze, so strong in his day of being, grasping by his intellect the barbaric and violent of history, and rejoicing in the active and collective life of past times. To him art was not an end in itself; it was merely a means of rendering his conception of men in dramatic situations and at picturesque epochs. The artist, pure and simple, has a different aim; his aim is beauty, and beauty and its means of expression are to him inseparable.

The interest of Mr. Roberts' Gallery would be strong were it only furnished with the three popular pictures, just mentioned, by Huntington and Leutze; but these, chief though they be in American art of yesterday, are but a portion of a large collection, which includes works by most American painters, and not a few by the leading contemporary French painters. One Meissonier, one Gérome, three Freres, specimens of Willems, Jules Noel, Plassan, Vantier; several pictures from the Düsseldorf school of painting; three large landscapes by Church, two pictures by S. R. Gifford a charming sketch of a woodroad and a masterly picture of sea and shore a little after mid-day; two landscapes by James Hart, one by William Hart and one Kensett; here, too, you can see one of George Hall's best-known pictures, his " April Shower; an historical picture by Irving; Robert M. Weir's "Embarkation of the Pilgrims; Lang's Beatrice Cenci in her la-t sleep; Hay's Herd of Buffaloes; a landscape

study by Hicks; a Venice by Cranch, also a bit of the russet woods by the same artist, and one of the best specimens of his talent; an interesting, and, in some respects, a fine picture of Corph Castle by Cropsey: these pictures, of varied rank, some of no rank at all, in art, are instructive to the lover of American art, and show what effort has been made by some of our older men years ago to give grace and beauty to our home-life. George A. Baker is represented by a lovely head of a young woman, and a cabinet picture of a group of girls, pleasant in color, but too gene ral in style to do credit to the painter's study of nature. A charming portrait of a child by William O. Stone, sketchy in execution and broad and delicate in effect, is worthy of attention. Two heads by Merle, a Venice by Tilton, a large landscape by Gignoux-Indian Summer in Virginia—a rocky coast by Alexander Wüst, four pictures by Eastman Johnson, a sketch by Homer, several pictures by Gray and one by Mount, a Marie Antoinette by Muller, a little picture by G. Lambdin, an elaborate study of the details of vegetation in the autumn woods by W. T. Richards, a remarkable and invaluable picture by Woodville, and several foreign pictures, in addition to those we have mentioned, constitute the body and force of Mr. Marshall O. Roberts' private gallery.

Now that we know what we have to look at, mindful of our "gentle reader," and yet without stopping to consider Leutze's "Expulsion of the Moors," one of his latest works, singularly like a piece of tapestry in effect, we will look at Woodville's "News from the Mexican War." This picture is to Mr. Roberts' collection what Homer's "Prisoners from the Front" is to Mr. J. T. Johnston's gallery. It is expressive of an epoch; it is a bit of local history of vast significance, painted with adequate knowledge and the right purpose. It is more elaborate art than Homer's picture; the direct and simple talent of the painter is less, his study and experience greater, than Homer's. This picture is a gift to all of us, and it should have a

place of honor in Mr. Roberts' gallery, for he has no American genre picture comparable to it. Many of our older readers, doubtless, are well acquainted with this picture, for we believe it dates from the old Art-Union days in New York. The artist has painted a group of men on the stoop of a country Hotel and Post-Office, listening to the host, who stands in an anxious and eager attitude, devouring with his eyes the exciting news from the seat of war, which he reads to a curious and varied group of old and young. Character, expression, action, grouping, are alike good-I will say more, remarkable—in this thoughtful and well-designed picture, which has more good sense, more brains, in it, than any Meissonier we have ever seen; and certainly it is more appropriately placed on the walls of an American gallery than most examples of foreign art. Luxury and ostentation, with undiscriminating pride, will covet and boast of foreign pictures, but real love of art will be as, responsive to the extraordinary merit of our best native talent as it is hospitable to the famous or admirable painters of modern France. It is for this reason that I congratulate Mr. Roberts upon being the owner of Woodville's "War-News from Mexico."

There seems to have been a generous impartiality presiding over the formation of Mr. Roberts' collection of paintings. Native and foreign art are represented without any thing like exclusiveness, although Church, Huntington, and Leutze do cover the greatest amount of space on the walls of the gallery. But size is not a measure of interest, of merit, or of cost, in matters of art, and therefore we suppose the little Meissonier, the well-proportioned Gérome, and the historical picture by Muller, represent as much art and as much wealth, if less of patriotism, than the enormous examples of native talent just mentioned.

Mr. Roberts' Gérome, in point of color, is the finest that we know of in New York. Prisoners and slaves, guarded by Arabs, are seen moving towards the spectator on the sands of the East. The

hot and dusty look, the strange and positive types, Nubians and Abyssinians, and a brawny negro from the Niger, coupled with wooden shackles, heads wrapped in the sheltering folds of white kaiks, while arms and legs and feet are bare to the sun and sand, are rendered with the hand of an unsparing, indefatigable, and masterly observer. What a group of surly and repugnant animals, subjected by treachery, or force, to the will of covetous and unscrupulous masters! It is in a picture like this that Gérome's accuracy and thoroughness do us a great service. Here the painter who travels is as much as-he is even more than the photographer. Here is a representative picture, which shows us the actual conditions of life in the intercourse between the races and tribes bordering the great desert. This picture is wholly interesting-interesting as art, interesting as a glimpse of the populous and barbaric East, where, under burning skies, and by the shores of sluggish rivers, or across desert-sands, the animal, the brute in human form, obeys those natural rulers of men-Cunning and Force. This must make us pause and think of destiny and fate, which hold so many races in the ruts of time, and bestow no glimmer upon them of that light by which we live and hope and love—the light of an ideal civilization.

The absolute Gérome, whose talent is sufficiently understood by people interested in the subject of my article, was, as the French say, never better inspired than when he painted this picture. It is one of his masterpieces, being more solidly painted, more vivid in color, more mellow and harmonious in effect, than most of his paintings.

The "gentle reader," somewhat neglected for the reason that he is somewhat indifferent to Gérome's work, has not been forgotten. We have observed him poring fondly over some of the preartistic examples of American art in Mr. Roberts' gallery-poring fondly over little futile bits, feeble sketches, and before great canvases that were painted when he was young! He is a tender

shade among the pathetic remains of the pride of yesterday-pictures that we cannot boast of before a New York journalist, much less in face of an instructed and exacting lover of art; but they are pictures which fill one with sadness, and suggest the sere and yellow leaf of artistic fame, and remind us how difficult it is for us who last but a little while to make a work that shall last. A great subject is not enough; the matter is often of so little importance in art, that the manner alone seems to be the part that floats a work and keeps a name fresh in the memory. But, shall a Meissonier, with his marvellous execution, touch, and tone, and drawing, and expression, employed on mean or poor or common subjects, last, while hosts of painters of sacred subjects, and pictorial and retrospective historians, have none to show them reverence! Shall patience and dexterity of hand and exact observation do more for a man's name than his power to sympathize with the noble, the good, the beautiful?

In the immortality of this world the shaping power, the power to give form and body, is the only pledge of the duration of a man's work and name. His sympathies, his intentions, all that makes him a delightful and attaching social be ing, counts for very little in art for, in art it is not the matter, but the manner, that constitutes the particular glory of the artist. If the subject, if variety and fulness of meaning, were more than the style, Oertell's "Father Time and his Family" in Mr. Roberts' gallery would have made him more famous than Meissonier was made by his "Chess-Players." And yet, it must be said that the greatest art must be the greatest subject expressed in the grandest manner. We are disposed to ignore this, for no American figure-painter has ever given us so much. Allston alone, were he now living, might do it. He had the mind, the culture, the heart for it; but he lived when painters were bound by tradition, and seemed exclusively retrospective, and were, assuredly, conventional.

We are now before Mr. Roberts' Meissonier. It represents the costume of a

soldier of the seventeenth century, and the face of a very modern fellow. It is a beautiful piece of painting, clear, bright, exact. On this little pannel the art of the painter is expressive of traits of character which must always command respect and sometimes admiration. But if at any time in the study and admiration of art, save when before a Vernet, a man may be excused for thanking God he is not like this man, it should be before a Meissonier. We all understand that he is unrivalled in his genre, that he is a positive fact in art as in life, that he is no trifler, no loose and careless and listless worker; we all know his power of application, his love of clothes, weapons, furniture, and the material life of men; we all call him master, and salute him. But would it not be well, out of respect to the grandeur and loveliness that may be in art because it is in man, to ask, now and then, what is the world to Meissonier, what does he introduce us to, and is not his work most appropriately placed in the galleries of unthinking and heartless men? elsewhere it can have place only as an object of curiosity and fashion. Thank God, there are but few Meissoniers among painters-that is, men who limit our sympathies and never appeal to the ideal, never seek for the beauty that is in all the fresh and natural and spontaneous and uncorrupted objects that bless us in life.

The insensibility of Ingres to contemporary life is better than Meissonier's, because he was infatuated with old Greek and Italian types of beauty. Meissonier's art is illustrative of soldiers, drinkers, gamblers, duellists, chess-playing gallants, sometimes in tragic situations, never in tender or humanizing ones; yet he makes all these costumed oreatures wonderfully attractive by his

picturesque and vivid realism. But will you not gladly turn from Meissonier's guardsman smoking, to contemplate a picture which, by its subject, at once raises you to a higher level, and makes you think of the grace and majesty and tenderness and gentle firmness that may be compounded with human clay, to make a martyr-woman, the wan and worn Marie Antoinette, seem to you one of the most awful and lovely and pathetic figures that human eyes have ever contemplated? You are before Muller's Marie Antoinette replying to the nameless accusation of "scandalous Hebert." And how well the artist has rendered the mother in the dignity, firmness, and proud scorn of her outraged nature! Art is of double service to us here-it serves our historical sense and celebrates an awful and heroic moment in the life of a woman. To us, the Christian martyr, virgin or mother, under the cruel eyes of a persecuting populace, waiting, breathless, dumb, or exalted by religious hope, for the devouring beasts of the Roman Amphitheatre, is not a more awful spectacle, not a more illustrious witness of the dignity and heroism of human nature, than Marie Antoinette before the human beasts of the Revolution. Something of the noble and firm bearing of that high-bred and lovely woman, grief-struck and appalled, yet, as mother, wife, and woman, an object sacred and immortal in history, the artist has caught for the eye to appreciate upon his canvas; and with this noble picture, the thoughts it quickens, the feelings it touches, we will leave you in Mr. Marshall O. Roberts' gallery, where the historical department of art is largely and impressively filled, and upon which Mr. Roberts seems to have bestowed much intelligent and generous appreciation.