189.3.] oJb [Rosengarten. 



the opening of the library of the Academy to artists and art students, and 

 that public lectures on art be given in the Academy regularly. He 

 a-so urged improvements in the life schools, and annual prizes for the 

 best paintings and drawings of the pupils from life, from the antique, and 

 of architectural subjects, and thus he aided in the establishment on a sound 

 basis of the schools that have now grown to be so important a part of the 

 work of the Academy, and so influential an element in the sound training 

 in art in this city. His only official recognition was his election as an 

 Academician, an lienor shared with Sartain and good workers in the 

 cause of art and art education in this city. Mr. Rothermel always 

 claimed that artists should have a larger share in the management of the 

 Academy of Fine Arts, and thus keep pace with the great foreign acade- 

 mies in which the administration is entrusted to the leaders in the various 

 branches of art. He attributes the success of numerous art associations 

 in New York to the energy of the artists in their management, and 

 thinks that the growth of art in New York is largely due to their con- 

 slant presentation to the public of the best examples of foreign and 

 American art. In writing in his old age, in the retirement of his country 

 home, he dwells on the want of recognition of artists in this country, 

 where art is too often looked on as a trade which requires no capital, and 

 against this view he saj^s, "Labor is the badge of all our tribe, and no 

 amount of talent or genius can do without it. The artist's own love of 

 art is his best incentive. The love of nature and of truth, a firm determi- 

 na.iion to do the best, to express from his own standpoint, his own 

 vision, paramount, and then in spite of laughter from friends and sneers 

 from enemies — the artist who can stand all this, has been at least true to 

 himself." 



In 1856 Rothermel went abroad, armed with twenty commissions, 

 secured for him by James L. Claghorn, one of his kindest, most generous 

 and most constant friends. He visited London, Brussels, Paris, Antwerp 

 (where his enjoyment of Rubens recalled a story that when Eichholz dis- 

 paraged Rubens to Neagle, and asked the latter what he would say if he, 

 Eichholz, painted as good a picture as Rubens' "Descent from the 

 Cross," it was said in view of a copy exhibited in Philadelphia, and Nea- 

 gle brusqely answered, "Say!" said Neagle, "I would say, here is a 

 new miracle ! ") Dusseldorf, where he found Leutze hard at work ; up the 

 Rhine, through Switzerland, the Italian lakes, Genoa, Venice, where he 

 says he was taken captive by its beautiful architecture, "the enemy of 

 the correct and classic;" Florence, where he went seriously to work 

 in the study of the old masters ; then Rome, where he remained from 

 October, 1856, to June, 1858, spending some time in the picturesque 

 neighboring villages. He painted " King Lear, " for Mr. Joseph Harri- 

 son ; a "St. Agnes," which went to St. Petersburg, and a "Rubens and 

 VanDyke," also bought by a Russian. He met and made friends with 

 Page, Terry, Chapman, Freeman, Akers, Ives, Rogers, Bartholomew, 

 and with them discussed art. At Orvieto he met Hawthorne, eloquent 



