54 KANSAS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 



WHAT IS GOOD FOR AN ARTIST, AND WHAT AN ARTIST 



IS GOOD FOR. 



BY MISS LIZZIE J. WILLIAMS. 



Jabez Stockstill's son, Rubens Rembrandt, wanted to be an artist 

 Jabez did not like the idea ; not that he objected to giving him every 

 advantage his own hard-earned money could procure, but he wanted 

 him to be a doctor or a minister — something that would be of some 

 use in the world, and not a mere apology for a man. But Rubens 

 Rembrandt was determined to be a painter, and his father was equally 

 determined that if the boy was one at all he should have every op- 

 portunity of becoming a first-class one. 



Now, the question was : "What is good for an artist?" He did 

 not wish to give him a thorough collegiate course unless it was going 

 to bear upon his work. He could see how a liberal education could 

 benefit a man in any of the learned professions; but of what use it 

 could be to a painter, or what studies he ought to pursue, he was at 

 a loss to decide. In his perplexity he wrote to one of the deepest 

 thinkers in the land, and was told in reply, since his son had already 

 been sufficiently drilled on the farm, in agriculture, to put him 

 through one of our most thorough colleges, then send him to a theo- 

 logical seminary and medical school ; let him take a special course 

 on mechanics and engineering, followed by a year's service in the 

 navy (to gain a familiar acquaintance with the ocean in all its forms); 

 then let him acquire the technical part of his profession at Cooper 

 Institute, or some other academy of design, after which he would be 

 pretty well prepared to begin the study of Art, provided he had a 

 common amount of talent and an uncommon amount of perseverance. 



Mr. Stockstill was considerably mystified by this reply, but 

 thought he comprehended its meaning, viz.: An artist, of all men, 

 should have the broadest culture — at once the most aesthetic and 

 the most practical, the most profound and the most popular. 



Take the studies in the curriculum of any of our best colleges — 

 hardly one that does not bear directly upon his life work. What 

 surgeon needs more than he a careful and exhaustive study of Anat- 

 omy, without which it is impossible to draw the human figure cor- 

 rectly. It is now taught in all schools of design ; the position and 

 play of each muscle thoroughly understood, as well as the skeleton 

 which underlies them. And what Anatomy is to the Figure Painter, 



