1826.] Painters— Painting. ; 29 
putation. But, still—still—it is a great thing for the puffee, if the 
motive be deep enough to require a search; a very great thing, if it be 
not worn, as a body may say, on the very forehead of the puffer—as in 
the every-day practice of your admirable puffers—pufters, by the 
way, from whose puffing, God preserve me. People of the same trade 
you know do not often praise each other, and if they do, they are never 
thought to be sincere. How much better, where a third party is to be 
cheated, for the author to puff the painter, the painter the author. =~ 
Consider of this, my dear P. By what a popular writer may say of a. 
picture, though it be not very well said—nay, by what any writer may 
say, though he be no judge—the public are excited, put up to inquiry, 
and after a while, if not in the very same hour, truth and good taste are 
awake in his behalf. 
‘So, a fig for the chattering of people, who are never satisfied by 
what we of the quill do for them; a fig for such as do not know when 
they are well off; and now for the painters of America, one after 
another, as their names occur to me. 
1. Cortey, the father of your present solicitor-general or attorney- 
general (I forget which), was born, I believe, in Massachusetts, New 
England, where he left a few very good, firm, sober, substantial portraits. 
He was educated in your country, however, and made his capital pic- 
tures there. You have heard of Trumbull, the president of the New 
York Academy (see No. 4): he is a decided imitator of Copley; so 
much so that in his Battle of Lexington he has given the portraits of a 
mother and a boy, the originals whereof are in some picture of Copley’s, 
the name of which I forget now; it has been very well engraved, though, 
and published. So, too, in the Sortie of Gibraltar, in the Death of 
Montgomery, and in the Death of Warren, I could show you several 
passages taken out of Copley—two or three figures, (attitudes and all) 
and the peculiar show of caps, with hair flying fiercely in the smoke, are 
stolen by Mr. T. 
2.. West (Sir Benjamin ?), late President of your Royal Academy, 
a Pennsylvanian by birth, and a quaker. He studied in Italy, whither 
_he was sent by a subscription at Philadelphia, or by the liberality of two 
or three friends, I do not know which, while he was yet a young artist. 
He has been called a great painter, not only in the United States of 
America, but in every part of Europe: nevertheless Mr. W. was not 
a great painter. As a draughtsman, however, he was great. His draw- 
ings were enough to immortalize any body: they were full of thought, 
and full of power, and full of truth; but his paintings were very bad— 
very, though he was patronized by your late king, and is puffed now by 
your President of the Royal Academy. He was learned, courageous, 
and original—original, though he would sometimes borrow ina large way, 
to be sure, as in the case where he took the head and character of the chief 
personage, in Dominichino’s St. Jerome, for the chief personage (among 
the afflicted) in his huge picture of Christ healing the Sick, a beautiful 
copy of which is here at Philadelphia; with parts in it, however, which you 
have not in your original. The old man who is carried up to the Sayiour, 
feet foremost, my dear P., is a positive copy of St. Jereme. So, too, 
the women with doves, in the same picture, by Mr. W.—they are stolen 
outright from Raphael, in one of the cartoons ; and I have met with 
somewhere, I believe, though I do not now recollect where, the original 
of his lunatic boy, in a picture of days that are gone by. Mr. W. 
