1826.] [ M45 ] 
LETTERS FROM THE UNITED STATES OF NORTH AMERICA. 
No. V. 
Painters— Painting. ( Concluded.) 
Jarvis—An Englishman by birth, who went over to America, with 
no more idea of becoming a portrait painter than you have now, my 
dear P., of becoming a bishop; but being rather hard pushed, and hay- 
_ ing a notion, from a little that he saw one day of coach-painting, that 
he could manage to make a face if he were paid for it, he began the 
experiment, succeeded very well, and after some twenty or thirty years’ 
practice in the art, has come to be one of the first portrait-painters 
alive. I know of no man who seizes a particular sort of character—that 
of a brother droll, for instance, or a decided humorist—so well as Jar- 
~ vis. I would not have you understand that he is low, or that he is given 
to caricature. No such thing—I only mean to say, that when he meets 
with a fine fellow, as fond of joke, or as much given to oddity, serious or 
profane, as he himself is, that you‘will be sure to find such a portrait 
as few men alive could produce. Let me give you an idea of Mr. J. 
by two or three little anecdotes ; they will show his character, not only 
as a man, but as a painter of other men—Ais character I say, for you 
see a dash of himself in whatever he does; and show it, I believe, much 
better than pages of description would. He tells a story better than 
any man alive (so far as I know )—not excepting Mathews himself, who 
is indebted to him for a large part of his North American tales, and 
for the best of the whole, “ Uncle Ben;” he is full of humour, brimful 
of it, and for ever on the stretch after it. So much for his temper; now 
for the anecdotes. 
A dignitary of the church was sitting to him one day; and having 
heard, perhaps, that our painter was not remagkable for orthodoxy, he 
beset him repeatedly on the subject of religion. But Jarvis, who had 
begun to work at the forehead only, and was far enough from the lower 
part of the face, contrived to escape from every attack, by dropping - 
the pencil as if he were at work about the lips, whenever the Bishop 
spoke,* and begging him to shut his mouth. Ear example : The Bishop 
would say—“ What do you think of such and such a matter, Mr. Jar- 
vis?” «Shut your mouth,” Jarvis would reply, dropping the brush to 
the lower part of the visage, as he spoke. In this way he baffled the 
Bishop, who it afterwards appeared had undertaken to see whether Mr. J. 
sare or was not a believer. 
_On some other occasion—he invited a gentleman to dine with him— 
a gentleman, of whose temper I know nothing, but I dare say that he was 
addicted to Byron, blank verse, raw beef-steak, the night-mare, tragedy, 
or something as bad—for when the cloth, a huge white cloth, like a 
winding sheet, was removed, the gentleman saw before him a human 
head in a charger—boiled. 
But enough—Mr. Jarvis I regard as a chief among portrait-painters ; 
and I knew of nothing more delightful or encouraging to the youthful 
and ambitious, than a peep at the znside character of an artist, who began 
such a glorious career, of his own head, by imitating coach-painters. 
* There are two (if no more) os Bishops in America ; and one erie oe, 
a Catholic.— xX. Y. Z. 
meet New Sertes.— VoL. i eal 8. es U 
