358 



FINE ARTS. 



"Ward, sculptors. Its associates comprise a 

 number of young men of promise who are des- 

 tined to make their mark at no distant day. 

 Early in the year "Historic Annals" of the 

 Academy were published by Thomas S. Cum- 

 mings, one of its founders. In November, a 

 collection of pictures was exhibited in the same 

 building, in aid of the Artists' Fund Society, 

 and, in the succeeding month, some sixty works 

 contributed to it by members, were sold at 

 auction for $7,500. At various times also, dur- 

 ing the year, conspicuous works by Bierstadt, 

 Huntington, Kossiter, Leutze, Hope, Carpenter, 

 Cropsey, Hart, and others, were elsewhere in 

 the city on public view, besides miscellaneous 

 collections by native and foreign artists. Car- 

 penter exhibited a large picture of President 

 Lincoln and his Cabinet, painted from careful 

 sittings by all the persons represented ; and 

 Leutze, one of Mr. Lincoln in the act of deliv- 

 ering an address in front of the Capitol at 

 Washington. Hope's picture represented the 

 encampment of the " Army of the Potomac" 

 at Cumberland Landing, on the Paraunkey, in 

 May, 1862. Under the auspices of a London 

 Committee, comprising such artists as Stanfield, 

 Maclise, and Goodall, an exhibition of modern 

 paintings by English, Frencli, and Flemish mas- 

 ters was, in December, opened in the Studio 

 Building, Tenth Street. It was the fourth of 

 its kind held in New York, and, apart from its 

 usefulness in developing a system of interna- 

 tional exhibitions of art, and thereby educating 

 the American public in a knowledge of the dif- 

 ferent European schools, has doubtless proved 

 an incentive to American artists to work with a 

 higher aim and in wider fields. Among the 

 artists represented were Maclise, Millais, 

 Hughes, Frith, and Leigh ton, of the English 

 school ; Meissonnier, Frere, Gerorae, Ary 

 Scheffer, Lambinet, etc., of the French school ; 

 and Leys, Gallait, Koller, Lamoriniere, etc., of 

 the Belgian school. Though prominent in the 

 annals of modern European art, not all of the 

 above names were adequately represented in 

 the exhibition. A noticeable feature in New 

 York, and generally also in the larger cities, has 

 been the frequent exhibition at the establish- 

 ments of prominent picture dealers of choice 

 collections of paintings by foreign artists. The 

 noted French painter, Gerome, was in particu- 

 lar represented by several striking works. In 

 the department of sculpture, several works by 

 Rogers, "Ward, and Thompson merit attention. 

 The first of these added to his reputation as a 

 truthful illustrator of incidents and character 

 associated with the late war, by the production 

 of three new groups : " Midnight on the Bor- 

 der," "Taking the Oath," and "The Bush- 

 whacker." An exhibition of his principal de- 

 signs in London, during the summer, elicited 

 high encomiums from the art critics of that 

 city. Thompson produced a model of a statue 

 of Napoleon I., and Ward one, of heroic size, 

 entitled " The Indian Hunter." The latter it is 

 designed to have cast in bronze by private sub- 



scription and placed in the Central Park. To 

 the attractions of this resort is about to be 

 added a hall of statuary in the building for- 

 merly employed as a public arsenal, which will 

 contain a collection of casts from the principal 

 works of the late Thomas Crawford. A mon- 

 ument to Shakespeare is also in progress in the 

 Park. , 



The spring exhibition of the Pennsylvania 

 Academy of Fine Arts, opened in Philadelphia 

 in April, with a ^collection of over eight hun- 

 dred paintings, drawings, and sculptures. "The 

 works sent in by our resident artists," said a 

 local critic, "are generally of a higher class 

 than they have heretofore been. There are a 

 smaller number of absolutely detestable works 

 among them. At the same time, no new man 

 has particularly evidenced any tendency to rise 

 out of the general ring, and we still recognize 

 such artists as Rothermel, Hamilton, and Lamb- 

 din, as by their different classes of merit, in- 

 contestably supreme upon the walls of our year- 

 ly exhibition of paintings." In addition to these 

 names, those of Moran, Dana, Bierstadt, Blau- 

 velt, Schussele, and many others of local repu- 

 tation, were weU represented. Later in the 

 season occurred the exhibition of the Philadel- 

 phia Sketch Club, containing a meritorious col- 

 lection of pictures, a portion of which was sub- 

 sequently transferred to New York for a similar 

 purpose. 



The decoration of the Capitol and other pub- 

 lic buildings at Washington has made marked 

 progress during the year, notwithstanding a 

 proposition to authorize Mr. Powell to " paint 

 a picture for the Capitol, at a cost not to ex- 

 ceed $20,000," was defeated in Congress, on the 

 score principally that the present was an inop- 

 portune time for appropriations in aid of art. 

 The principal undertaking was the frescoing of 

 the canopy of the Capitol dome by Constantino 

 Brumidi, an artist who has for many years 

 been employed upon the building, and whose 

 designs were several years ago approved by a 

 Congressional committee, and by the then Secre- 

 tary of the Interior, Hon. Caleb B. Smith. The 

 space allotted to the work comprises an area 

 of six thousand square feet, upon which sixty- 

 three figures of colossal size have been designed, 

 which, however, from the pavement below, a 

 distance of one hundred and sixty-five feet, will 

 appear of ordinary life size. The central figure, 

 in the chief of the several groups which the 

 composition comprises, is a portrait of Wash- 

 ington, in a sitting posture. To his right is seat- 

 ed the Goddess of Liberty, and on the left a 

 female figure representing Victory and Fa mo, 

 proclaiming freedom. In a semicircle is a 

 group of females, representing the thirteen orig- 

 inal sister colonies, bearing aloft a banner on 

 which is inscribed the words E Pluribu* UH ">/'. 

 Surrounding this under circle, near the base of 

 the design, are six groups representing War, 

 Agriculture, Mechanics, Commerce, the Na\y, 

 and Science. In that of War, America, in the 

 shape of the Goddess of Liberty, stauda erect, 



