68 PAUL KANE, THE CANADIAN ARTIST. 



The first industrial pursuits of the hoy appear to have been carried 

 on in the employment of Mr. Conger, subsequently sheriff of Peter- 

 borough, but then engaged in the manufacture of household furniture. 

 In this occupation his latent talent found expression in the ornamen- 

 tation of various pieces of furniture, till he began to be recognized 

 as one whose artistic abilities deserved encouragement. But in his 

 native village no works of art existed to furnish the slightest hint 

 to the aspiring boy, and no teacher could be found to supply adequate 

 instruction. He was thus a purely self-taught artist. Some of his 

 crude efforts at portraiture would probably have amused himself at a 

 later date. But his early patrons were, fortunately, not too critical ; 

 and thus he was enabled to overcome the first difficulties of his artistic 

 career, and to save a little money for making an independent start 

 in life. 



His first scene of artistic labour, after leaving Toronto, was Cobourg, 

 where portraits of Sheriff and Mrs. Conger, her sister Mrs. Perry, 

 Sheriff Ruttan, and others of his early patrons, were executed. By 

 this means he acquired sufficient funds to enable him to set off for the 

 neighbouring States, there to try his fortune as a portrait painter, in 

 the hope of accumulating the requisite means for the bold project 

 he had already formed of visiting Europe, and perfecting himself in 

 his favourite art by studying the works of the great masters. A 

 letter from his father, addressed to him at Detroit, in 1836, speaks 

 of difficulties that '' will probably prevent your Italian excursion." 

 Thereafter he is found, at various dates between that and the year 1841, 

 at Mobile, St. Louis, and other American cities, closing with New 

 Orleans, from whence he set sail, in June of the latter year, for 

 Marseilles. 



The following four years were spent by Paul Kane in some of the 

 great cities of European art, studying and copying the works of the 

 Italian masters. Unfortunately, a journal which he kept during this 

 period has perished; so that the details of his continental sojourn are 

 no longer recoverable. But we trace him, by means of his passports 

 and other evidence, at Paris, Genoa, Milan, Verona, Venice, Bologna, 

 Florence, Rome and Naples. While in the latter city, he availed 

 himself of an offered passage in a Levantine cruiser, and visited the 

 coasts both of Asia and Africa. He joined a party of Syrian explorers, 

 and was already on his way to Jerusalem, when they were deserted 

 by their Arab guides, and, after being exposed to great danger, were 



