84 
House & Garden 
Double 
Sterling 
The Range for Busy Women 
Because it economizes kitchen time for 
both the woman who directs and the 
woman who does the actual work— 
The simple range of proven merit 
that makes cooking so quick and 
pleasant that the kitchen becomes a 
happy work room instead of the 
housekeeping bug bear. 
The range, backed by seventy years’ ex¬ 
perience in stove and range building, that 
embodies in its construction, every suc¬ 
cessful scientific principle which con¬ 
serves heat and applies it properly. Every 
convenience that saves time, steps and 
temper and insures results. 
"Double" 
Sterling 
The 40 Feature, 2 oven 2 Fuel Range 
The 49-inch Range that saves both food and fuel. 
Furnish as illustrated or with closed base and 
high warming closet. 
Polished top requires no 
blacking, accommodates 
nine ntensils at one time. 
Broiler in top of gas oven 
—can be placed any de¬ 
sired distance from 
burners. 
Two large ovens side by 
side on same level abso¬ 
lutely independent of each 
other. 
Gas Oven Burners can not 
be turned on unless oven 
door is open,absolutely safe. 
These are four of the forty features which are 
fully described and illustrated in our handsome 
catalog which we will gladly send to any woman 
who desires to take trouble out of her kitchen. 
Sill Stove Works 
Established 1849 
Rochester, N. Y. 
Makers of Coal Ranges, Combination Ranges and 
Warm Air Furnaces— 
If you do not have gas connections write for 
catalogue of the Sterling Range, The Range that 
bakes a barrel of flour with a single hod of coal 
Colonial Portraits as Decorations 
in Modern Homes 
(Continued from page 82) 
riage painting. Early in his life he be¬ 
came the protege of Bishop Berkeley. 
He accompanied the Bishop, then Dean 
Berkeley, to Italy, where he studied the 
Italian masters, then came with him to 
Rhode Island, where he painted the 
portrait of the famous preacher and 
philosopher surrounded by his family. 
This portrait is now the property of 
Yale. When his patron returned to 
England, the artist went to Boston, 
where, until his death in 1751, he passed 
a busy career. His subjects in nearly 
all instances were the preachers and 
magistrates who were the real leaders 
and moulders of society in the early 
New England days. Nearly forty of 
his portraits survive—a priceless heritage 
because they preserve the physical ap¬ 
pearance of the men who were re¬ 
sponsible for nurturing the early New 
England character. 
Many other painters were at work 
soon after Smibert began his career, 
but their portraits were exceedingly 
mediocre, being poor imitations of the 
art of such English painters as Kneller 
and Lely, because this was before En¬ 
glish portraiture reached its flower in 
the times of Reynolds and his con¬ 
temporaries. 
The next man to do work worthy of 
preservation for artistic reasons was 
Jonathan Blackburn, who opened a 
studio in Boston in 1750 and who in 
the next fifteen years painted many 
scores of portraits of Colonists of note 
and wealthy traders and their families, 
about fifty of which now survive. 
Blackburn is reputed to have been the 
teacher of Copley. His work has much 
intrinsic merit. He was fond of soft 
gray tones, and the faces of his sub¬ 
jects were most faithfully, though stiffly, 
drawn, and his draperies were arranged 
in harmonious and decorative composi¬ 
tions. 
John Singleton Copley 
John Singleton Copley, who was 
born in Boston in 1737, was the greatest 
of the Colonial portraitists until the 
coming of Stuart. Of Yorkshire parent¬ 
age, the father died about the time the 
son was born, and the widow opened 
a tobacco shop in Boston as a means of 
livelihood. When the lad was nine or 
ten years old she married Peter Pelham, 
painter and engraver, who has already 
been mentioned. Young Copley was 
taught drawing by his step-father and 
began his career as a portraitist when 
quite youthful. As early as 1755 he 
executed a miniature of Washington, 
who had come to Boston and who was 
then known as a great Indian fighter. 
At seventeen he was established as a 
portrait painter, and never thereafter 
lacked for commissions. In 1767, when 
thirty years old, he wrote: “I make 
as much money as if I were a Raphael 
or a Correggio, and three hundred 
guineas a year, my present income, is 
equal to nine hundred a year in Lon¬ 
don.” Just before the Revolution he 
went to London, where he had con¬ 
siderable success. His most interesting 
period to Americans, however, is that 
comprehended by his work in Boston. 
Copley’s art was not lit by imagina¬ 
tion, but it had great verity. His por¬ 
traits are cold and clear, and, as we 
would have them, they adroitly reveal 
the character of his sitters. His pains¬ 
taking methods are indicated by the fact 
that he sometimes took sixteen sittings 
of a day each to paint a head alone. 
In contrast to the austerity of the 
New England portraitists was the suavi¬ 
ty of some of the painters who worked 
in the South, where art and romance 
were more at home. There was John 
Woolaston, for instance, whose sitters 
comprised many of the aristocratic 
families of the South, and James 
Sharpies, who, though English by birth, 
exhibited more of the qualities of the 
French in his painting. 
Benjamin West and Others 
After Copley, the list of early Ameri¬ 
can painters whose work is worthy of 
survival grows rapidly larger. There 
is Benjamin West, who went to Lon¬ 
don, became the friend of Reynolds 
and succeeded him as president of the 
Royal Academy; Charles Willson Peale, 
Joseph Wright, Robert Edge Pine and 
Matthew Pratt. Then follows Gilbert 
Stuart, whose fame chiefly rests on his 
portrait of Washington, which became 
America’s favorite presentment of the 
hero, but who was a painter of such 
excellence that his achievements were 
unrivalled in the United States for half 
a century. He has been termed the 
“American Reynolds,” and, indeed, there 
are certain of his compositions that rank 
with the best of the great English 
School. 
After Stuart in fame and talent comes 
John Trumbull, who was both portrait¬ 
ist and historical painter, Washington 
Allston, John Vanderlyn and the first 
American colorist and romanticist, 
Thomas Sully. The work of these men, 
though not wholly Colonial, belongs to 
the dawn of American art and so ranks, 
for decorative purposes, with that of 
the men who painted wholly before the 
Revolution. 
And so, following the vogue of “Old 
Masters,” which our collectors have 
been bringing from Europe at so tre¬ 
mendous a rate, Americans have at last 
found some “Old Masters” of their 
own, which they can be proud of and 
cherish and enjoy. 
What to Know About Furniture 
( Continued, from page 39) 
turally a better wood than mahogany. 
Red gum, since lumbermen have 
learned to season it, is in itself an ex¬ 
cellent wood, its misfortune being its 
versatility as an imitator. Red gum 
makes very convincing “mahogany,” or 
an equally seemly “walnut,” according 
to the way it is stained, and, in se¬ 
lected figure veneers, is the only cabinet 
wood that succeeds in imitating Cir¬ 
cassian walnut. But in all this matter 
of imitation the fault lies not in the 
wood, but in its masquerade, for which 
the public at large is partly responsible. 
Many people would cheerfully buy a 
piece of birch furniture, tagged “ma¬ 
hogany” knowing that, for the price, it 
couldn’t be mahogany, while they would 
absolutely refuse the same piece if it 
were labelled “birch, mahogany finish.” 
There are instances in which manufac¬ 
turers and dealers use the term “birch 
mahogany” and it is to be hoped that 
there will be a sensible reaction on this 
point upon which now, perhaps, there 
is more thoughtlessness and foolishness 
than dishonesty, and that people will 
have pride of ownership in birch and 
red gum furniture. 
In the matter of grades, even the 
humblest cabinet wood should be se¬ 
lected for freedom from defects. 
Imitation carving is found on a good 
deal of meritorious furniture. Like any¬ 
thing else, it may be well done or poor¬ 
ly done. Good design and careful ap¬ 
plication go far toward legitimatizing 
(Continued on page 86) 
