BOOKS RECOMMENDED: _American Art Review_; Amory, _Life of Copley_; _The Art Review_; Benjamin, _Contemporary Art in America_; _Century Magazine_; Caffin, _American Painters_; Clement and Hutton, _Artists of the Nineteenth Century_; Cummings, _Historic Annals of the National Academy of Design_; Downes, _Boston Painters_ (_in Atlantic Monthly Vol. 62_); Dunlap, _Arts of Design in United States_; Flagg, _Life and Letters of Washington Allston_; Galt, _Life of West_; Isham, _History of American Painting_; Knowlton, _W. M. Hunt_; Lester, _The Artists of America_; Mason, _Life and Works of Gilbert Stuart_; Perkins, _Copley_; _Scribner's Magazine_; Sheldon, _American Painters_; Tuckerman, _Book of the Artists_; Van Dyke, _Art for Art's Sake_; Van Rensselaer, _Six Portraits_; Ware, _Lectures on Allston_; White, _A Sketch of Chester A. Harding_. AMERICAN ART: It is hardly possible to predicate much about the environment as it affects art in America. The result of the climate, the temperament, and the mixture of nations in the production or non-production of painting in America cannot be accurately computed at this early stage of history. One thing only is certain, and that is, that the building of a new commonwealth out of primeval nature does not call for the production of art in the early periods of development. The first centuries in the history of America were devoted to securing the necessities of life, the energies of the time were of a practical nature, and art as an indigenous product was hardly known. After the Revolution, and indeed before it, a hybrid portraiture, largely borrowed from England, began to appear, and after 1825 there was an attempt at landscape painting; but painting as an art worthy of very serious consideration, came in only with the sudden growth in wealth and taste following the War of the Rebellion and the Centennial Exhibition of 1876. The best of American art dates from about 1878, though during the earlier years there were painters of note who cannot be passed over unmentioned. [Illustration: FIG. 102.--WEST. PETER DENYING CHRIST. HAMPTON CT.]