Meanwhile, in 1893, he had started for himself in business, working for jewelry and silversmith firms; steadily improving his financial conditions, but becoming more and more impatient under the restraints which the exigencies of trade placed upon his desire to be an artist. I should judge that these years of material comfortableness may have been really more trying to him than the previous lean years. Then, work and food and lodging seemed the only desirable things; now he was in labour with a desire that exceeded all others. He had tasted of the sweets of beauty and become conscious of having something beautiful within himself, might he but learn how to express it; and all the while the Gallios of trade “cared for none of those things.” This period of probation at length came to an end in 1898, by which time he had saved sufficient money for study in Paris. A little time before, in connection with a medal for the Convention of Charities and Corrections, he had made the acquaintance of Mr. Samuel P. Avery. But the latter had for some time been acquainted with him, keeping watch over his progress and secretly helping him to commissions. Of the value and encouragement of Mr. Avery’s friendship Brenner speaks with warm gratitude. Through him he obtained an introduction to Mr. George A. Lucas, who befriended him in Paris and introduced him to Roty, furnishing him with commissions while he was still studying in the latter’s _atelier_. This he entered after preliminary studentship in the [Illustration: PORTRAIT OF C. P. HUNTINGTON By Victor David Brenner] Julien school, and became the assistant as well as pupil of the master. His progress was rapid, and examples of his work are already to be found in the Paris Mint, Munich Glyptothek, Vienna Numismatic Society, the Metropolitan Museum and the Numismatic Society, New York. Up to the present time Brenner’s best work has been portrait-plaques and the heads upon the obverse of medals. In designs which involve a decorative treatment he has been less happy. As might be expected of one whose period of study has been so short, he is weak in composition and freehand drawing, nor does he display much inventiveness of fancy. On the other hand, he has an extraordinarily direct vision, quickened by experience in so exacting an occupation as die-cutting, and, moreover, a very mobile sympathy. The latter helps him to be interested at once in his subject, and with so much affection and reverence for the personality that his portrayal exhibits a very unusual degree of intimacy. Among the best of his portraits are those of William Maxwell Evarts, J. Sanford Saltus and George Aloysius Lucas, whom I place in one group; and those of M. Vadé, Edward D. Fulde and M. Lacour in another. The reasonableness of the separation is to be found in the difference of motive, respectively, illustrated in the modelling; the more distinctively sculptural as compared with the painter-like method.