Gallery 63-English Influence. This is the richest of the historical rooms. Although there is a scattered collection including the names of Van Dyke, Guido Reni, Tiepolo, Ribera, Velasquez, Goya, and Turner, on walls A and B, the important thing is the fine collection of the English portraitists. Here are examples, many of them among the finest, by Hogarth, Reynolds, Gainsborough, Romney, Lawrence, and Hoppner. It is hardly necessary to point out the close connection between the work of this English group and early American painting, since a visit to the adjoining gallery 60 will show how the first important development in the States grew out of the art of the mother country. The American Historical Section covers the entire development of American painting from the beginning to the early years of the present century. To obtain the proper sequence, one should start in room 60, working gradually down to 57, then visiting 64 and 54. Gallery 60 contains a profusion of fine examples of the early portrait school, which was so closely connected with English art of the time. Gilbert Stuart, the most important figure, is represented by an extensive collection on wall A. In this room, too, are canvases by West, Peale, Copley, and their followers well into the Nineteenth Century. Gallery 59 contains chiefly the work of that barren mid-century period when portraiture and landscape painting alike became hard and labored. Insofar as any foreign influences can be detected here, they are of the "tight" schools of England and Germany. Gallery 58 contains some interesting work of the latter half of the Nineteenth Century-notably the paintings by Eastman Johnson, an important figure of the time when American art was finding itself. Albert Bierstadt's two landscapes are typical of the so-called Hudson River School, the mechanical forerunner of the Inness-Wyant group. An interesting contrast is offered here by H. J. Breuer's "Santa Inez Mountains," a contemporary landscape that is full of the freshness and light of present-day American painting. Gallery 57 shows another great step in advance. A generous portion of the space is given to Edwin A. Abbey, an American-born artist who really was more a part of English art. The exhibit shows clearly that Abbey was greater as illustrator than as painter, the finest things here being the exquisite pen drawings. Wall D has five paintings by John LaFarge, who by his work and by his theories greatly influenced American art at the end of the century. Worthy of study, too, are the more modern landscapes of Theodore Robinson. From this room one should turn back into the central line of galleries.