In painting, the change that occurred after we became a republic is even more unmistakable. The English School underwent considerable modification when its representatives here began to work for themselves. Where Reynolds, Gainsborough, and Lawrence were consulting the old masters with such studious solicitude, Sir Joshua especially pursuing his enquiry into the processes of Titian, men like Copley and Blackburn were thrown back on such technical resources as they could find here and had to depend for progress on tightening their hold on character. Copley has the true note of the primitive in the intensity with which he studies his people, and must be reckoned with portraitists of almost the highest order. What a change in the next generation! The more independent we are politically the more we come out of the isolation that gave us quiet and freedom to build up the admirable style of pre-Revolutionary days. And then there was so much to be done in getting our new institutions to work and our new land under cultivation, there was so much money to be made and so much to import from Europe. It is significant that the best painter of the period is John Vanderlyn, who had been sent to Paris to study under Ingres. Fine artist that Vanderlyn was, and informed by a greater tradition than Copley knew, he never reached the impressiveness of the latter. I shall not attempt to describe at any length the various steps by which we rose from the artistic poverty which was ours in the earlier decades of the 19th century. My purpose is not to write even a short history of American art, but to enquire into its character and accomplishment. The test of these is evidently not what each period or school meant to the American artists before or after it, but how it compares with the rest of the world’s art at its time. The thought occurs to one forcibly on hearing of the wildly exaggerated esteem--whether measured by words or by money--in which the more celebrated of American artists are held; one asks oneself how the given work would be considered in Europe by competent men. Few indeed are the reputations that will stand the test; and we do not need to go abroad to apply it, for the galleries of our large cities supply ample opportunity for the comparison.