The earliest native painter who has left any lasting record is ROBERT FEKE, whose life is enveloped by the mystery of romance. Sprung from Quaker stock, and separated from his people by difference of religious opinion, he left home, and was in some way taken a prisoner to Spain, where he is said to have executed rude paintings, with the proceeds of which he managed to return home. Feke painted in Philadelphia and elsewhere about the middle of the last century, and his portraits, according to Tuckerman, are considered the best colonial family portraits next to West's. Specimens of his work may be seen in the collections of Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Me.; the Redwood Athenaeum, Newport, R.I.; and the R. I. Historical Society, Providence, R.I. Nearest to Feke in date--although his later contemporaries, West and Copley, were earlier known as artists, and the first named even became his teacher in England--is MATTHEW PRATT (1734--1805), who started in life as a sign-painter in Philadelphia. Pratt's work is often spoken of slightingly, and does not generally receive the commendation it deserves. His full-length portrait of _Lieutenant-Governor Cadwallader Colden_, painted for the New York Chamber of Commerce in 1772, and still to be seen at its rooms, shows him to have been quite a respectable artist, with a feeling for colour in advance of that exhibited by Copley in his earlier work. Still another native artist of this period, HENRY BEMBRIDGE, is chiefly of interest from the fact that he is said to have studied with Mengs and Battoni, which would make him one of the first American painters who visited Italy. He seems to have painted chiefly in Charleston, S.C., and his portraits are described as of singularly formal aspect. The most celebrated painters of this period, however, and the only ones whose fame is more than local, are John Singleton Copley and Benjamin West. But as both of them left their country at an early age, never to return, they belong to England rather than to America.