W. H. POWELL is best known by his _De Soto discovering the Mississippi_, in the Rotunda at Washington, a work which is on a level with the average of official monumental painting done in Europe, in which truth is invariably sacrificed to so-called artistic considerations. As a portrait-painter he does not stand very high. T. B. READ, the "painter-poet," enjoyed one of those fictitious reputations which are unfortunately none too rare in America. Without any real feeling for colour, and with a style of drawing which made up in so-called grace for what it lacked in decision, he attained a certain popularity by a class of subjects such as _The Lost Pleiad_, _The Spirit of the Waterfall_, &c., which captivate the unthinking by their very superficiality. Several of his productions, among them his _Sheridan's Ride_, may be seen at the Pennsylvania Academy. J. B. IRVING, a student at Duesseldorf under Leutze, was a careful and intelligent painter of subjects which might be classed as historic _genre_, including some scenes from the past history of the United States. Among the foreign artists who came to America during this period must be named CHRISTIAN SCHUeSSELE (1824--1879), a native of Alsace, who has exercised some influence through his position as Director of the Schools of the Pennsylvania Academy, in Philadelphia. His _Esther denouncing Haman_, in the collection of the institution just named, shows him to have been an adherent of the modern French classic school, in which elegance is the first consideration. A place all by himself must finally be assigned to WILLIAM RIMMER (1816--1879), of English parentage, who spent much of his life in the vicinity of Boston. Dr. Rimmer, as he is commonly called, since he began life as a physician, is of greater importance as a sculptor than as a painter. He, nevertheless, must be mentioned here on account of the many drawings he executed. To an overweening interest in anatomy he added a somewhat weird fancy, so that his conceptions sometimes remind one of Blake. His most important work is a set of drawings for an anatomical atlas, in which special stress is laid upon the anatomy of expression. His oil-paintings, such as _Cupid and Venus_, &c., are marred by violent contrasts of light and dark, and an unnatural, morbid scheme of colour, which justifies the assumption that his colour-vision was defective. But Rimmer will always remain interesting as a brilliant phenomenon, strangely out of place in space as well as in time.