Having dwelt at such length upon the interesting concurrences in their careers, I now pass on to a comparison of their methods of work; and here there are many resemblances, but these are no doubt due to the times in which they lived. Birket Foster found himself, when he commenced, the pupil of a school which had some merits and more demerits. Composition and drawing were still thought of, and before a landscape artist presumed to pose as such, he had to study the laws which governed the former, and to thoroughly imbue himself with a knowledge of the anatomy of what he was about to depict. Mrs. Allingham, as I have pointed out, was also fortunate enough to commence her tuition before the fashion of undergoing this needful apprenticeship died out. But Birket Foster came at the end of a time when landscape was painted in the studio rather than in the field. He went to Nature for suggestions, which he pencilled into note-books in the most facile and learned manner, but content with this he made his pictures under comfortable conditions at home. The fulness of his career, too, came at a time when Art was booming, and the demand for his work was such that he could not keep pace with it. It is not surprising, therefore, that in the zenith of his fame his pictures were, in the main, studio pictures, worked out with a marvellous facility of invention, but nevertheless just lacking that vitality which always pervades work done in the open air and before Nature. Mrs. Allingham's work at the outset was very similar to this. For her subject drawings she made elaborate preliminary studies from Nature in colour, but the drawing itself was thought and carried out in the house. Fortunately this method soon became unpalatable to her, and she gradually came to work more and more directly from Nature, and when, at Witley, she found her subjects at her doors, she discontinued once and for ever her former method. Since then she has painted every drawing on the spot during the months that it is feasible, leaving actual completion for some time, to enable her to view her work with a fresh eye, and to study at leisure the final details, such, for instance, as where the figures shall be grouped, usually posing, for this purpose, her models in the open air in her Hampstead garden. Her figures are, however, sometimes culled from careful studies made in note-books, of which she has an endless supply. Fastidious to a degree as to the completeness of a drawing, she lingers long over the finishing touches, for it is these which she considers make or mar the whole. Every sort of contrivance she considers to be legitimate to bring about an effect, save that of body-colour, which she holds in abhorrence; but the knife, a hard brush, a pointed stick, a paint rag, and a sponge are in constant request.