THE MENTOR 1917.01.15, No. 123 [Illustration: (decorative background)] LEARN ONE THING EVERY DAY [Illustration] JANUARY 15 1917 SERIAL NO. 123 THE MENTOR AMERICAN MINIATURE PAINTERS By MRS. ELIZABETH LOUNSBERY Author DEPARTMENT OF FINE ARTS VOLUME 4 NUMBER 23 FIFTEEN CENTS A COPY Art and Life [Illustration: (decorative)] We are close to realizing the greatest joys to be found in this workaday world when we accept art as a vital part and not a thing separate and distinct from our daily lives. Then we come to know the true values of things--to "find tongues in trees, books in running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything." [Illustration: (decorative)] "Art, if we so accept it," says William Morris, "will be with us wherever we go--in the ancient city full of traditions of past time, in the newly cleared farm in America or the colonies, where no man has dwelt for traditions to gather round him; in the quiet countryside as in the busy town--no place shall be without it. [Illustration: (decorative)] You will have it with you in your sorrow as in your joy, in your working hours as in your leisure. It will be no respecter of persons, but be shared by gentle and simple, learned and unlearned, and be as a language that all can understand. It will not hinder any work that is necessary to the life of man at the best, but it will destroy all degrading toil, all enervating luxury, all foppish frivolity. [Illustration: (decorative)] It will be the deadly foe of ignorance, dishonesty, and tyranny, and will foster good-will, fair dealing, and confidence between man and man. It will teach you to respect the highest intellect with a manly reverence, but not to despise any man who does not pretend to be what he is not." [Illustration: JOHN LAWRENCE. BY JOHN TRUMBULL. Actual size 3-3/4 inches high. IN THE POSSESSION OF THE NEW YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY] _AMERICAN MINIATURE PAINTERS_ _John Trumbull_ ONE The work of John Trumbull as a historical painter has already been considered in The Mentor (No. 45), and in that number, too, the main facts of his life are told. John Trumbull was a patriotic American and a leader in the artistic and public life of his day, both in England and in America. His position was much more than that of a painter. His attitude toward painting was not one of complete and whole souled devotion. "I am fully sensible," he wrote at one time, "that the profession of painting as it is generally practised is frivolous, and unworthy a man who has talents for more serious pursuits. But to preserve and diffuse the memory of the noblest series of actions which have ever presented themselves in the history of man is sufficient warrant for it." We see accordingly that John Trumbull's idea of the work of a painter was to _write history on canvas with a brush_--and his pictures bear out his idea.