Lucia Fairchild Fuller is the wife of the well known artist, Henry Brown Fuller. She was born in Boston on December 6, 1872. She was a pupil of Dennis M. Banker, and studied at the Cowles Art School and at Mrs. Shaw's in Boston--likewise with Siddons Mowbray, and William M. Chase in New York. As a member of the Society of American Artists she became an associate of the National Academy in 1906, and was likewise one of the founders of the American Society of Miniature Painters, of which she is now president. Her work has not only won popular appreciation, but has secured distinguished recognition in the form of medals awarded at various expositions in Paris and in the United States. PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR. VOL. 4, No. 23, SERIAL No. 123 COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC. THE MENTOR . DEPARTMENT OF FINE ARTS JANUARY 15, 1917 AMERICAN MINIATURE PAINTERS By ELIZABETH LOUNSBERY _Author and Critic_ [Illustration: Lord and Lady Fairfax By courtesy of Mrs. Frank Ralston, New York Attributed to Charles Willson Peale] _MENTOR GRAVURES_ THE GOLDEN HOUR, _by W. J. Baer_ THE HOURS, _by Edward G. Malbone_ PORTRAIT OF A CHILD, _by Lucia Fairchild Fuller_ MRS. BECKINGTON, _by Alice Beckington_ PERSIS, _by Laura Coombs Hills_ JOHN LAWRENCE, _by John Trumbull_ The revival of miniature painting in America in the last twenty-five years has awakened interest in its past history. The installation in the Metropolitan Museum of Art of the comprehensive collection of miniatures owned by the estate of the late J. Pierpont Morgan has no doubt done much to increase this, and inspire the purchase and gifts of examples by American painters, for the Museum collection, that are now on permanent exhibition there. Just when the art had its beginning has never been definitely determined, but its evolution from the portrait painting in illuminated manuscripts and parchments of the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is generally accepted. In these, small heads and portraits were painted into the text and often in the first letter of the first word of a paragraph. This was extensively practiced in Italy, where this work assumed a necessarily religious character, being executed almost exclusively in the monasteries, for ecclesiastical use.