Stuart is quoted as saying “Houdon’s bust is the best, and after that, my portrait.” We can well be content to accept these as the two ideal renderings. It has been claimed that he was not very successful in portraying female beauty. This is a contention that is hard to controvert. He did not prettify his sitters in the way Lawrence did; but he surely made them humanly lovely. Rebecca Smith, Anne Bingham, Frances Cadwalader, Elizabeth Bordley, and Sallie McKean, all reputedly handsome in the written testimony of that period, have certainly not suffered in that repute by Stuart’s painting of them. And Betsy Patterson, she of the wilful temperament and romantic career, who married the brother of an emperor, lives for all time as a beauty because of the ability of Stuart. Of this handsome woman a contemporary writes, “Mme. Jerome Bonaparte is a model of fashion, and many of our belles strive to imitate her; but without equal éclat, as Madame has certainly the most beautiful back and shoulders that ever were seen,” and again, “To her mental gifts were added the beauty of a Greek, yet glowing, type, which not even the pencil of Stuart adequately portrayed in the exquisite portrait that he wished might be buried with him: not yet on his other canvas which, with its dainty head in triple pose of loveliness, still smiles in unfading witchery.” Whether or no he painted her as lovely as life, he produced a canvas that has great individuality and charm. [Illustration: ELIZABETH BEALE BORDLEY MRS. WM. JACKSON FRANCES CADWALADER Women’s portraits by Stuart.] [Illustration: THE GIBBS-CHANNING PORTRAIT OF WASHINGTON By Stuart, in Metropolitan Museum, N. Y.] THE CULTURE OF ALLSTON Washington Allston had a great reputation in his day; but his product was inconsiderable and not of a quality to justify the standing he then had. He had greater culture and a finer intellectuality than perhaps any other artist in the United States in its first century. His was a sensitive nature. He lived in the spirit. For the high, the lovely, the perfect, he strove all his days. Yet that high ideality and that earnest striving had little effect on the art of his time. He was honored by his literary contemporaries; but his work was not emulated to any extent by his fellow artists. His work was an intellectual expression. Its tradition was continued by Thomas Cole, who painted landscape as an allegorical message.