Allston was born near Charleston, South Carolina, spent his youth at Newport, where he became intimate with Malbone, and after graduating from Harvard went abroad to study. The Italians attracted him; but he found his way to London, where he associated with Coleridge and other literary celebrities. He was made an A. R. A.; but returned soon thereafter to Boston, working there from 1818 to his death in 1843. He laid much stress on his technical processes in painting. His pictures had none of the spontaneous quality of his sketches and studies. His was an art totally at variance with the mode of the present day. We feel in Copley’s canvases a very modern quality, and in most of Stuart’s, but not in Allston’s. [Illustration: ELIZABETH PATTERSON, MME. JEROME BONAPARTE By Stuart.] VANDERLYN AND SULLY A more modern man, though not so celebrated, was John Vanderlyn, a native of Kingston, New York, who spent many years in Paris. He had aspiration after beauty for its own sake. His Ariadne, owned by the Pennsylvania Academy, was really the first important nude painted here. Such subjects in those days caused much protest. This artist’s life was a stern struggle against adverse conditions; though he greatly deserved success. In the rotunda of the Capitol at Washington is his Landing of Columbus, a work that does not well represent his ability. His portrait work carried through the traditions of the Revolutionary days to that period of the early half of the nineteenth century when Thomas Sully and Henry Inman were the leaders. The latter was born in Utica in 1801, and lived but forty-five years. His work was uneven, but at its best, as in the Henry Pratt portrait in the Pennsylvania Academy, is comparable to Raeburn. He painted Wordsworth, Macaulay, Dr. Chalmers, and other men of mark in England, on commissions from their American admirers. Though Sully was a pupil of Stuart, he entirely lacked the master’s authority of manner. His was a timid technic, without freshness of color or firm characterization. His life was a long and successful one, spent chiefly in Philadelphia, and he had many celebrities as sitters,--Queen Victoria, Fanny Kemble, and General Jackson are among his best known canvases. Of the work of Sully the Pennsylvania Academy has, besides several portraits of the artist himself, a large number of his canvases. This policy of the chief galleries of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, of acquiring works of the several worthy artists of the older time, has become a more difficult one to follow as the years go on, and the ancestral portrait, the family heirloom, becomes precious beyond price. THE BEGINNING OF AMERICAN MINIATURE PAINTING [Illustration: WASHINGTON ALLSTON Miniature by Malbone, Boston Museum of Fine Arts.] [Illustration: DEAD MAN RESTORED TO LIFE BY TOUCHING BONES OF PROPHET ELISHA By Allston, Pennsylvania Academy.]