Miss Hall took some lessons in oil-painting from Alexander Robertson in New York, but has chiefly devoted herself to painting in water-colors on ivory. Her merits have been acknowledged by the most distinguished artists in New York and different parts of the United States to be of the highest order. Among her miniature copies of oil pictures by old masters, two from Guido were particularly noticed as executed with surprising vigor and a rich glow of coloring. Her groups of children from life were done with masterly skill, and finished with a taste and delicacy which a woman’s hand only could exhibit. Her portraits in miniature were acknowledged to possess exquisite delicacy and beauty. The soft colors seem breathed on the ivory rather than applied with the brush. A miniature group often sold for five hundred dollars. Dunlap mentions one of her compositions as “marked with the beautiful simplicity of some of Reynolds’s or Lawrence’s portraits of children, evincing a masterly touch and glowing in admirable coloring.” Miss Hall was unanimously elected a member of the National Academy of Design in New York. Her portrait of a lovely Greek girl, from life, was engraved, and the rare beauty of the painting was universally acknowledged. The floating silken waves of hair have an unrivaled effect. A group of two girls and a boy is admirable in composition, color, and expression. Miss Hall’s “management of infant beauty” is, indeed, unsurpassed; her flowers and children, Dunlap observes, “combine in an elegant bouquet.” One of the best of her original compositions is a group of a mother and child--Mrs. Jay and her infant. The first, clasping the babe to her bosom, has a Madonna-like beauty; the child is perfect in attitude and expression. Another group of a mother and two young children, the widow and orphans of the late Matthias Bruen, has a most charming expression. One of the children was painted as a cherub in a separate picture, much valued by artists as a rare specimen of skill. Miss Hall has also painted the portraits in miniature of many persons distinguished in the best social circles of New York. Several of her groups have been copied in enamel in France, and thus made indestructible. Three children of Mrs. Ward, with a dog and bird; a child holding a grape-vine branch; with portraits of Mrs. Crawford, widow of the sculptor, Mrs. Divie Bethune, and the daughters of Governor King, may be mentioned among numerous works, a single one of which has sufficient merit to establish the author’s claim to the reputation she has long enjoyed, of being the best of American miniaturists. MARY SWINTON LEGARÉ (MRS. BULLEN).