connection with the public school system. Its course occupies three years, and comprises free-hand drawing, designing, moulding, wood carving, etc. Professor Adams, an instructor, says the work of this school compels the student, whether bright or dull, to give careful thought to every step he takes. Guess work or hurried work will not make a perfect joint, nor a perfect square, nor will it make the lines of a drawing sustain to one another their proper relation.

The Toledo Art school has a membership of over one hundred. The antique class has thirty members. The life class, which meets every Wednesday evening, has an average attendance of forty. Their exhibitions are held semi-annually at their room, and are well patronized. This association was founded in February, 1885, and is gradually growing and enlarging.

Miss Louise Overmiller, a pupil of Lietzenmyer and Frans Lenbach, studied in Munich and in Paris a number of years, and in Italy. Exhibited in the Paris salon; makes a specialty of composition and figures. Born in Tiffin, Ohio; resides in Toledo.

William Whitlock was born in Ithaca, New York. He studied in Munich in 1865; Antwerp in 1866 to 1871, at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. He is located in Toledo.

Mr. Robert Wickenden came to Toledo when twelve years of age; showed a good deal of artistic skill when young, and went to New York in 1881 and entered the Art Student's League; went to Paris in 1883; returned to this coun

York. Exhibited in salon in Paris, and in the Dudley gallery, London, and is now exhibiting in the water-color exhibition in New York.

Mr. L. E. Vangorder of Toledo, graduate of the Academy of Design, New York, ranks well as landscape and genere painter. He is now located in New York.

STEUBENVILLE.

Wilson McDonald, the sculptor, was born in Steubenville, Ohio, a few doors from the house in which Edwin M. Stanton was born. The first art he ever saw, was a picture on a silk flag or banner, in the primitive studio of Mr. William Walcutt of Columbus. This was in 1839 or 1840. Mr. McDonald is a very intelligent gentleman, and has studied and lectured upon the pyramids, the mounds of this country, and other interesting subjects. He presented, through the North American Review, a plan for a Grant monument, to cost two millions of dollars. A friend says, "He seems to aim at universal knowledge, and does not concentrate his powers sufficiently on his art." Among his works are a statue of Fitz Green Halleck, in Central Park, and a statue of General Custer at West Point.

We would like to claim Mr. E. F. Andrews as a Columbus artist. He was born in Steubneville, Ohio, in 1838, and was a son of the late Dr. Andrews of Columbus. We heard him highly spoken of by artists in Paris in 1878, as one who was sure to reach a high position in his profession. He resides in Wash

ington City. We were delighted with his portrait of Martha Washington, which is in the white house, at Washington. The body draperies and accessories are of his own composition, and the whole effect is artistic and shows rare knowledge and refinement. His portraits of Governor Foster and of Governor Hoadly, which hang in the rotunda of the state house, are among the best there which he has just finished. The latter, especially, is an excellent portrait and a work which is much admired by artists. His portraits of Presidents Jefferson and Hayes, and of Mrs. Hayes, in the White House at Washington, are much admired.

SPRINGFIELD.

There were three or four brothers by the name of Frankenstein who lived in Springfield, Ohio, who painted and exhibited a panoroma of Niagara Falls, which we remember to have seen in Columbus, which was received with great favor, and many predicted that they would become distinguished artists. "The coloring of Niagara by the Frankensteins was better than Church's, and it was a bolder and stronger picture, though less elaborate and finished.

John Frankenstein was looked upon as a prodigy in piano playing. He drew in pencil, pen and ink, and painted in oil from earliest youth. He used to hire old men with marked heads and faces to sit for him while he painted their portraits.

He began modeling in clay very early. He attended the Ohio Medical college,

Cincinnati, and made himself a thorough anatomist.

Aside from his father's example, John Frankenstein never studied with anyone, being himself the master, and he loaned his studio, his aid and his encouragement to all beginners in art that applied to him.

At about sixteen or eighteen he went to Philadelphia and painted many portraits. There, too, several suffering artists made his studio their refuge; among them Joseph Kyle.

Near the same time he went to New York, and became intimate in the family of Governor William H. Seward, who appointed him aide-de-camp on his staff, with the rank of colonel. made a bust of Mrs Seward, which is at Auburn.

He

His teacher, instructor, inspirer, was nature, which he studied with unremitting zeal. mitting zeal. When about twenty-five years of age he retuned to Cincinnati from the east, and in his twenty-seventh year he painted two Scriptural paintings; the first embracing seven or more figures, with Christ the central one. He called it "Christ Mocked in the Pretorium." Thousands upon thousands of people flocked to his studio in Foote's Row to see it. Charles Anderson, a man who had traveled, and of more than ordinary culture, wrote glowing articles about this work. This was followed by another, which he called "Isaiah and the Infant Saviour," bringing the two youths together. These works were bought by a famous art connoisseur in Canada. Many other por

About 1854 he modeled the figure of a reclining boy with his head on a pillow. He modeled a head of Judge McClean, in 1856 or 1857. Not far from this time he painted a large picture of Niagara, entitled "Niagara, The Love of the Gods."

Godfrey N. and John Frankenstein established the first academy of fine arts in Cincinnati, in 1835, or 1836 perhaps. They had brought from Europe (for the benefit of the pupils of the academy) casts from the antique, embracing many of the finest works. This was at their own expense, with aid of such subscriptions as they could raise. He was the first man that ever painted any views of Niagara Falls on the spot, sometime in 1839 or 1840, I believe. During his boyhood he painted many portraits, etc., in Canada-Toronto, Montreal, Quebec. At the latter place he sketched the Falls of Montmorency.

He painted portraits of John Quincy Adams, Charles Francis Adams, Abbott Lawrence, and many other distinguished

men.

Also several portraits of William Cullen Bryant, probably one of the first ever painted of the poet.

Having already spent ten or twelve years at the Falls of Niagara, and painted many pictures on a small scale, he carried out his long-intended design of putting the views in a panoramic form, and this was done in 1851-2, and on the eighteenth of July, 1853, the exhibition was opened at Hope Chapel,

was then occupied as a Sunday meeting place by Adams' Presbyterian church. He left the finest collection of views of Niagara, in oil, in the world. Jenny Lind spent several weeks at the Falls, the summer following her first concert tour, and bought a number of paintings from him.

Godfrey Frankenstein went to Europe for the first time in 1867, and painted many views of the Alps, Lake Geneva, etc.

Eliza Frankenstein, the sister, is a fine landscape painter; she now lives in Springfield, Ohio. She painted in the White mountains and at Niagara.

Gustavus Frankenstein, in 1866-7, made many studies in oil in the mountains of Wales, the first series of studies of the glowing heather.

Mr. J. W. Bookwalter writes me:

During the existence of Mr. Warder's gallery and my own, there was some art spirit developed in Springfield, and several artistically inclined students were inspired to attempt the study and practice of

painting, and went to Europe to complete their education, and have returned here enjoying, I believe, much reputation as painters. The terrific duty on works of foreign art, together with the heavy tax thereafter, makesthe collection and holding of a gal

lery of paintings too expensive a luxury. I have directed that all my paintings be sold, which was done at Chickering Hall, New York, on the twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth of February.

I should like to see some steps taken to give an

impetus to art in our country, and that can, in my opinion, be best done by encouraging the accumulation of the best examples of all countries, and thereby familiarizing our people with what is really meritori

ous. It is this encouragement that has developed art in France, Germany and other continental countries.

FRANCIS C. SESSIONS.

A BIOGRAPHY of Cabeza de Vaca is easily condensed into a few paragraphs. I have been unable to find the year of his birth, and equally unsuccessful in tracing the date of his demise. The latter, however, took place after 1565, and possibly at Sevilla in Spain.* The original name of his family was Alhaja, but was changed to Cabeza de Vaca in 1212, A. D. The family belonged to the Andalusian nobility (conferred upon them after the battle of las Navas de Tolosa--twelfth of June, 1212), and lived at Xerez.t He went to the Indies as treasurer and alguazil major of the

*The date of 1565, A. D., results from his dedication of comentarios to Don Carlos of Spain, in which Alvar Nunez says: "Thirtyseven years have elapsed since that long and perilous expedition to Florida." Reckoning from the year when that expedition was destroyed (1528), this would bring his death to after 1565, and if we depart from 1536, date of his arrival in Sinaloa, it would even carry it beyond 1573.

For these and all other biographical details concerning Cabeza de Vaca, I refer in order to cut short an otherwise long biographical list, to the following works. Voyages, Relations et Mémoires originaux pour servir à l'histoire de la déconverte de l'Amérique, by H. Ternaux Compans, Paris, 1837. Commentaires d'Alvar Nunez de Vaca. (Preface), pp. 1 to 4).—(Enrique de Vedia Historiadores primitivos de Indias, Vol. I, 1852. Preliminares pp. 18, 21.

expedition of Pamfilo de Narvaez, of which ill-fated body he, two other Spaniards and a negro were sole survivors. With these associates, he performed the almost incredible feat of crossing from Florida to the state of Sonora in Mexico. After his return to Spain in 1837, he was made governor of Paraguay, or rather Adelantado (commander of an expedition for conquest and settlement), and remained in South America until 1544, when he was arrested and brought to Spain as a prisoner. Thereafter Cabeza de Vaca disappears from history; it is impossible to determine whether his arrest and imprisonment were just or

not.

That remarkable overland trip, executed on foot and under the most distressing circumstances, forms the subject of this sketch. Cabeza de Vaca is commonly credited with having discovered New Mexico, but this is an error, though a widely circulated one.

The sad tale of Narvaez' disasters has often been told. Misfortunes befell him from the day he left San Lucar de Barrameda in Spain (17-29 June 1527).‡ They culminated in the destruction of his fleet, in his own death, in the gradual extermination of his men, except

This date is so frequently mentioned that it needs no special references.

four, Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, Alonso del Castillo Maldonado of Salamanca, Andrés Dorantes of Béjar, and Estévanico, an Arabian negro of Azamor. These four men, after six years of separation, met on the coast of eastern Texas.* They had been prisoners of various roving tribes, by whom they had been dragged hither and thither, sometimes inland, sometimes along the coast. Their captors rarely showed any consideration; on the contrary, they ill-treated the wretched Spaniards until Cabeza de Vaca, having observed the methods employed by Indians for healing and curing, and urged by the same Indians to become a medicineman, began to apply his scanty knowledge of medicine and surgery with considerable success. He also became a peddler, penetrating into the interior and along the coast as far as one hundred to one hundred and fifty miles, exchanging shells and shell-beads for skins, red earth, flint flakes and other products of northern countries. He reached the vicinity of Red river, south of Shreve port, but always returned to the coast. again in hopes of meeting some companions of misfortune.†

When the four unfortunates at last came together, they were naked like *The term of five years is established by Cabeza de Vaca 'Naufragios,' Chap. xvi, (in Vedia, I, p. 529). Fucron casi seis anos el tiempo gueyo estuve en esta tierra solo entre ellos y desnudo. Oviedo Historia general y natural de Indias,' (edition of 1853, Vol. III, Lib. xxxv, Chap. iv. p. 601). Vino Cabesa de Vaca a se juntar con essotros, que avia cinco anos que lo avian dexado atrás.

†'Naufragios,' (Vedia I, p. 529.)

their Indian masters, their bodies were emaciated, bruised and torn. But they had acquired a great store of practical knowledge about the country and its inhabitants, and the practice of medicine seemed-for one of them at leastunusual prestige among the natives. Communicating to each other what they had seen and learned, they reached the conclusion that, in order to extricate themselves from their forlorn condition, it was best to improve the hold which success in healing and curing furnished, and thus induce the Indians to gradually lead them where people of their own race might be met with. To the stormy waters of the Gulf, which had swallowed their ships as well as the frail boats and rafts hastily constructed on the coast of Florida, they did not dare to entrust themselves. Besides, the Indians would not have suffered them to escape in that direction. Their only hope, therefore, lay in the west. They knew that expeditions from Mexico reached the Rio Panuco and the Pacific coast. By shifting slowly from one Indian tribe to another, always proceeding in a westerly direction as much as possible, countries might at last be reached into which other Spaniards penetrated, or whose inhabitants had knowledge of Spanish settlements.

In the course of ten months‡ this adventurous plan was carried out, and on the 1-12 of May, 1536, Cabeza de Vaca and associates reached San

Oviedo, "Historia General, etc., (III, p. 604.) "è hicolo Dios tan bien, que lo que no pensaban andar aunque las vida les turara ocho anos, la andovieron en diez meses.