Portrait of the Artist

William Hogarth, 1697-1764

JOGARTH was born, lived and died in London.

He is essentially English and of his own time. In his work he never troubled himself about art and little about beauty, but having certain things to express to the world, and having found out

a way of his own to do this, he went ahead. He was brought up an engraver on silver, then took to engraving plates on copper for the publishers, and soon began designing and making engravings for himself, and taught himself to make the paintings he wished to copy with the graver.

In this manner he developed a technique as a painter, which in his day held in too little account, has in our time been as far overestimated. Hogarth was an original genius whose few portraits and similar pieces are faithful and excellent delineations, full of character and meaning, photographic in rendering of detail, but with less strength and charm of color.

Hogarth was a unique moralist and social satirist with brush and graving tool, and his famous series of "The Harlot's Progress," "The Rake's Progress," "The Marriage à la Mode," and "Industry and Idleness," contain such abundance of pregnant allusion and illustration in their endless details, such striking and entertaining pictures of the manners and follies of the time, such clear and vivid moral lessons in so simple yet agreeable manner, that they have no rivals in their own field the world over, and are as pertinent to-day as ever.

Hogarth never painted a better picture as a piece of painting than his own fine portrait, which is in the National Gallery.

Washington and Lafayette at Mount Vernon
Thomas P. Rossiter, 1818-1871

JOSSITER was born in New Haven, studied there with Jocelyn, a local portrait painter, then in 1840 and on, spent six months in London, a year in Paris, and five years in Rome. Returning he settled in New York; but in 1853 traveled in Europe and lived three years in Paris. After a stay in New York from 1856 to 1860, he resided at Cold Spring on the Hudson until his death.

Such a varied training should have stimulated to notable achievement, if foreign study is the right method. The American painters of that time went. to Europe full of zeal, and were astounded at the marvels of art opened to them, but were too often also overwhelmed. Some were inspired for a time, some dazed, and returning home, chilled by the artistic barrenness about them, deprived of art stimulus, few had the strength to do the work of which they had dreamed.

Rossiter was an amiable man of much intelligence, but little power, who painted portraits, ambitious historical genre and large religious pieces, some of which he exhibited about the country for money with small success. He had learned how to draw and to compose with skill, painted easily though in a hard, dry manner, but his themes had for him only a remote or literary interest. He painted several pictures illustrating the life of Washington like this canvas, now in the Metropolitan Museum, and their subject gives them. for us a greater value. Louis R. Mignot, a landscape painter of merit, put in the background of this work.

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The Wise and Foolish Virgins

Carl Piloty (pe'-lo-ty), 1826-1886

INDER the instruction of his father, a good lithographer of Munich, young Piloty was early set to work drawing, for use in publication as lithographs, the masterpieces of the Munich Galleries, and this work may have influenced him more than the years of study in the Academy there.

After this training and some time spent in Antwerp and Paris, his first works were realistic studies on social themes. His success led to a commission from the King of Bavaria for a large historical picture. He then turned to painting historical tragedy, in such works as "Seni before the Dead Wallenstein," and "Nero Walking among the Ruins of Rome."

From 1856 on, as professor, then as director of the Munich Academy he had a long career as an art teacher. Technical excellence in design and finish, great care in details and accessories, an effort for brilliance of color were his virtues, which sometimes grew to defects, and cannot outweigh the unskillful composition and the stiff theatrical treatment of his figures, that often lower his work in interest and vitality.

Piloty's version of "The Wise and Foolish Virgins" well illustrates his methods. He has grouped in the foreground the wise but unamiable maidens, robust figurantes in a good stage tableau, while their unhappy comrades, who also went out to meet the bridegroom, but whose improvidence is so relentlessly punished, with traditional theatrical attitudes and gestures, bewail unregarded their fate.

With all its shallowness of conception and its conventionality, the stronger masses of color and a greater unity of composition than is usual with Piloty, give this picture a value, which is enhanced by its faithful workmanship.