Popularizing Art

THE impatience of a German Washerwoman led to the invention of lithography. The history of that elegant art begins with a homely domestic scene, which occurred at Munich about the year 1793, and in which three characters figured, — Madame Senefelder, the poor widow of an excellent actor, then recently deceased ; her son, Alois Senefelder, aged twenty-two, a young man of an inventive turn ; and the impatient washerwoman just mentioned. The washerwoman had called at the home of this widow for the weekly "wash ” ; but the “list” was not ready, and the widow asked her son to take it. He looked about the room for a piece of paper upon which to write it, without being able to find the least fragment, and he noticed also that his ink was dry. Washerwomen are not apt to be overawed by such customers, and this one certainly did not conceal her impatience while the fruitless search was proceeding. The young man had in the apartment a smooth, soft, creamcolored stone, such as lithographers now use. He had also a mass of paste made of lampblack, wax, soap, and water. In the hurry of the moment, he dashed upon the soft, smooth stone the short list of garments, using for the purpose this awkward lump of oily paste. The washerwoman went off with her small bundle of clothes, peace was restored to the family, and the writing on the stone remained.

To understand how so trifling a circumstance caused the invention of lithography, it is necessary to know why this young man had in his house that flat, smooth stone and that soapy black lump, and how it happened that his ink was dry, and that not the smallest piece of paper could be found in the room. If it is humiliating to the pride of man to learn what a great part Accident plays in discoveries, we are somewhat reassured when we perceive that it is only a specially trained, active, penetrating human intelligence which can interpret and follow up the hint which Accident gives. Our washerwoman, reader, might drive us raving mad with her impatience, but I fear we should never invent anything remarkable in consequence. But this Alois Senefelder was prepared for his washerwoman by previous experiment and brooding thought.

He had been a law student to please His father ; but upon his father’s death, the poverty of the family compelled him to abandon a distasteful pursuit, and he hastened to try the stage. The coldness of the audience announced to him that he had not inherited his father’s talent, and the manager could only offer him the position of supernumerary, which he accepted. While performing silent parts, he devised speeches and situations for more gifted actors. Some of his plays were performed, and with such success that he deemed it worth while to print them ; and this led to his becoming intimately conversant with the whole art and mystery of printing. Having plenty of leisure, and a plentiful lack of everything else, it occurred to him to try and save expense by printing his own plays ; and, with that end in view, he proceeded to experiment with sealing-wax, wood, and other substances. Not succeeding in getting a good impression from wax or wood, he attempted taengrave a copperplate by the aid of aqua-fortis. But be fore applying this biting liquid, he had to cover his copperplate with the varnish that engravers use for the purpose, and write upon it a page of print backwards. It is not easy to write printing letters backwards ; he made many mistakes; and one mistake might spoil a most laboriously written page. To lessen this difficulty, he contrived the mixture of wax, soap, lampblack, and water referred to above, with which he used to cover over his errors, and write upon it the correct word. This accounts for his having in his house so unusual a mixture, which was, in fact, an oily pencil, — one of the essentials of the art, then unknown, of taking impressions from a writing or drawing upon stone.

He succeeded, at length, in getting a tolerable proof of one page from his copperplate. But plates of polished copper are expensive, and the poor German playwright could not continue his experiments with them. In the neighborhood of Munich the slabs of soft stone, since used by lithographers, are found ; and it now occurred to the experimenter to try and engrave his works upon them. It is a lime stone, which, though soft when taken from the quarry, hardens after exposure to the air. He cut some letters upon the surface of one of the slabs which he had brought with his own hands from the banks of the Inn ; but the result was not encouraging, and he only waited for his purse to be replenished to continue his experiments upon copper. Meanwhile he used to cover his flat stone with engraver’s varnish, and upon the surface thus prepared practise writing backwards. On the morning of the washerwoman’s visit he had in his room a stone which he had been roughening a little to receive the varnish, and it lay before him fresh and clean. Every scrap of paper in the house he had used in taking proofs from his copperplate and engraved stones ; and the ink of this dramatic author was dry because, in his eagerness to print, he had ceased to write. Hence it was that, to get rid of an impatient washerwoman, he wrote the list of clothes upon a surface of limestone with a soapy, waxy pencil. The wax was of no importance. The secret of what followed was that he had written upon limestone with a pencil of which grease was an ingredient.

In fact, the whole art of lithography and chromo-lithography depends upon two facts of chemistry, — that water and oil will not mix, and that oil and lime will.

Before rubbing out his hasty scrawl, it occurred to him to try whether the letters would resist aqua-fortis ; a weak dilution of which he poured over the stone, and let it remain wet for five minutes. He found, or fancied, that the aqua-fortis had eaten away the stone to the depth of one line, leaving the letters in slight relief. His next thought was to see if it were possible to take an impression of his list upon paper. After many experiments and failures, he succeeded in contriving a method by which he could cover his letters with ink. and keep the rest of the surface clean. He found it was only necessary to wet the whole surface of the stone before applying his inking pad. The film ot water kept the oily printers’ ink from adhering to the stone, but did not keep it from adhering to the letters written upon the stone with soap and lampblack. He laid bis paper upon the stone, applied the requisite pressure, and lo ! an excellent proof of his washing list ! Lithography was invented. The process was complete. It only remained to devise apparatus for executing it with facility and despatch.

The great secrets of the art are these three : I. A limestone surface ; 2. An oily pencil in drawing upon that surface ; 3. Wetting the stone before putting on the oily printing-ink.

Every one familiar with the history of inventions can guess perfectly well what next befell this inventor without being told. It is ever the same old story. After reducing himself very near the verge of starvation by continuing his experiments, and being at his wits’ end, a man who had been drawn as a conscript in a neighboring province offered him fifty dollars if lie would serve in his stead. Senefelder accepted the offer, but, upon presenting himself at the station, he was rejected as a foreigner, and compelled to return to Munich. Then he revealed his secret to the Court musician, and represented to him how well adapted the new process was to the printing ot music, which was then onlyprinted upon copperplates at great cost. The Court musician was convinced. He joined the inventor in setting up at Munich the first lithographic establishment that ever existed in the world; where, amid poverty and discouragement, Senefelder toiled on, inventing presses, utensils, processes, and methods, patiently developing the art which he had created. Of course, the engravers and draughtsmen of that day either pooh-poohed lithography as sometning contemptible and. transitory, or denounced it as inimical to the interests of art; and we may be sure that some of the art critics of the time smiled derision upon the inventor’s exertions, and maintained that the slightest sketch from an artist’s hand was more to be desired than the best lithograph which mechanism could assist in producing. It is mentioned, as an evidence of the slight importance attached to the new art, that on one occasion the Academy of Munich voted to Senefelder and Ids partner the sum of twelve florins to aid them in their experiments. The inventor, however, as inventors frequently do, triumphed at length over foes and friends, and, after about twenty years of unrequited labor, secured a small but sufficient share of the results of his invention.

He lived to the year 1834. I am assured by the most eminent lithographer of the United States, that Senefelder created almost the entire process, as now conducted, by which plain lithographs are produced, and that he lived to see that branch of the art reach its utmost development. Better plain lithographs were executed in the inventor’s own lifetime than it has since been thought worth while to attempt. He also brought the art of tinting lithographs as far as it has ever gone, although, perhaps, he did not himself execute the best specimens. Finally, he more than suggested the application of the process by which those chromo ot color lithographs are produced, which now adorn our abodes, and which are pushing from cottage and farm-house and barber-shop walls the gorgeous daubs of Napoleon crossing the Alps, the portraits of “ Emma,” the engravings of General Washington ascending to heaven borne by angels in Continental uniform, the representations of Edwin Forrest in the part of Rolla, holding aloft in fearful peril the child of a supernumerary, which used to disfigure them. It is seldom that in a single lifetime an invention is developed so far as this, and applied to so many uses.

The part which Accident played in the invention of lithography is more than usually remarkable. Since the day when Alois Senefelder, wandering thoughtful on the banks of Isar, near Munich, picked up specimens of that peculiar limestone, and brought home a slab to engrave upon, the earth has been carefully looked over, and the geologists have been closely questioned, for lithographic stones ; but none have been found equal to those which he there discovered, seventy-live years since. That quality of stone has increased in price, until it now sells in our seaports at thirty-five cents a pound, which makes a stone twenty inches square worth about fifty dollars ; but we can get no supplies of it except in the region where Accident revealed its existence to our poor playwright in 1793If he had daubed his washing-list on marble or slate, nothing would have come of it. If he could only have found a small fragment of a play-bill or newspaper lying about in his room, we might never have had lithography. If his ink had hot been dry, he would doubtless have used that in waiting upon the stone, and from such an ink no impressions could have been taken. If his washerwoman had been so happy as to possess a tranquil mind, or if she had had no crying baby at home, or had held the Senefelder family in more respect, the poor lad might have kept her waiting while he ran in next door and borrowed a piece of paper. If he had not mixed some soap in his paste, and thus added to it the ingredient of oil, which forms the requisite chemical combination with the limestone, he would have experimented fruitlessly with his washing-list. It he and his mother had not been very poor, and in all respects circumstanced just as they were and where they were, mankind might not for ages to come, and might never, have attained to lithography, and we should not have been the happy possessors of Mr. Prang’s chromes. It is startling to consider how near we all came to losing Eastman Johnson’s “Barefoot Boy.” Two inches of waste paper the more, or a small piece of yellow soap the less, and the public might never have had that interesting child.

Chromo-lithography, by which our houses and school-rooms are now filled with beautiful pictures, is a combination of Senefelder’s invention with an ancient method of printing in colors by using two or more blocks. Antiquity, however, only gave the hint, which has been developed with wonderful rapidity by accomplished artists and artisans in Germany, France, England, and the United States, — the German Engelmann being the chief originator of methods. The first patents relating to chromo-lithography bear date 1835, and in these forty-four years the art has made such progress, that copies of fine oilpaintings are now daily produced which contain all of the original picture which the public can see, and which none but a close observer can tell from the original. At Prang’s manufactory of chromos in Boston there is a gallery in which the proprietor sometimes hangs, side by side, an oil painting and the chromo-lithograph taken from it, both framed alike. I think that not even the artist who painted the picture could always tell them apart, and I am sure that few others could. It would be a safe thing to wager that the critics who have endeavored to write down these beautiful productions would not be always able, without handling them, to decide which was brush and which was printing-press.

The prpeess by which these chromolithographs are produced is simple, but it is long, delicate, and expensive. One of the chromos most familiar, just now, to the public is that of the boy referred to above, in the painting of which Mr. Eastman Johnson endeavored to express upon canvas that which Mr. Whittier had already written in verse : —

It is a small picture, — about thirteen inches by ten,—but to reproduce it in chromo-lithograph requires twenty-six slabs of stone, weighing not far from two tons, and worth fourteen hundred dollars. The time occupied in preparing these stones for the press is about three months ; and when once the stones are ready, an edition of a thousand copies is printed in five months more. And yet, although the original is worth a thousand dollars, and the process of reproduction is so long and costly, a copy is sold for five dollars, — a copy, too, which, to nineteen-twentieths of the public, says as much, and gives as much delight every time it is looked at, as the original work could. It may be possible, in a few words, to convey some idea of the manner in which this particular boy, standing barefoot upon a rock in a brook, with trees, a grassy bank, and blue sky behind him, is transferred from a thousand-dollar canvas to whole stacks of five-dollar pasteboard.

As far as possible, the chromo-lithographer produces his copy by the method which the artist employed in painting the original. One great difference between painting and printing is, that the printer puts on all his color at once, while the painter applies color in infinitesimal quantities. One crush of the printing-press blackens the page ; but a landscape grows and brightens gradually under the artist’s hand, as the natural scene which he is representing ripens and colors under the softer touches of the sun, the warm winds and gentle showers of April and May. As far as possible, I say, the chromolithographer imitates these processes of art and nature by applying color in small quantities and by many operations. He first draws upon a stone, with his pencil of soap and lampblack, a faint shadow of the picture, — the outline of the boy, the trees, and the grassy bank. In taking impressions from this first stone an ink is used which differs from printers' ink only in its color. Printers’ ink is composed chiefly of boiled linseed oil and lampblack ; but our chromo-lithographer, employing the same basis of linseed oil. mixes with it whatever coloring matter he requires. In taking impressions from the first stone in laying, as it were, the foundation of the boy, he prefers a browned vermilion. The proof from this stone shows us a dim beginning of the boy in a cloud of brownish-red and white, in which can be discerned a faint outline of the trees that are by and by to wave over his head. The face has no features. The only circumstances clearly revealed to the spectator are, that the boy has his jacket off, and that his future trousers will be dark. Color is placed, first of all, where most color will be finally wanted.

The boy is begun. He wants more vermilion, and some portions of the trees and background will bear more. On the second stone, only those portions of the picture are drawn which at this stage of the picture require more of that color. Upon this second stone, after the color is applied, the first impression is laid, and the second impression is taken. In this proof, the boy is manifestly advanced. As the deeper color upon his face was not put upon the spots where his eyes are to be, we begin to discern the outline of those organs. The boy is more distinct, and the general scheme of the picture is slightly more apparent.

As yet, however, but two colors appear, — brown-vermilion and white. On the third stone the drawing is made of all the parts of the picture which require a blue coloring, — both those that will finally appear blue and those which are next to receive a color that will combine with blue. Nearly the whole of the third stone is covered with drawing; for every part of the picture requires some blue, except those small portions which are finally to remain white. The boy is now printed for the third time, a bright blue color being spread upon the stone. The change is surprising, and we begin now to see what a pretty picture we are going to have at last. The sky is blue behind the boy, and the water around the rock upon which he stands is blue ; there is blue in his eves and in the folds of his shirt; but in the darker parts of the picture the brownvermilion holds its own, and gains in depth and distinctness from the intermixture with the lighter hue.

Stone number four explains why so much blue was used upon number three. A bright yellow is used in printing from number four, and this color, blending with the blue of the previous impression, plasters a yellowy disagreeable green on the trees and grass. The fifth stone, which applies a great quantity of brown - vermilion, corrects in some degree this dauby, bad effect of the yellow, deepens the shadows, and restores the spectator’s confidence in the future of the boy. In some mysterious way, this liberal addition of vermilion brings out many details of the picture that before were scarcely visible. The water begins to look like water, the grass like grass, the sky like sky, and the flesh like flesh. The sixth stone adds nothing to the picture but pure black ; but it corrects and advances nearly every part of it. especially the trunks of the trees, the dark shade upon the rocks, and portions of the boy’s trousers. Stone number seven gives the whole picture, except the figure of the boy, a coat of blue ; which, however, only makes that bluer which was blue before, and leaves the other objects of their previous color, although brighter and clearer. The eighth stone merely puts “madder lake " upon the boy’s face, hands, and feet, which darkens them a little, and gives them a reddish tinge. He is, however, far from being a pleasing object ; for his eyes, unformed as yet, are nothing but dirty blue spots, extremely unbecoming. The ninth stone, which applies a color nearly black, adds a deeper shade to several parts of the picture, but scarcely does anything for the boy. The tenth stone makes amends by putting upon his cheeks, hands, and feet a bright tinge of blended lake and vermilion, and giving to his eyes a somewhat clearer outline.

To an inexperienced person the picture now appears to be in a very advanced stage, and many of us would say. Put a little speculation into that boy’s eyes, and let him go. Trees, rocks, grass, water, and sky look pretty well, — look a thousand times better than the same objects in paintings which auctioneers praise, and that highly. But we are only at the tenth stone. That child has to go through the press sixteen times more before Mr. Prang will consider him fit to appear before a fastidious public.

Stones number eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen all apply what seems to the uninstructed eye mere black. The colors are, indeed, extremely dark, although not pure black, and the chief object of these six impressions is to put into the picture those lines and shadows which the eye just mentioned cannot understand, but only enjoys. It is by such minute applications of color that a picture is raised from the scale of merit which escapes censure to that which affords delight. The last of these shading stones gives the boy his eyes, and from this time he looks like himself.

The seventeenth stone lays upon the trees and grass a peculiar shade of green that corrects them perceptibly. Number eighteen just touches the plump cheeks, the mouth and toes of the boy with mingled lake and vermilion, at which he smiles. The last seven stones continue the shading, deepening, and enriching of the picture by applying to different parts of it the various mitigations of black. It is then passed through the press upon a stone which is grained in such a way as to impart to the picture the roughness of canvas ; after which it is mounted upon thick pasteboard and varnished. The resemblance to the original is then such that it is doubtful if Mr. Eastman Johnson could pick out his own boy if he were surrounded with a number of copies.

It is not every picture that admits of such successful treatment as this, nor does every chromo-lithographer bestow upon his productions so much pains and expense. A salable picture could be made of this boy in ten impressions ; but, as we have seen, he receives twenty-six ; and the process might be prolonged until a small quarry of stones had been expended upon him. Some landscapes have been executed which required fifty-two stones, and such pictures advance to completion by a process extremely similar to that employed by an artist. That is to say, color is applied to them very much in the same order, in the same minute quantities, and with an approach to the same intelligent delicacy of touch. It is an error to regard these interesting works as mechanical. A mere mechanic, it is true, by a certain Chinese servility of copying, can produce an extremely close, hard imitation of an oil painting; and much work of this kind is done in Germany and England. But in our Boston establishment no mechanic puts pencil to one of the stones employed in producing fine pictures. The artistic work is executed by artists of repute, who have themselves produced respectable paintings of the kind which they are employed to imitate. Any one who watches Mr. Harring transferring to a long series of lithographic stones Mr. Hill’s painting of the Yosemite Valley will perceive that he is laboring in the spirit of an artist and by the methods of an artist. It would be highly absurd to claim for any copyist equal rank with the creator of the original, or to say that any copy can possess the intrinsic value of an original. But it is unjust to reduce to the rank of artisans the skilful and patient artists who know how to catch the spirit and preserve the details of a fine work, and reproduce in countless copies all of both which the public can discern.

This art of chromo-lithography harmonizes well with the special work of America at the present moment, which is not to create, but to diffuse; not to produce literature, but to distribute the spelling-book ; not to add to the world’s treasures of art, but to educate the mass of mankind to an intelligent enjoyment of those which we already possess. Our poets, most of them, are graybeards, and it does not yet appear that their places are to be filled when they are gone. Our few literary men of established rank are descending into the vale of years, and their successors have not emerged into view. In the region of the fine arts there are indications of more vigorous life ; but our young artists do not seem so willing as the great men of old to submit to the inexorable conditions of a lasting and a growing success, — a simple, inexpensive life, steady toil, Spartan fare, and a brain uncontaminated by narcotics. And if, in the department of original science, we can boast of one great name, it is the name of a person whom we only had the sense to appropriate, not the honor to produce. Meanwhile, what our sweet and tenderly beloved Tory friends amiably style “ the scum of Europe ” pours upon our shores, chokes up our cities, and overspreads the Western plains. When a Tory speaks of the “scum of Europe,” or of “the dregs of the people,” he merely means the people whom his barbaric and allgrasping meanness has kept ignorant and poor. These people, as well as the emancipated slaves of the South, it devolves upon us of this generation and the next to convert into thinking, knowing, skilful, tasteful American citizens. Mr. Prang has finished his new manufactory just in time. By his assistance we may hope to diffuse among all classes of the people that feeling for art which must precede the production of excellent national works.

The public have shown an alacrity to possess these beautiful pictures. In April, 1861, Louis Prang was proprietor of a small lithographic establishment in the fourth story of a building in Boston. The impending war had not merely injured his business, but brought it to an absolute standstill. His presses were covered with dust; he had dismissed his workmen ; no one came near him; and, being still in debt for his presses and stones, he was not to be reckoned, just then, among the fortunate of his species. One day, at the time when all eyes were directed to the pregnant events occurring in Charleston Harbor, when Sumter and Moultrie were on every tongue and in every heart, a friend chanced to show the anxious lithographer an engineer’s plan of that harbor, with the positions of all the forts, shoals, and channels marked, with a map of the city in its proper place, drawings of the forts in the corners, and the distances indicated. “ This would be a good tiling for you to publish,” said his friend. It was an oar thrown to a drowning man. A few days after, the occupants of the lofty building in which Mr. Prang had his small shop were at first surprised, and then annoyed, by the thunder of newsboys and errand-boys tramping up and thumping down the stairs leading to the lithographer’s room. Four presses were soon running. The master of the shop, with surprise and pleasure beaming from his countenance, of late so dejected, was handing out copies of the map by ones, twos, dozens, twenties, and hundreds, damp from the stones, as fast as the presses could print them. On the first day, before the map had got into the shop windows and upon the news-stands, so large a number of single copies were sold, at twenty-five cents each, by the publisher himself, that he had at night a hatful of silver coin. The flow of cash came so suddenly and so unexpectedly, that he did not know where to put it, and was obliged to use bis hat, for want of a reservoir more convenient. The little map was a marvellous hit. It sold to the extent of forty thousand copies before the public mind was turned to other scenes.

And you may be sure that, when the public mind had gone over the Long Bridge into Virginia, Mr. Prang was ready with another map, and that during the four years which followed it was not his fault if the people did not perfectly comprehend the various Seats of War. One of his maps, drawn so that each person could mark for himself the changing positions of the two armies, was in such demand that, he had six presses running upon it, night and day, for several weeks, and sold hundreds of thousands of copies. When maps flagged, he started those cardportraits of popular generals, of which millions were sold, at ten cents each, chiefly to the army. Then followed sheets of heads, — fifty heads upon one large card, — which had consideiablc success.

In this way was accumulated the capital upon which Mr. Prang’s present business of chromo-lithography was founded. He began with those extremely pretty cards which enliven young ladies’ albums. He invited a lady of Boston, noted for her skill and taste in painting flowers and fruit, to paint for him twelve wild-flowers from nature, each on a card of the usual album size. These he lithographed in colors, and followed them with sets of mosses, butterflies, birds, roses, autumn leaves, fruit, dogs, landscapes, and many others. All of these were painted from nature, and reproduced with great hdelity. Some of them are exceedingly popular with the possessors of albums ; one set of twelve beautiful roses having already reached a sale of fifty thousand sets. And so, by successive steps, this able man arrived at the production of full chromo-lithographs. His first attempts were failures, A set of four Cuban scenes, the first of the Prang chromos, which were sold together in a paper portfolio, did not strike the public favorably. There was nothing to hang up in the parlor. Mr. Prang next tried a pair of landscapes, which also failed to lure five-dollar bills from the passers-by. His third attempt was Tait’s Group of Chickens, and this was an immediate, great, and permanent success. This encouraged him to persevere, until now his list of full chromos embraces forty subjects, and he has been able to build the first factory that was ever erected for a lithographic business in any part of the world. With seventy men and forty presses, he is only just able to supply the demand. It would now be hard to find a house or school-room in which there is not somewhere a bit ot brilliancy executed at this establishment.

In order to value aright the advantage it is to the public to be able to buy a truly beautiful little picture, correct in drawing and natural in color, for the price of a pair of slippers, it is necessary for us to know what pictures these chromos displace. It is not true that they lessen the demand for excellent original works. The ostentation of the rich, in this kind of luxury, ministers to the pleasure of the rest of mankind ; just as the pride of a class pays for the opera, which the poor man can enjoy for next to nothing in the nailery. The reason why I, in this city of New York, own a fine park of eight hundred acres, is because sundry rich men felt the need ot a more convenient place for displaying their equipages on fine afternoons. We may rely upon it, that the persons who now buy expensive works will continue so to do, and that these chromos will enhance, rather than diminish, the value of originals ; because the possession of an original will confer more distinction when every one has copies ; and it is distinction which the foolish part of our race desires. Nor is it a slight advantage to an artist to have in his works two kinds of property, instead of one ; the power to sell them, and the power to sell the privilege of multiplying copies of them. Neither art, literature, nor science will have fair play in. this world, until one success, strictly first-rate, will confer upon the producer of the work a competent estate ; or, in other words, until every one who acquires property in a production of art, literature, or science will pay a just compensation to the producer. Before many years have passed, we shall see artists mounted on horseback riding in my Central Park, who would have gone on foot all their days, but for the reproduction of their works by chromo-lithography. Copyright will pay for the oats.

But there is one class of picturedealers and picture-makers whom this beautiful process of chromo-lithography will seriously injure. I mean those who make and sell the landscapes which are offered at the New York ferries for five dollars a pair, gilt frames and all ; also those who sell at auction “ splendid oil paintings collected in Italy by a well-known connoisseur recently deceased.” Some of these fine works, I am informed by one who has done them (a German artist whom poverty and ignorance of the English language compelled for a few months to misuse his brush in this way), are executed a dozen at a time, and are paid for by the dozen. Twelve canvases are set up in a large garretroom. The painter, with paint-pot in one hand and brush in the other, goes his rounds ; first, putting in all the skies ; next, perhaps, all the grass; then, his trees ; and, finally, dots in a few cows, sheep, children, and ladies. A good hand can execute a very superior dozen in a week, for which, in these dear times, he may get as much as twenty dollars. Before the war, the established price for a good article of an oil painting was twelve dollars a dozen, and find your own paint.

The principal manufactory in the United States of this description of ware is in a certain Broad and noisy street of a city that need not be named. It is styled by its proprietor “The American Art Gallery for the Encouragement of Art and Young Artists”; but. among the unhappy young men who earn a sorry livelihood by plying the brush therein, the establishment is called “ The Slaughter-House,” and its master “The Butcher.” This man of blood was once an auctioneer in a street that has little in common with the illustrious orator and statesman whose name it bears, wherein persons in needy circumstances can either sell superfluous or buy indispensable garments. It is now his boast that he is the “greatest patron of the fine arts in America,”and his ways of patronizing art are various. He will have pictures painted by a young artist whose necessities are urgent, which he will keep as part of his stock in trade. In a room partitioned off from “The American Art Gallery” just mentioned he has a number of “ hands ” multiplying copies of these pictures as fast as the brush can dab on the paint. These “hands,” to whom he pays weekly wages which average less than the wages of laborers, acquire by incessant practice a dexterity in making the copies that is truly remarkable. Besides these, he has outdoor hands, who, like journeymen tailors, take their work home and do it by the piece. The pictures are offered for sale in the Gallery ; but as they accumulate rapidly, the proprietor holds an auction every few weeks, either of the Old Masters or of Great Living Artists. These auctions take place by turns, in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Buffalo, Cincinnati, Chicago, St. Louis, and San Francisco. The Californians, my German artist says, are liberal patrons of the " American Art Gallery for the Encouragement of Art and Young Artists.” the sales in San Francisco being both frequent and profitable. Even to Australia, on the other side of the globe, consignments of these precious works are sent from the Gallery in the nameless city. The pictures offered at the auction sales are frequently advertised and declared to be “ original oil paintings, by native artists, from the American Gallery for the Encouragement of Art and Young Artists.” The frame is, of course, an item of the first importance in this kind of picture. The butcher manufactures his own frames, and he takes care that they shall be splendid. This is probably the secret of his success ; for what is there dearer to the heart of man and woman than a gorgeous parlor ? This amiable passion burns in the breast of every true American, and it is this which creates the demand for splendid gilt frames with something in them that looks a little hke a picture.

I will copy, for the reader’s more complete information, a few sentences from a letter lying before me, which describes some of the modes in which Art is encouraged at this American Gallery : —

“ The proprietor never fails to impress upon a young artist who goes to him to sell pictures or get employment the advantages to be derived from studying with him, and his generosity in founding a place for their encouragement and assistance, and in furnishing them canvas, a nice studio, easels, and other things, and then paying them while they are improving themselves. They are required to furnish their own paints ; but as they all use house paint, and buy it in pound pots, that does not form a very heavy item of expense. When I first went to him in 1863 I preferred working by the piece, and generally made about fifteen dollars a week. . . . . I received for a picture twenty-six inches by thirty-six, four dollars ; for one about twelve by sixteen, one dollar and a half. For Cole’s Voyages of Life, size twenty-four by thirty (one set was sent with every collection), we received two dollars. The next time I went to him he would not employ me except by the week, and gave me twelve dollars, which he said was more than he was in the habit of paying. When working by the piece, the most money was to be made on what he calls his crystal medallions, —small ovals pasted on the under side of convex glasses, for which we were paid from seventylive cents to a dollar and a quarter, according to size. It is a trick of this old fellow, when a person brings in a picture for sale, to tell him to leave it, and when he has time he will look at it, and pay whatever it is worth. If the owner does so, and the picture is of any value, he sends it immediately to the paint room, and has one or more copies made of it. When the owner calls he will offer him two of three dollars for it; and if he is not satisfied, he can take it away, for the copies answer the purpose just as well as the original.”

These are the pictures which chromos are displacing. Such are the dealers whom their popularity is likely to drive to more honest or less hurtful employments. When I hear critics lamenting the prevalence of these truly beautiful products of chemistry and art, and declaring that they corrupt the taste of the people, I think of the American Gallery for the Encouragement of Art and Young Artists, and smile serene.

It is possible to overvalue the educating influence even of excellent pictures. In strengthening or informing the intellect, they are of no more use than mothers’ kisses or the smiling loveliness of a flower-garden ; and, truly, a man may spend his life among pictures, and fill books with eloquent discourse about them, and yet remain a poor, short-sighted reactionist, filled with insolent contempt of his species, whom he does his best to mislead. But we can say of good pictures, that they are a source of innocent and refined pleasure; and that is enough to justify their existence. I think, therefore, that this new art, which enables me and other laborers to buy for five dollars all that we can enjoy of a thousand-dollar picture, is one that deserves the encouragement it is receiving ; and I cannot but regard it as a kind of national blessing, that the business of supplying us with these productions has fallen to the lot of so honest, painstaking, and tasteful a person as Louis Prang.