'A 
 
ARTIST-BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 ALLSTON. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 HOUGHTON, OSGOOD AND COMPANY. 
 
 Wc\t i^itocrsitre ^Bress, Cambridge. 
 1879. 
 
Copyright, 1878. 
 BY HOUGHTON, OSGOOD & CO. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
 ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 
 
 CAMBRIDGE. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Washington Allston was one of the highest prod- 
 ucts of American civilization and European culture 
 combined, and possessed the full affluence of literary 
 genius, artistic knowledge, refinement, purity, and re- 
 ligion as few other men of the Western World ever 
 have. He was the intimate friend of Sumner and 
 Irving, Coleridge and Wordsworth, Thorwaldsen and 
 West, Longfellow and Channing, and many others of 
 the foremost men of his age ; and on all occasions 
 proved himself worthy of their companionship, and 
 even of their love. 
 
 Some materials for this biography were obtained 
 from the memoirs of Leslie, Morse, Collins, Harding, 
 Sumner, and other contemporaries of the artist ; and 
 from the writings of Tuckerman, Ware, and Dunlap. 
 I have also examined nearly all the English memoirs 
 and miscellanies relating to the first quarter of the 
 nineteenth century, finding here and there chance allu- 
 sions or original characterizations of my subject. But 
 a large part of the facts herein set forth have been col- 
 
iv 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 lected from the friends of Allston ; and in this connec- 
 tion I would hereby render my thanks to Mr. Richard 
 H. Dana, Jr., and other members of the Dana family, 
 and also to Messrs. Jonathan Mason, George S. Hil- 
 lard, Henry W. Longfellow, Robert C. Winthrop, 
 Robert C. Waterston, and other New-England gen- 
 tlemen who have given me facts about Allston's life. 
 I would also gratefully acknowledge similar assistance 
 from Messrs. Daniel Ravenel and S. P. Ravenel 
 of Charleston, S. C. ; the Rev. Benjamin Allston, of 
 Georgetown, S. C. ; Captain Joseph Blyth Allston, of 
 Baltimore ; and other members of the Allston family. 
 
 I have preferred to give as much of the autobio- 
 graphical character as possible to this sketch, by 
 using Allston's own words on all available occasions, 
 and supplementing them with the language of Morse, 
 Leslie, Colhns, Sumner, Irving, Lowell, Felton, and 
 Dana. In this way we may gain a clear and living 
 idea of the great artist and his surroundings, as he 
 appeared to his contemporaries and associates, and 
 may, perchance, comprehend the secret of his fas- 
 cination. 
 
 M. F. SWEETSER. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Page 
 
 Waccamaw. — The Allstons. — Childhood of the Master. — New- 
 port. — Channing and Dana. — Harvard College. — Malboue. 
 — Return to South Carolina. — Youth's Joys .... 7 
 
 CHAPTER H. 
 
 Studies in London. — West, Fuseli, and Northcote. — With Van- 
 derlyn at Paris. — Switzerland and the Italian Lakes. — Rome. 
 — Thorwaldsen and the Humboldts. — Irving and Coleridge. — 
 "The American Titian." — Return to America. — Marriage to 
 Miss Channing 31 
 
 CHAPTER in. 
 
 Return to London. — Collins, Leslie, and Morse — Sir George 
 Beaumont. — West. — Coleridge and Southey. — Death of Mrs. 
 AUston. — Paris. — Lord Egremont. — Irving. — Homeward 
 Bound . . ' 55 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 The Studio at Boston. — Chester Harding. — Academic Honors. — 
 Horatio Greenough. — Washington Irving. — De Veaux. — 
 Morse 92 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 A Group of Pictures. — The Valentine, Rosalie, Beatrice, Spala- 
 tro, etc. — The ' Belshazzar's Feast ' 
 
vi 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 The Studio at Cambridgeport. — Lowell's Pen-Sketch. — Mrs. 
 Jameson. — The Exhibition. — Eminent Friends. — The 
 Death of Allston 131 
 
 CHAPTER VH. 
 
 Allston as an Author. — "The Sylphs." — "The Two Painters.'* 
 — Minor Poems. — " Monaldi." — "Lectures on Art." — 
 Studio Aphorisms . . . o . . . , .156 
 
 CHAPTER VHL 
 
 Personal Traits. — System of Color. — Versatility. — Italianism. — 
 
 Slight Influence on American Art ...... 172 
 
ALLSTON. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Waccamaw. — The Allstons. — Childhood of the Master. — New- 
 port. — Channing and Dana. — Harvard College. — Malbone. — 
 Return to South Carolina. — Youth's Joys. 
 
 The district of Waccamaw, in South Carolina, 
 is a long strip of land, between the Waccamaw 
 River and the Ocean, from three to six miles 
 wide, and separated by Winyah Bay, on the south, 
 from the Santee country. On this sequestered 
 and sea-fronting peninsula, a century ago, several 
 patrician families lived under an almost baro- 
 nial regime^ with their broad plantations, their 
 many vassals, and their generous hospitalities. 
 Prominent among these were the Allstons, from 
 whom arose one of the foremost of American 
 artists. 
 
 It is supposed that the Allstons came from the 
 Norse settlements in Northumberland, and from 
 
8 
 
 ALLS TON. 
 
 a baronet's family. There is a town in that 
 county by the name of Alston, and one in 
 Norway called Alsten. Some people think that 
 the American Allstons were descended from 
 John Allston, who was banished from England* 
 about the year 1685, for complicity in the re- 
 bellion of the Duke of Monmouth. 
 
 William Allston of Brook Green was the nephew 
 of Colonel William Allston, of Marion's staff, 
 who married the daughter of the heroic Rebecca 
 Motte. The younger William had two children, 
 Benjamin and Elizabeth, by his first wife ; and 
 three by his second wife, Mary, Washington, 
 and William Moore Allston. Benjamin was 
 therefore Washington's half-brother, and his son 
 was Governor R. F. W. Allston, whose son Ben- 
 jamin, a retired army officer, now resides in the 
 AVaccamaw region. Mr. Joseph B. Allston, of 
 Baltimore, and late of the Confederate army, a 
 gentleman famous for his ringing war-poetry, is 
 another grand-nephew of our artist. 
 
 Governor Joseph Allston, of South Carolina, 
 who married Theodosia, the daughter of Aaron 
 Burr, was the son of the painter's great-uncle, 
 Colonel William Allston ; and his brother, William 
 
THE ALLSTONS IN 1780. 
 
 9 
 
 Algernon Allston, married Mary Allston, the sis- 
 ter of Washington. The artist's younger brother, 
 William, studied at Princeton College, and set- 
 tled in the North, where he married a Miss 
 Rogers, by whom he had three children. 
 
 William Allston had several estates in the 
 Waccamaw region, and chose the Springfield 
 plantation as Washington's heritage, while Brook 
 Green was allotted to Benjamin. In the year 
 1780, before his son W^ashington had attained 
 his second birthday, William died ; and Mrs. 
 Rachel Allston afterwards married Dr. Henry C. 
 Flagg, of Rhode Island, an officer of the Conti- 
 nental army. 
 
 We cannot better describe the Allston man- 
 sions and their people, a century ago, than in 
 the words of General Horry, one of Marion's 
 partisan officers : " These three spirited charges, 
 having cost us a great deal of rapid marching 
 and fatigue, Marion said he would give us 
 little rest.'' So he led us down into Waccamaw, 
 where he knew we had some excellent friends ; 
 among whom were the Hugers and Trapiers, and 
 the Allstons ; fine fellows ! rich as Jews, and 
 hearty as we could wish : indeed, the worthy 
 
lO 
 
 ALLSTON, 
 
 Captain, now Colonel, William Aliston, was one 
 of Marion's aids. These great people all re- 
 ceived us as though we had been their brothers, 
 threw open the gates of their elegant yards for 
 our cavalry, hurried us up their princely steps ; 
 and, notwithstanding our dirt and rags, ushered 
 us into their grand saloons and dining-rooms, 
 where the famous mahogany sideboards were 
 quickly covered with pitchers of old amber-col- 
 ored brandy, and sugar dishes of double refijied^ 
 with honey, for drams and juleps. Our horses 
 were up to the eyes in corn and sweet-scented 
 fodder ; while, as to ourselves, nothing that air, 
 land, or water could furnish was good enough 
 for us. Fish, flesh, and fowl, all of the fattest 
 and finest^ and sweetly graced with the smiles of 
 the great ladies, were spread before us as though 
 we had been kings ; while Congress and Wash- 
 ington went round in sparkling bumpers, from 
 old demijohns that had not left the garret for 
 many a year. This was feasting indeed 1 " 
 
 On the Brook Green domain, twenty-two miles 
 above Georgetown, in the mansion-house of his 
 family, Washington Aliston was born, on the 
 fifth of November, 1779. The house in which he 
 
DESIGNING IN INFANCY, 1 1 
 
 came into life has since been destroyed. From 
 his earliest years he was distinguished by a 
 nervous and active temperament, a quick mind, 
 and an acute sensibility, conditions peculiarly 
 unfavorable to his development in the languid 
 atmosphere of the Carolinas, and under the dull 
 routine of a plantation-home. 
 
 Allston has thus v^Titten of his early years, and 
 of the first manifestations of his genius for com- 
 position and landscape, and love for the marvel- 
 lous and poetic : — 
 
 "To go back as far as I can, — I remember 
 that I used to draw before I left Carolina, at six 
 years of age (by the way, no uncommon thing), 
 and still earlier, that my favorite amusement, 
 much akin to it, was making little landscapes 
 about the roots of an old tree in the country, — 
 meagre enough, no doubt, — the only particulars 
 of which I can call to mind were a cottage built 
 of sticks, shaded by little trees, which were com- 
 posed of the small suckers (I think so called), 
 resembling miniature trees, which I gathered in 
 the woods. Another employment was the con- 
 verting the forked stalks of the wild ferns into 
 little men and women, by winding about them 
 
12 
 
 ALLSTON, 
 
 different colored yarn. These were sometimes 
 presented with pitchers made of the pomegranate 
 flower. These childish fancies were the straws 
 by which, perhaps, an observer might then have 
 guessed which way the current was setting for 
 after Hfe. And yet, after all, this love of imi- 
 tation may be common to childhood. General 
 imitation certainly is ; but whether adherence to 
 particular kinds may not indicate a permanent 
 propensity, I leave to those who have studied 
 the subject more than I have, to decide. 
 
 " But even these delights would sometimes 
 give way to a stronger love for the wild and mar- 
 vellous. I delighted in being terrified by the 
 tales of witches and hags, which the negroes 
 used to tell me ; and I well remember with what 
 pleasure I recalled these feelings on my return to 
 Carolina, especially on revisiting a gigantic wild 
 grape-vine in the woods, which had been the 
 favorite swing for one of these witches. 
 
 " One of my favorite haunts when a child in 
 Carolina was a forest spring, where I used to 
 catch minnows, and, I dare say, with all the cal- 
 lousness of a fisherman ; at this moment I can 
 see that spring, and the pleasant conjurer Mem- 
 
SENT TO NEWPORT. 13 
 
 ory has brought again those Httle creatures before 
 me ; but how unlike to what they were ! They 
 seem to me Hke the spirits of the woods, which 
 a flash from their little diamond eyes lights up 
 afresh in all their gorgeous garniture of leaves 
 and flowers." 
 
 When the boy had reached his seventh year 
 the family physician advised that he should be 
 sent to the North, in order that his nervous and 
 high-strung organization might be recruited by 
 a more bracing air than that of the Carolina 
 lowlands. The education befitting the son of 
 a Southern planter could hardly be obtained on 
 a secluded estate like that of the Allstons, and 
 the desire to place their heir in a situation favor- 
 able to his intellectual culture was another reason 
 why his parents resolved to send him away for a 
 few years. In those days there was but one place 
 for a Carolina lad to be educated in, and that 
 was Newport, R. I., whither young Washington 
 was sent. ' 
 
 The excellent schools of Newport afforded fa- f 
 cilities for the proper education of the Southern j 
 children, many of whom were left here to be pre- } 
 
 i 
 
 pared for college. John C. Calhoun received | 
 
14 ALLSTON. 
 
 his elementary tuition here, before going to Yale 
 College. James Hamilton was educated here, 
 and afterwards reversed bis Northern indoctrina- 
 tion by forcing South Carolina into conflict with 
 the United States, and advocating the Nullifica- 
 tion Act, while he was governor. The Kinlocks of 
 Charleston were summer visitors at Newport from 
 1785 to 1800, and other Carolinians there were 
 the Shubricks, Rutledges, Gists, and Hayneses. 
 The Carolina colony at Newport flourished and 
 increased until it was ruined by the fatal results 
 of the Rutledge-Senter duel. 
 
 The connection between Newport and Allston's 
 parish was always peculiarly intimate. An All- 
 ston was born in Rhode Island, and appointed 
 thence to West Point in 1820. At the reunion 
 of the Sons of Newport, in 1859, there were 
 seven old Rhode-Islanders present from George- 
 town, S. C, the town nearest to the Allston 
 estates. 
 
 From 1785 to 1800 Newport was one of the 
 most cultivated and wealthy communities of the 
 United States, the chief naval station of the 
 Republic, and hardly second to New York in 
 commerce. The wealth acquired by maritime 
 
NEWPORT IN lySS' ^5 
 
 trading had given opportunity for the development 
 of numerous aristocratic families, with whom so- 
 cial life and elegant hospitalities had been refined 
 by the visits of distinguished foreigners and the 
 frequent sojourns of the courtly officers of the 
 French fleets, whose favorite rendezvous during 
 the Revolutionary war had been in this harbor. 
 There was also less of ecclesiastical intolerance 
 here than among the Puritan colonies on the north 
 and west, and a superior ease and freedom of life 
 and manners. The intellectual stimulus which 
 Dean Berkeley had given to the society of the 
 town in 1729-31 had been aided by the founda- 
 tion of the Redwood Library a few years later, 
 and resulted in a notable degree of scholarship 
 and culture. Dr. Waterhouse of Harvard Uni- 
 versity stated that the laboratories of Newport 
 were then the best in America. Nor was art 
 so nearly unknown here as in the other small 
 American towns, for Smybert had accompanied 
 Berkeley in his sojourn on these shores, and por- 
 trayed several of the Rhode-Islanders. Black- 
 burn had visited Newport on the same errand, 
 as early as 1754; and Cosmo Alexander painted 
 here in 1770. Robert Feke was a skilful local 
 
i6 
 
 ALLS TON. 
 
 artist ; Gilbert Stuart obtained his education in 
 Newport, and began to paint here ; and Mal- 
 bone was a native of the town and a scion of one 
 of its best famihes. As early as 1730, Henry 
 Collins, a wealthy merchant of this place, had 
 collected a notable gallery of paintings, including 
 porti'aits which he caused Smybert to paint 
 of Dean Berkeley, Callender, Hitchcock, and 
 Clapp. 
 
 The master thus speaks of his boyhood at 
 Newport : My chief pleasure now was in draw- 
 ing from prints, — of all kinds of figures, land- 
 scape, and animals. But I soon began to make 
 pictures of my own ; at what age, however, I 
 cannot say. The earliest compositions that I re- 
 member were the storming of Count Roderick's 
 castle, from a poor (though to me delightful) 
 romance of that day, and the siege of Toulon ; 
 the first in Indian-ink, the other in water-colors. 
 I cannot recall the year in which they were done. 
 To these succeeded many others, which have 
 likewise passed into oblivion. Though I never 
 had any regular instructor in the art (a circum- 
 stance, I would here observe, both idle and ab- 
 surd to boast of), I had much incidental instruc- 
 
THE FIRST ART-FRIEND. 17 
 
 tion, which I have always through life been glad 
 to receive from every one in advance of myself. 
 And, I may add, there is no such thing as a self- 
 taught artist, in the ignorant acceptation of the 
 word ; for the greatest genius that ever lived 
 must be indebted to others, if not by direct 
 teaching, at least indirectly through their works. 
 I had, in my school-days, some of this latter kind 
 of instruction from a very worthy and amiable 
 man, a Mr. King, of Newport, who made quad- 
 rants and compasses, and occasionally painted 
 portraits. I believe he was originally bred a 
 painter, but obliged, from the rare calls upon his 
 pencil, to call in the aid of another craft. I used 
 at first to make frequent excuses for visiting his 
 shop to look at his pictures, but finding that he 
 always received me kindly, I went at last without 
 any, or rather with the avowed purpose of mak- 
 ing him a visit. Sometimes I would take with 
 me a drawing, and was sure to get a kind word 
 of encouragement. It was a pleasant thing to 
 me, some twenty years after this, to remind the 
 old man of these little kindnesses." 
 
 This was not the only recompense which All- 
 ston made to his generous old friend, for one of 
 
i8 
 
 ALLSTON. 
 
 his first oil-paintings was a portrait of Mr. King, 
 bearing a distinct prophecy of the warm and 
 mellow tone and rich coloring of the artist's later 
 works. The face is filled with a pleasing be- 
 nignity, and the head has a noble and striking 
 contour. 
 
 While a boy, Allston was distinguished among 
 his playmates for his quick and almost fiery 
 spirit and for his indomitable courage. An in- 
 teresting school-boy friendship sprung up between 
 him and a young native of Newport, William 
 EUery Channing, and lasted for many decades, 
 beautiful and unimpaired. Together these in- 
 spired lads rambled through the charming coun- 
 try around the town, and along the resounding 
 shore of the beaches, receiving such impressions 
 of the beautiful and the sublime as had a pro- 
 found influence upon their after-lives. Fifty 
 years later Allston described Channing as hav- 
 ing been a generous and noble-minded boy, his 
 leader and exemplar, though several months 
 younger. Another companion in these walks 
 was Channing's cousin, Richard H. Dana, who 
 was a sensitive and high-strung child, younger 
 than either of the others. The intimacy between 
 
HARVARD DAYS. 
 
 19 
 
 these three was still kept up in the pale winter 
 of their age, when the venerable artist, the saintly 
 divine, and the manly poet were accustomed to 
 visit each other frequently, in their quiet Boston 
 homes. 
 
 Of his life at Harvard College he says : — 
 My leisure hours at college were chiefly de- 
 voted to the pencil, to the composition equally 
 of figures and landscapes ; I do not remember 
 that I preferred one to the other ; my only guide 
 in the choice was the inclination of the moment. 
 There was an old landscape at the house of a 
 friend in Cambridge (whether Italian or Spanish 
 I know not) that gave me my first hints in color 
 in that branch ; it was of a rich and deep tone, 
 though not by the hand of a master ; the work, 
 perhaps, of a moderate artist, but of one who 
 lived in ?i good age^ when he could not help catch- 
 ing some of the good that was abroad. In the 
 coloring of figures, the pictures of Pine, in the 
 Columbian Museum, in Boston, were my first 
 masters. Pine had certainly, as far as I can 
 recollect, considerable merit in color. But I had 
 a higher master in the head of Cardinal Benti- 
 voglio, from Van Dyck, in the college library, 
 
20 
 
 ALLS TON. 
 
 which I obtained permission to copy one winter 
 vacation. This copy from Van Dyck was by 
 Smybert, an English painter, who came to this 
 country with Dean, afterwards Bishop, Berkeley. 
 At that time it seemed to me perfection ; but 
 when I saw the original some years afterwards, I 
 found I had to alter my notions of perfection. 
 However, I am grateful to Smybert for the in- 
 struction he gave me, — his work rather. Deliver 
 me from kicking down even the weakest step of 
 an early ladder." (The same picture by Smybert 
 had previously awakened the first artistic im- 
 pulses in the soul of John Trumbull, whose skil- 
 ful pencil afterwards depicted the great events of 
 the Revolutionary era in America.) 
 
 " I became acquainted with Malbone but a 
 short time before he quitted Newport, a circum- 
 stance which I remember then regretting exceed- 
 ingly, for I looked up to him with great admira- 
 tion. Our not meeting earlier was owing, I sup- 
 pose, to his going to another school, and being 
 some years older than myself. I recollect bor- 
 rowing some of his pictures on oiled paper to 
 copy. Our intimacy, however, did not begin till 
 I entered college, when I found him established 
 
MALBONE. 
 
 21 
 
 at Boston. He had then (for the interval was of 
 several years) reached the maturity of his powers, 
 and was deservedly ranked the first miniature- 
 painter in the country. Malbone's merits as an 
 artist are too well known to need setting forth 
 by me : I shall therefore say but a few w^ords 
 on that head. He had the happy talent, among 
 his many excellences, of elevating the character 
 without impairing the likeness : this was remark- 
 able in his male heads ; and no woman ever lost 
 any beauty from his hand ; nay, the fair would 
 often become still fairer under his pencil. To 
 this he added a grace of execution all his own. 
 My admiration of Malbone induced me at this 
 time (in my Freshman year at college) to try my 
 hand at miniature, but it was without success. I 
 could make no hand of it ; all my attempts in that 
 line being so far inferior to what I could then do 
 in oil, that I became disgusted with my abortive 
 efforts, and gave it up. One of these miniatures, ' 
 or rather attempts at miniature, was shown me 
 several years after, and I pronounced it ' without \ 
 promise' not knowing it to be my own. I may ^ 
 add, I would have said the same had I known it. ; 
 I may observe, however (for I know not why I 
 
22 
 
 ALLSTON. 
 
 should not be as just to myself as to another per- 
 son), that I should not have expressed a similar 
 opinion respecting its contemporaries in oil ; for 
 a landscape with figures on horseback, painted 
 about this time, was afterwards exhibited at 
 Somerset House.'' 
 
 Forty years later he presented Mr. Waterston 
 with a beautiful little sketch which he made in 
 1798. Three other early sketches, in pencil, 
 now in the possession of Mr. R. H. Dana, repre- 
 sent log-huts and block-houses, and were proba- 
 bly copied from some book on rural architecture. 
 Other drawings of this time are of romantic and 
 tragic scenes, — a scene from Schiller's Rob- 
 bers," a castle from " The Mysteries of Udolpho," 
 and that weird picture of a maniac crushing a 
 dove, which Sully so much admired. A vein of 
 contrasted sentiment appeared in the ludicrous 
 caricatures with which he filled the blank leaves 
 of his own and his classmates' text-books. 
 
 At this period Harvard had less than two hun- 
 dred students, and was under the presidency of 
 Dr. Joseph Willard. Massachusetts and Hollis 
 Halls were the chief dormitories, and Harvard 
 Hall contained the chapel, library, and dining- 
 
CHANNING, 
 
 23 
 
 room. The most prosperous societies were the 
 Institute of 1770, the Speaking Club, and the 
 Phi Beta Kappa, all of which were literary; 
 the Adelphi, a religious union ; and the Porcel- 
 lian and Hasty-Pudding Clubs, devoted to social 
 mysteries and much debating. Allston belonged 
 to the two last named, and one of the record- 
 books of the latter (of which he was secretary) 
 contains a pen-sketch by his hand, depicting a 
 youth seated before a huge caldron, and ladling 
 its contents into his mouth. 
 
 Dr. Waterhouse, the professor of medicine, held 
 Allston under his special care while in college, 
 and had a paternal friendship for him. He 
 claims that the youth's first essay in oil-painting 
 was a portrait of his eldest boy, which was in the 
 doctor's possession as late as 1833. 
 
 It is said that Allston, before he went abroad, 
 painted four portraits of members of the Chan- 
 ning family, including his firm friend William 
 EUery. William visited Allston almost daily while 
 they were in college, and the latter once drew for 
 him a quaint group of pyramidal figures, composed 
 of mild caricatures of the professors and tutors, 
 which Channing offered at his recitation on men- 
 
24 
 
 ALLSTON. 
 
 suration. During his Junior year he wrote to 
 Allston, saying, " I have no inclination for either 
 divinity, law, or physic/' 
 
 A favorite resort of the young Carolinian was 
 the mansion of Judge Francis Dana, the Chief 
 Justice of Massachusetts, and ex-minister to Rus- 
 sia. This house was situated on Dana Hill, be- 
 tween Harvard University and Boston, and was 
 surrounded by wide fields which pertained to the 
 estate, and were afterwards laid out in streets 
 and occupied by a large population. Judge Dana 
 was one of the most hospitable of men, and fre- 
 quently entertained the chiefs of the Federal 
 party and the leading men of the State. His 
 house was almost a home to many of the students 
 at the college, especially those from the South 
 and the Middle States. Allston was at that time 
 passionately fond of society, and became a very 
 frequent visitor at the Dana mansion. 
 
 Among his classmates were Joseph S. Buck- 
 minster, afterwards a celebrated Unitarian divine 
 and scholar; Lemuel Shaw, a profound jurist, and 
 Chief Justice of Massachusetts ; Charles Lowell, 
 D. D., another liberal theologian, the father of 
 J. R. and R. T. S. Lowell ; Joshua Bates, D. D , 
 
HOME TO CHARLESTON. 2$ 
 
 President of Middlebury College ; and Timothy 
 Flint, famous for his writings about the Missis- 
 sippi Valley and the Far West. 
 
 Allston's genius for poetry manifested itself 
 during his college years, and won high considera- 
 tion for the young Southron. Harvard College 
 voted to mourn the death of Washington, in De- 
 cember, 1799, by the following exercises: "An 
 introductory Address in Latin by the President. 
 An Elegiac Poem in English by Washington 
 Allston, a Senior Sophister. A Funeral Oration 
 by Benjamin Marston Watson, a Senior Sophister. 
 A Solemn and Pathetic Discourse by the Hollis 
 Professor of Divinity." Once more he appeared 
 as a poet, on taking his degree. 
 
 As soon as his college career was over, Allston 
 hastened south to Charleston, where Malbone 
 had already established himself, and was meeting 
 with great success. Charleston was in those days 
 pre-eminent among the Southern cities in its en- 
 couragement of art, chiefly in the line of portraits 
 of the members of the patrician Carolina fami- 
 lies. Charles Eraser, a native of the city, painted 
 no fewer than 313 miniatures and 139 landscapes 
 and compositions, illustrating the fair country 
 
26 
 
 ALLSTON. 
 
 ♦around Charleston, as well as the clear-cut fea- 
 tures of the Hugers, Pettigrus, and Pinkneys. 
 Sully had settled in the city late in the last cen- 
 tury ; Waldo of Connecticut was liberally patron- 
 ized there by the Rutledges ; De Veaux excelled 
 in portraits of the planters ; Coram was busy in 
 CaroHna about 1780; and Earle also practised 
 there, in the manner of Benjamin West. 
 
 Allston humorously called his studio at Charles- 
 ton a "picture-manufactory''; and its chief pro- 
 ductions appear to have been a head of Judas 
 Iscariot, and another of St. Peter when he heard 
 the cock crow. The latter, together with some of 
 the youth's college verses, aroused the keen in- 
 terest of Mr. Bowman, a wealthy Carolinian of 
 Scottish birth, who immediately sought out and 
 generously befriended their author. Bowman was 
 a ripe scholar and an accomplished conversa- 
 tionalist, and delighted to welcome Allston, Mal- 
 bone, and Fraser to his frequent dinner-parties. 
 In after years his memory was most dear to his 
 protege. About this time Malbone painted a 
 beautiful miniature of the young artist, which is 
 still preserved in Charleston. 
 
 The Allston estates aj; Waccamaw were in the 
 
PARTING FROM CAROLINA. 27 
 
 hands of executors, one of whom offered the 
 young heir a fraction of its real value for his part 
 of the property. The artist's heart was with the 
 aesthetic treasures of Europe, and had no yearn- 
 ing for the patriarchal life of a Carolina planter; 
 and so, fearful of litigation and delays, and un- 
 skilled in matters of business, he disposed of his 
 share of the paternal domain at a ruinous sacri- 
 fice, and appropriated the proceeds to his sup- 
 port in Europe. Not only that, but so ignorant 
 was he of affairs that he made no attempt to 
 live on the generous interest which might have 
 accrued from the moneys which he received, but 
 deposited his funds with a London banker, and 
 drew directly and freely thereon until they were 
 exhausted. 
 
 Certain generous Carolinians, unwilling to have 
 the Waccamaw plantation pass out of the Allston 
 family, offered to advance funds for the youth to 
 make his foreign sojourn with ; but he declined 
 these proposals, preferring to keep his indepen- 
 dence and to learn to rely on himself. Mr. Bow- 
 man insisted on his accepting 100 a year from 
 him during the journey and the period of study- 
 ing ; and when this was declined, he proposed to 
 
28 
 
 ALLSTON, 
 
 ship several tierces of rice for him. Refusing 
 even this, and when Bowman would not let him 
 go without a present, Allston accepted Hume's 
 History of England and a novel by Dr. Moore, 
 with a letter of introduction to the latter. 
 
 The master himself has thus described his 
 morning years : " With youth, health, the kindest 
 friends, and ever before me buoyant hope, what a 
 time to look back upon ! I cannot but think that 
 the life of an artist, whether painter or poet, de- 
 pends much on a happy youth ; I do not mean as 
 to outward circumstances, but as to his inward 
 being; in my own case, at least, I feel the de- 
 pendence ; for I seldom step into the ideal world 
 without I find myself going back to the age of 
 first impressions. The germs of our best thoughts 
 are certainly often to be found there; sometimes, 
 indeed (though rarely), we find them in full 
 flower; and when so, how beautiful seem to us 
 these flowers through an atmosphere of thirty 
 years ! 'Tis in this way that poets and painters 
 keep their minds young. How else could an old 
 man make the page or the canvas palpitate with 
 the hopes, and fears, and joys, the impetuous, 
 impassioned emotions of youthful lovers or reck- 
 
HE TELLS OF HLS YOUTH, 
 
 29 
 
 less heroes ? There is a period of life when the 
 ocean of time seems to force upon the mind a 
 barrier against itself, forming, as it were, a per- 
 manent beach, on which the advancing years 
 successively break, only to be carried back by a 
 returning current to that furthest deep whence 
 they first flowed. Upon this beach the poetry 
 of life may be said to have its birth ; where the 
 real ends and the ideal begins. . . . 
 
 " Up to this time my favorite subjects, with an 
 occasional comic intermission, were banditti. I 
 well remember one of these, where I thought 
 I had happily succeeded in cutting a throat ! 
 The subject of this precious performance was, 
 robbers fighting with each other for the spoils, 
 over the body of a murdered traveller. And 
 clever rufiians I thought them. I did not get rid 
 of this banditti mania until I had been over a 
 year in England. It seems that a fondness for 
 violence is common with young artists. One 
 might suppose that the youthful mind would de- 
 light in scenes of an opposite character. Perhaps 
 the reason of the contrary may be found in this : 
 that the natural condition of youth being one in- 
 cessant excitement, from the continued influx of 
 
so 
 
 ALLSTON. 
 
 novelty, — for all about us must at one tivte be 
 new, — it must needs have something fierce, ter- 
 rible, or unusual to force it above its wonted 
 tone. But the time must come to every man 
 who lives beyond the middle age, when ' there is 
 nothing new under the sun.' His novelties 'then 
 are the rifacimenii of his former hfe. The gentler 
 emotions are then as early friends who revisit 
 him in dreams, and who, recalling the past, give 
 a grace and beauty, nay, a rapture even, to what 
 in the heyday of youth had seemed to him spirit- 
 less and flat. And how beautiful is this law of 
 nature, — perfuming, as it were, our very graves 
 with the unheeded flowers of childhood." 
 
AT LONDON. 
 
 31 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Studies in London. — West, Fuseli, and Northcote. — With Van- 
 derlyn at Paris. — Switzerland and the Italian Lakes. — Rome. 
 — Thorwaldsen and the Humboldts. — Irving and Coleridge. — 
 "The American Titian," — Return to America. — Marriage to 
 Miss Channing. 
 
 In May, 1801, Allston embarked for England, 
 in company with his congenial friend Malbone. 
 I^he latter remained in London five months, 
 studying the pictures there, and executing his 
 exquisite masterpiece, * The Hours ' (now in the 
 Providence Athenaeum). He then returned to 
 Charleston, and our artist never saw him again. 
 
 Soon after Allston's arrival in London he ob- 
 tained permission to draw at the Royal Academy, 
 by submitting a drawing from a cast of the Glad- 
 iator ; and another sketch won for him the ticket 
 of an entered student. " Mr. West received me 
 with the greatest kindness, — I shall never forget 
 his benevolent smile when he took me by the 
 hand : it is still fresh in my memory, linked with 
 
32 
 
 ALLSTON, 
 
 I the last of like kind which accompanied the last 
 ! shake of his hand, when I took a final leave of 
 him in 1818. His gallery was open to me at all 
 times, and his advice always ready and kindly 
 I given. He was a man overflowing with the milk 
 of human kindness." Allston was fascinated 
 by the exquisite taste of Sir Joshua Reynolds's 
 pictures, and expressed his wonder at the slight 
 acquaintance which had existed between Rey- 
 nolds, Gainsborough, and Wilson, three men who 
 had emerged, with a common purpose, from an 
 age of lead. He thought Fuseli the greatest of 
 living painters (a belief which was afterwards 
 qualified), and was made happy by a courteous 
 welcome to the Swiss artist's studio. He told 
 him that he had journeyed to London in the hope 
 of becoming an historical painter, and was an- 
 swered, drearily enough, " Then you have come 
 a great way to starve, sir." Fuseli had recently 
 exhibited a series of pictures in illustration of 
 Milton, and showed Allston such of the can- 
 vases as were not rolled up, being highly pleased 
 with the youth's enthusiastic praises and his free 
 quotations from the great English poet. 
 
 The young student began his labors by draw- 
 
LONDON SOCIETY. 
 
 33 
 
 ing from plaster casts, at the Royal Academy. 
 The huge paintings of West appear to have ex- 
 ercised no effect upon him, and it was not until 
 after he returned to America that his true inclina- 
 tion appeared. The academic precision learned 
 in London was cold and meaningless to his 
 mind, until the magic wand of the Venetian 
 coloring awakened him to the glory of a higher 
 art. 
 
 Bowman's letter to the author of "Zeluco" 
 was never delivered, for the gifted Moore died 
 about the time of AUston's arrival in London. 
 But the high culture and delightful conversation 
 of the young Carolinian secured admission for 
 him to the best literary and artistic circles of 
 the city, and his subsequent reminiscences of 
 metropolitan life were full of interest and attrac- 
 tion. He was also a great favorite among his 
 professional brethren, to whom he was introduced 
 and commended by the venerable West. But 
 his numerous social engagements were not al- 
 lowed to conflict with his studies, which he 
 practised for more than two years with great 
 assiduity. 
 
 About this time, also, Rembrandt Peale. of 
 
34 
 
 ALLSTON. 
 
 Pennsylvania, entered West's studio as a pupil, 
 and was introduced to Allston and Lawrence. 
 
 Our artist's habit at this period was to read one 
 or two articles from Pilkington's Dictionary of 
 Painters, as an accompaniment to his breakfast, 
 before entering upon the labors of the day. 
 Many of these were written by Fuseli, whom he 
 regarded as an inspiring and graphic critic, giv- 
 ing clear ideas and a distinct apprehension of 
 the works of many painters with whom he was 
 altogether unfamiliar. Allston has preserved 
 several sparkling anecdotes of Fuseli and his 
 contemporaries, two of which we may give here. 
 Sir William Beechy was criticising a young art- 
 ist's picture, and said, Very well, C, very well 
 indeed. You have improved, C. But, C, why 
 did you make the coat and the background of 
 the same color?" "For harmony, sir," replied 
 the youth. " O, no ! C, that 's not harmony, 
 that 's monotony." Again, Fuseli asked the 
 opinion of the Academy porter on one of his 
 new pictures. " Law ! Mr. Fuseli, I don't know 
 anything of pictures." " But you know a horse, 
 Sam ; you have been in the Guards, you can tell 
 if that is like a horse ? " " Yes, sir." " Well ? " 
 
NORTHCOTE AND REYNOLDS. 35 
 
 " Why, it seems to me, then, Mr. Fuseli, that — 
 that five men could ride on him." " Then you 
 think his back too long ? " "A bit, sir." 
 
 Allston was also acquainted with Northcote, 
 the crusty old Devonshire painter, and pupil of 
 Sir Joshua Reynolds. He used to tell that he 
 once asked Northcote's opinion as to the merits 
 of William Hamilton, one of the illustrators of 
 Boydell's Shakespeare, and the tart answer was 
 made, " A very silly painter, sir, a very silly 
 painter." Of the pictures of Reynolds, North- 
 cote's master, the young Carolinan thought so 
 highly that he said, "There is a fascination 
 about them which makes it almost ungrateful to 
 think of their defects." 
 
 So fearless was Allston of his ability that he 
 sent three pictures to the Exhibition of the Royal 
 Academy, — ' A French Soldier telling a Story,' 
 *A Rocky Coast with Banditti,' and ^A Land- 
 scape with Horsemen.' The latter was painted 
 while the artist was at Harvard ; and the 
 * French Soldier ' was sold to the European 
 Museum, whose proprietor ordered a companion- 
 picture, ' The Poet's Ordinary.' These two were 
 comic subjects, and were perhaps accompanied 
 
36 
 
 ALLSTOM. 
 
 by others of a similar character, for the biogra- 
 pher of Sir Thomas Lawrence makes the follow- 
 ing amazing statement: "In mentioning Ameri- 
 can painters, it would be unpardonable to omit 
 the broad humor, in the style of Hogarth, in the 
 pictures by Mr. Allston.'^ It is to be noticed 
 that Holmes also finds the spirit of Hogarth in 
 some of the artist's earlier sketches. 
 
 In November, 1803, Allston and Vanderlyn, 
 the gifted and unfortunate American painter, 
 journeyed from London to the Low Countries, 
 and from thence to Paris. The former remained 
 for several months in the French capital, and 
 painted four pictures, besides copying one of 
 Rubens's works, in the Luxembourg, and Paul 
 Veronese's great composition of "The Marriage 
 at Cana." He said that during his sojourn at 
 Paris he " worked like a mechanic/' 
 
 Never before nor since was there such a 
 magnificent collection of pictures and statuary 
 as that which dazzled the eyes of Paris at this 
 time, attesting the victories of Napoleon by the 
 choicest art-treasures of the Continent. The 
 Louvre contained the noblest works of Raphael 
 and Titian, from Italy ; the masterpieces of Mu- 
 
ARTISTIC RAPTURES. 
 
 37 
 
 rillo, stolen from Spain ; and the richest flower- 
 ings of Teutonic and Batavian art, which had been 
 torn from the German and Flemish churches and 
 palaces. Through this peerless gallery the poet- 
 painter rambled for weeks, attended by Vander- 
 lyn, a worthy comrade. He wrote thus : " Titian, 
 Tintoret, and Paul Veronese absolutely en- 
 chanted me, for they took away all sense of 
 subject. When I stood before the Peter Martyr, 
 the Miracle of the Slave, and the Marriage at 
 Cana, I thought of nothing but of the gorgeous 
 concert of colors.^ or rather of the indefinite forms 
 (I cannot call them sensations) of pleasure with 
 which they filled the imagination. It was the 
 poetry of color which I felt ; procreative in its 
 nature, giving birth to a thousand things which 
 the eye cannot see, and distinct from their cause. 
 I did not, however, stop to analyze my feelings, 
 — perhaps at that time I could not have done it. 
 I was content with my pleasure without seeking 
 the cause. But I now understand it, and thinJz 
 I understand why so many great colorists, espe- 
 cially Tintoret and Paul Veronese, gave so little 
 heed to the ostensible stories of their composi- 
 tions. In some of them, the Marriage at Cana, 
 
38 
 
 ALLSTON. 
 
 for instance, there is not the sHghtest clew given 
 by which the spectator can guess at the subject. 
 They addressed themselves, not to the senses 
 merely, as some have supposed, but rather 
 through them to that region (if I may so speak) 
 of the imagination which is supposed to be under 
 the exclusive dominion of music, and which, by 
 similar excitement, they caused to teem with 
 visions that ^ lap the soul in Elysium.' In other 
 words, they leave the subject to be made by the 
 spectator, provided he possesses the imaginative 
 faculty, — otherwise they will have little more 
 meaning to him than a calico counterpane." 
 
 After the sojourn at Paris (let us borrow the 
 beautiful words of Charles Sumner), "he di- 
 rected his steps toward Italy, the enchanted 
 ground of literature, history, and art, — strown 
 with richest memorials of the Past, — filled with 
 scenes memorable in the Progress of Man, — 
 teaching by the pages of philosophers and his- 
 torians, — vocal with the melody of poets, — 
 ringing with the music which St. Cecilia pro- 
 tects, — glowing with the living marble and 
 canvas, — beneath a sky of heavenly purity and 
 brightness, — with the sunsets which Claude has 
 
SWITZERLAND. 
 
 39 
 
 painted, — parted by the Apennines, early wit- 
 nesses of the unrecorded Etruscan civilization ; 
 surrounded by the snow-capped Alps, and the 
 blue, classic waters of the Mediterranean Sea. 
 The deluge of war submerging Europe had sub- 
 sided here, and our artist took up his peaceful 
 abode in Rome, the modern home of Art." 
 
 On his way from Paris to Italy, Allston leis- 
 urely traversed Switzerland, and experienced the 
 keenest pleasure from a contemplation of its 
 grand scenery. He crossed the Lake of Lu- 
 cerne, and then went over the St. Gotthard Pass 
 to Bellinzona and the exquisite lakes of Northern 
 Italy. He says : " The impressions left by the 
 sublime scenery of Switzerland are still fresh to 
 this day. A new world had been opened to me, 
 — nor have I met with anything like it since. 
 The scenery of the Apennines is quite of a dif- 
 ferent character. By the by, I was particularly 
 struck in this journey with the truth of Turner's 
 Swiss scenes, — the poetic truth, — which none 
 before or since have given, with the exception 
 of my friend Brokedon's magnificent work on 
 the passes of the Alps. I passed a night, and 
 saw the sun rise, on the Lake Maggiore. Such a 
 
40 
 
 ALLSTON. 
 
 sunrise ! The giant Alps seemed literally to rise 
 from their purple beds, and, putting on their 
 crowns of gold, to send up a hallelujah almost 
 audible." 
 
 Allston left London in November, 1803, and 
 entered Rome in March, 1805, and there is 
 nearly a year of this interval unaccounted for. 
 It was doubtless during this period that he made 
 a long visit to Florence, where he painted the 
 picture which is now in the Boston Athenaeum. 
 Some part of the time was probably spent at 
 Venice, in studying the processes of that school 
 of art to which the American master afterwards 
 clung so closely. 
 
 Late in 1805 Vanderlyn rejoined Allston in 
 Rome, and these two were the only students from 
 America then in the city. They cast in their 
 lots with an association of youths from Germany, 
 Sweden, and Denmark, who assembled frequently 
 to draw from the living model ; and although the 
 two transatlantic students lacked the government 
 patronage and pensions which so greatly aided 
 their European rivals, they had marked success 
 in contending for the honors of their art. 
 
 The four years which Allston spent in Italy 
 
ALLSTON ON RAPHAEL. 41 
 
 were devoted to an earnest study of the old 
 masters, and of that oldest master, Nature, whose 
 fairest works are lavishly displayed in the land 
 of the Apennines, — between ^tna and the Alps. 
 The effects of this long communion with such 
 sources of inspiration appeared in his subsequent 
 pictures and writings, and added a new charm to 
 his graceful conversation. He was profoundly 
 moved by the contemplation of the great master- 
 pieces of art at Rome, and enjoyed them in a 
 spirit sufficiently rare among youths of his age, 
 saying, " I had rather see a picture which I could 
 not equal than one which I could surpass." It 
 was the same sentiment which he expressed, in 
 after years, in the words, " I had rather be the 
 second painter in the world than the first, be- 
 cause I could then have some one to admire and 
 look up to." 
 
 Allston has himself told how he was moved by 
 the masterpieces of ancient art. " It is needless 
 to say how I was affected by Raphael, the great- 
 est master of the affections in our art. In beauty 
 he has often been, surpassed, but in grace, — the 
 native grace of character, — in the expression 
 of intellect, and, above all, sanctity, he has no 
 
42 
 
 ALLSTON. 
 
 equal. What particularly struck me in his works 
 was the genuine life (if I may so call it) that 
 seemed, without impairing the distinctive char- 
 acter, to pervade them all ; for even his humblest 
 figures have a something^ either in look, air, or 
 gesture, akin to the venusias of his own nature, 
 as if, like living beings under the influence of a 
 master-spirit, they had partaken, in spite of them- 
 selves, of a portion of the charm which swayed 
 them. This power of infusing one's 0W7t life^ 
 as it were, into that which is feigned, appears to 
 me the sole prerogative of genius. In a work of 
 art, this is what a man may well call his own ; 
 for it cannot be borrowed or imitated. Of Mi- 
 chael Angelo I know not how to speak in ade- 
 quate terms of reverence. With all his faults 
 (but who is without them ?), even Raphael bows 
 before him." 
 
 In criticising a painting by Caracci, Allston 
 used the following Dantesque sentences: "The 
 subject was the body of the Virgin borne for 
 interment by four apostles. The figures are 
 colossal ; the tone dark and of tremendous color. 
 It seemed, as I looked at it, as if the ground 
 shook at their tread, and the air were darkened 
 by their grief.'* 
 
ROMAN SOCIETY, 
 
 43 
 
 Vanderlyn has told us how he and Allston, 
 Turner and Fenimore Cooper, frequented the 
 famous old Caffe Greco, the resort of the north- 
 ern barbarians in Rome for so many decades. 
 There, too, were to be seen Thorvvaldsen and 
 Cornelius, Andersen and Louis of Bavaria, Flax- 
 man and Gibson, Shelley, Keats, and Byron. 
 Thorvvaldsen could hardly have been a student 
 with Allston, as some assert, for he had been in 
 Rome eight years when the latter arrived, and 
 had already won rich pecuniary rewards and the 
 praise of Canova. Nevertheless, he was a friend 
 of the American artist, and often in after years 
 pointed to him as a proof that the loftiest abili- 
 ties were indigenous to the Western world. 
 
 Another group of eminent persons then living 
 in Rome, and accessible to the young Carolinian, 
 was gathered around William von Humboldt, the 
 Prussian ambassador, and Alexander von Hum- 
 boldt, who had just returned from his travels 
 among the South-American Andes. The Danish 
 envoy, Baron von Schubert, and the Neapolitan 
 envoy, Cardinal Fesch, were also members of the 
 artistic society of the city. Madame de Stael 
 was living there at the same time, with A. W. 
 von Schlegel and Sismondi. 
 
44 
 
 ALLSTON, 
 
 During the period of Allston's sojourn at 
 Rome, the city was continually menaced by the 
 armies of Napoleon, which had occupied several 
 of the Papal provinces. In February, 1808, the 
 French troops entered the gates, disarming the 
 Pontifical guards, and the States of the Church 
 were converted into provinces of the Empire. 
 Pope Pius VII. was imprisoned in the Quirinal 
 Palace, but published thence a bull, excommuni- 
 cating all who had commanded or were con- 
 cerned in the invasion of the city. In July of 
 the next year Pius was arrested by French offi- 
 cers and haled away to his prolonged captivity of 
 five years at Savona and Fontainebleau. 
 
 The fascination which Allston exercised upon 
 all around him was felt strongly by Washington 
 Irving, who says: "I first became acquainted 
 with Washington Allston early in the spring of 
 1805. He had just arrived from France, I from 
 Sicily and Naples. I was then not quite twenty- 
 two years of age, — he a little older. There was 
 something to me inexpressibly fascinating in the 
 appearance and manners of Allston. I do not 
 think I have ever been more completely capti- 
 vated on a first acquaintance. He was of a 
 
IRVING FASCINATED. 
 
 45 
 
 light and graceful form, with large blue eyes, 
 and black silken hair, waving and curling round 
 a pale, expressive countenance. Everything 
 about him spoke the man of intellect and refine- 
 ment. His conversation was copious, animated, 
 and highly graphic ; w^armed by a genial sensi- 
 bility and benevolence, and enlivened at times 
 by a chaste and gentle humor. A young men's 
 intimacy took place immediately between us, and 
 we w^ere much together during my brief sojourn 
 at Rome. He was taking a general view of the 
 place before settling himself down to his pro- 
 fessional studies. We visited together some of 
 the finest collections of paintings, and he taught 
 me how to visit them to the most advantage, 
 guiding me always to the masterpieces, and pass- 
 ing by the ethers without notice. * Never at- 
 tempt to enjoy every picture in a great collec- 
 tion,' he would say, * unless you have a year to 
 bestow upon it. You may as well try to enjoy 
 every dish at a Lord Mayor's feast. Both mind 
 and palate get confounded by a great variety and 
 rapid succession, even of delicacies. The mind 
 can only take in a certain number of images and 
 impressions distinctly ; by multiplying the num- 
 
46 
 
 ALLSTON, 
 
 ber, you weaken each, and render the whole con- 
 fused and vague. Study the choice pieces in 
 each collection ; look upon none else, and you 
 will afterwards find them hanging up in your 
 memory/ 
 
 He was exquisitely sensitive to the graceful 
 and the beautiful, and took great delight in paint- 
 ings which excelled in color ; yet he was strongly 
 moved and roused by objects of grandeur. I 
 well recollect the admiration with which he con- 
 templated the sublime statue of Moses by Michael 
 Angelo, and his mute awe and reverence on en- 
 tering the stupendous pile of St. Peter's. Indeed, 
 the sentiment of veneration, so characteristic of 
 the elevated and poetic mind, was continually 
 manifested by him. His eyes would dilate ; his 
 pale countenance would flush ; he would breathe 
 quick, and almost gasp in expressing his feelings, 
 when excited by any object of grandeur and sub- 
 limity. 
 
 "We had delightful rambles together about 
 Rome and its environs, one of which came near 
 changing my whole course of life. We had been 
 visiting a stately villa, with its gallery of paint- 
 ings, its marble halls, its terraced gardens set out 
 
WASHINGTON IRVING. 
 
 47 
 
 with statues and fountains, and were returning to 
 Rome about sunset. The blandness of the air, 
 the serenity of the sky, the transparent purity of 
 the atmosphere, and that nameless charm which 
 hangs about an Italian landscape, had derived 
 additional effect from being shared with AUston, 
 and pointed out by him with the enthusiasm of 
 an artist. As I listened to him, and gazed upon 
 the landscape, I drew in my mind a contrast be- 
 tween our different pursuits and prospects. He 
 was to reside amid these delightful scenes, sur- 
 rounded by masterpieces of art, by classic and 
 historic monuments, by men of congenial minds 
 and tastes, engaged like him in the constant study 
 of the sublime and beautiful. I was to return 
 home to the dry study of the law, for which I had 
 no relish, and, as I feared, but little talent. 
 
 Suddenly the thought presented itself, ' Why 
 might I not remain here, and turn painter?' 
 I had taken lessons in drawing before leaving 
 America, and had been thought to have some 
 aptness, as I certainly had a strong inclination 
 for it. I mentioned the idea to Allston, and he 
 caught at it with eagerness. Nothing could be 
 more feasible. We would take an apartment to- 
 
48 
 
 ALLSTON. 
 
 gether. He would give me all the instruction 
 and assistance in his power, and was sure I would 
 succeed. 
 
 " For two or three days the idea took full pos- 
 session of my mind ; but I believe it owed its 
 main force to the lovely evening ramble in which 
 I first conceived it, and to the romantic friend- 
 ship I had formed with Allston. Whenever it 
 recurred to mind, it was always connected with 
 beautiful Italian scenery, palaces, and statues, 
 and fountains, and terraced gardens, and Allston 
 as the companion of my studio. I promised 
 myself a world of enjoyment in his society, and 
 in the society of several artists with whom he had 
 made me acquainted, and pictured forth a scheme 
 of life all tinted with the rainbow-hues of youth- 
 ful promise. 
 
 " My lot in life, however, was differently cast. 
 Doubts and fears gradually clouded over my pros- 
 pect ; the rainbow-tints faded away ; I began to 
 apprehend a sterile reality; so I gave up the 
 transient but delightful prospect of remaining 
 in Rome with Allston and turning painter." 
 
 The poet-painter says of another friend: "To 
 no other man whom I have known do I owe so 
 
COLERIDGE, 
 
 49 
 
 much intellectually as to Mr. Coleridge, with 
 whom I became acquainted in Rome, and who 
 has honored me with his friendship for more than 
 five-and-twenty years. He used to call Rome 
 the silent city ; but I never could think of it as 
 such, while with him ; for, meet him when or 
 where I would, the fountain of his mind was never 
 dry, but, like the far-reaching aqueducts that once 
 supplied this mistress of the world, its living 
 stream seemed specially to flow for every classic 
 ruin over which we wandered. And when I recall 
 some of our walks under the pines of the Villa 
 Borghese, I am almost tempted to dream that I 
 had once listened to Plato in the groves of the 
 Academy. It was there he taught me this golden 
 rule : never to judge of any work of art by its de- 
 fects ; a rule as wise as benevolent ; and one that 
 while it has spared me much pain, has widened 
 my sphere of pleasure." 
 
 Allston studied not only drawing and painting, 
 but also modelling in clay, to which he devoted 
 much time. He always kept up the practice of 
 modelling, and recommended it to young painters 
 as one of the best means of acquiring an accu- 
 rate knowledge of the joints. In the study of 
 
so 
 
 ALLS TON. 
 
 anatomy he labored unremittingly, considering 
 the relations of bones, joints, and muscles, and 
 bestowing prolonged attention on the structure 
 and peculiarities of the external human skin. 
 He also gave himself eagerly to the study and 
 analysis of the methods employed by the old 
 masters in coloring. 
 
 His magical colormg attracted much atten- 
 tion, even in Rome. Twenty years later, when 
 Weir was studying his profession in that city, 
 the Italian artists asked after a countryman of 
 his, for whom they had no other name than the 
 A7nerica7i Titian, When Weir spoke the name 
 of AUston, in calling the roll of American art- 
 ists, they exclaimed, " That 's the man ! " This 
 wonderful wealth of color was ever the grand 
 distinction of the master, and was imbued with 
 depth and richness and divine harmony. He 
 made no secret of his processes and materials, 
 but those who sought to avail themselves thereof 
 found that they lacked the fine inner sense of 
 color. His marvellous carnations were never 
 even imitated. He was altogether dependent 
 on his mastery of colors in simple landscapes 
 and ideal female heads, where the charms of 
 
ALLS TON'S COLORING. 
 
 51 
 
 design and incident were absent, yet the sense 
 of beauty is fully satisfied by the richness of 
 the hues. 
 
 William Ware says: "When, after a careful 
 study of very many of the best instances of 
 Titian's pencil, I returned, and, with that experi- 
 ence fresh in my mind, again re-examined the 
 best works of Allston, I felt that, in the great 
 Venetian, I had found nothing more true, noth- 
 ing more beautiful, nothing more perfect, than 
 I had already seen in Allston.'' An able critic, 
 in Bunsen's great work on Rome, avers that All- 
 ston's colors came nearer Titian's than those of 
 any other modern artist. Sandby, the historian 
 of the Royal Academy, says that "Allston was 
 famous in Rome for rich color . . . obtained by 
 an extensive use of asphaltum, after the manner 
 of Rembrandt." 
 
 In 1805 the young art-student painted a por- 
 trait of himself, which he gave to his friend Mrs. 
 N. Amory, of Newport. In this early work the 
 connoisseur cannot fail to see intimations of the 
 grace, vigor, and minute finish of the artist's 
 later pictures, while the uncritical observer is 
 charmed with the youthful sweetness of the face. 
 
52 
 
 ALLSTON. 
 
 Two Other small pictures which he painted at 
 Rome were 'David playing the Harp before 
 Saul ' and ' The Romans and the Serpent of 
 Epidaurus.' 
 
 In 1809 Allston returned to America, and re- 
 mained in Boston for nearly two years, when he 
 married the lady to whom he had long been 
 engaged. She was Miss Ann Channing, the 
 daughter of William Channing, a prominent 
 lawyer of Newport, and granddaughter of Wil- 
 liam EUery, a signer of the Declaration of In- 
 dependence. She was thirty-one years old when 
 Allston married her. 
 
 In a letter to Mr. Ellery, William Ellery Chan- 
 ning said : " A few hours ago Washington and 
 Ann, after their long and patient courtship, were 
 united in marriage. . . . Your granddaughter has 
 found, I believe, an excellent husband, one who 
 from principle and affection will make her hap- 
 piness his constant object. I hope that she will 
 settle at no great distance from us j but we have 
 not yet sufficient taste for the arts to give Mr. 
 Allston the encouragement he deserves.'' 
 
 During this sojourn at Boston the master 
 wrote some of the poems which were afterwards 
 
SAMUEL F. B. MORSE. 
 
 53 
 
 published in "The Sylphs of the Seasons." They 
 were read, in manuscript, by many of his per- 
 sonal friends, and called forth high praise. In 
 1811 he also read a poem before the Phi Beta 
 Kappa of Harvard College. During this visit 
 to America Allston received several visits from 
 his old friend Irving, who was now getting fairly 
 to work in literature. 
 
 About this time S. F. B. Morse, the son of 
 Jedediah Morse, the celebrated geographer, 
 graduated from Yale College, and went home to 
 his father's parsonage at Charlestown, Mass. 
 Ever since the fourth year of his age he had 
 drawn and painted, unaided by instruction, and 
 now he determined to adopt art as a profession. 
 Allston, ever ready and even anxious to help 
 young men in whom he saw the divine light of 
 genius, sought him out and directed his first 
 studies, awakening in his mind a loving rever- 
 ence which time never changed. 
 
 It is said that Allston paid some attention to 
 portrait-painting after his return to America, 
 charging higher prices than Stuart, who received 
 % 150 for a kit-cat picture (28 by 36 inches) and 
 % ICQ for a bust. He was once asked if he 
 
54 
 
 ALLSTON. 
 
 did n't find the need of rest, and answered, No, 
 I only require a change. After I paint a por- 
 trait I paint a landscape, and then a portrait 
 again." His studio was in the premises on 
 Court Street, between Brattle Street and Corn- 
 hill, where Smybert, Dean Berkeley's Scottish 
 protege^ had painted eighty years before. Here 
 Allston made portraits of several local celebrities. 
 
 Benjamin West once told Walter Channing 
 that " Allston should never have left London. 
 His course here was plain, — his success certain. 
 Here was the proper ground for his labor. He 
 should never have gone to America, — or if he 
 went, it should only have been on a visit. Never 
 should he have married. He was already mar- 
 ried, — married to the Art. He should have 
 married no other." 
 
LIVERPOOL. 
 
 55 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Return to London. — Collins, Leslie, and Morse. — Sir George 
 Beaumont. — West. — Coleridge and Southey. — Death of Mrs. 
 Allston. — Paris. — Lord Egremont — Irving. — Homeward 
 Bound. 
 
 In the year 1811 the master once more turned 
 his steps toward London, to refresh himself at 
 the springs of the Royal Academy, and to feel 
 again the stimulus of a healthy rivalry. Mrs. 
 Allston was the companion of his journey and 
 the joy of his new home. The good ship Lydia 
 sailed from New York in July, 181 1, bearing the 
 Allstons and Morse, with eleven other passen- 
 gers. After a voyage of twenty-six days the 
 vessel reached Liverpool, and the Boston trio 
 established themselves at the Liverpool- Arms 
 Hotel. But they were hurried from the city by 
 the Mayor's orders, since hostilities were then 
 impending between Great Britain and the United 
 States, and all Americans were regarded with 
 suspicion. They set off for London in a post- 
 
56 
 
 ALLSTOJSr. 
 
 chaise, and made the journey of two hundred 
 miles in a week, although Mrs. Allston was in 
 very poor health. The master immediately re- 
 newed his former friendship with West, to whom 
 he introduced young Morse ; and settled in lodg- 
 ings at 49 London Street, visiting his young pro- 
 tege every day, to talk and smoke a cigar with 
 him. Soon afterwards Charles R. Leslie came 
 across the ocean to begin those careful studies, 
 by w^hich he became one of the most famous 
 historical painters of England. 
 
 Leslie speaks thus of the time when he and 
 Morse were at London, in 1811 : "Our Mentors 
 were Allston and King ; nor could we have been 
 better provided: Allston, a most amiable and 
 polished gentleman and a painter of the purest 
 taste ; and King, warm-hearted, sincere, sensible, 
 prudent, and the strictest of economists.'' Les- 
 lie, then seventeen years old, was bitterly home- 
 sick for Philadelphia, and found it possible to be 
 unhappy even in London, where in later years he 
 attained such proud honors. Morse was a year 
 or two older, and labored diligently in acquiring 
 the art which his subsequent invention of the 
 electric telegraph rendered him independent of. 
 
LESLIE AND MORSE. 57 
 
 The two youths lived together, in dreary rooms 
 near Fitzroy Square, and visited Mrs. Siddons's 
 performances and copied the Elgin Marbles in 
 company. West and Allston were their instruc- 
 tors and advisers, permitting them to see all 
 their pictures in various stages of progress, and 
 helping them in many ways. Leslie says that 
 "it was Allston who first awakened what little 
 sensibility I may possess to the beauties of color. 
 He first directed my attention to the Venetian 
 school, particularly to the works of Paul Ve- 
 ronese, and taught me to see, through the accu- 
 mulated dirt of ages, the exquisite charm that 
 lay beneath. Yet for a long time I took the 
 merit of the Venetians on trust, and, if left to 
 myself, should have preferred works which I 
 now feel to be comparatively worthless. I re- 
 member when the picture of 'The Ages,' by 
 Titian, was first pointed out to me by Allston 
 as an exquisite work, I thought he was laugh- 
 ing at me." 
 
 Allston was a severe teacher and an unflinch- 
 ing critic, as Morse shows in one of his letters 
 home, saying : " Mr. Allston is our most intimate 
 friend and companion. I can't feel too grateful 
 
ALLSTON, 
 
 to him for his attentions to me ; he calls every 
 day, and superintends all that we are doing. 
 When I am at a stand and perplexed in some 
 parts of the picture, he puts me right, and encour- 
 ages me to proceed, by praising those parts which 
 he thinks good ; but he is faithful, and always 
 tells me when anything is bad. It is mortifying, 
 sometimes, when I have been painting all day 
 very hard, and begin to be pleased with what I 
 have done, and on showing it to Mr. Allston, 
 with the expectation of praise, and not only of 
 praise, but a score of 'excellents, well-dones, 
 and admirables,' — I say, it is mortifying to hear 
 him, after a long silence, say : ^ Very bad, sir ; 
 that is not flesh, it is mud, sir ; it is painted with 
 brick-dust and clay.' I have felt, sometimes, 
 ready to dash my palette-knife through it, and 
 to feel at the moment quite angry with him ; but 
 a little reflection restores me. I see that Mr. 
 Allston is not a flatterer^ but a friend, and that, 
 really to improve, I must see my faults. What 
 he says after this always puts me in good 
 humor again. He tells me to put a few flesh- 
 tints here, a fe7V gray ones there, a?id to clear up 
 such and such a part, by such and such colors ; and 
 
MORSE'S LOVE FOR ALLS TON. S9 
 
 not only that, but takes the palette and brushes, 
 and shows me how. In this way he assists me ; 
 I think it one of the greatest blessings that I am 
 under his eyes. I don't know how many errors 
 I might have fallen into if it had not been for 
 his attentions." 
 
 Early in 1866 Professor Morse bought Leslie's 
 portrait of Allston, and presented it to the Na- 
 tional Academy of Design, saying: "There are 
 associations in my mind with those two eminent 
 and beloved names which appeal too strongly to 
 me to be resisted. . . . Allston was more than any 
 other person my master in art. Leslie was my 
 life-long cherished friend and fellow-pupil, whom 
 1 loved as a brother. We all lived together for 
 years in the closest intimacy and in the same 
 house." 
 
 In the little coterie of which Allston was the 
 head were found Charles B. King, the Rhode- 
 Island artist; Leslie and Morse; Collard, the 
 merry musician ; and Lonsdale, a mediocre por- 
 trait-painter w^ho made excellent company. Fre- 
 quent were the evening parties at their houses, 
 when they assembled for social pleasures and 
 conversation. Leslie wrote to his sister that 
 
6o 
 
 ALLSTON. 
 
 " Mr. and Mrs. Allston are the only friends we 
 have left that are very near us, and if I were 
 to lose the society of Mr. Allston I should 
 not wish to remain any longer in England." 
 John Trumbull, the American historical painter, 
 was then occupying a diplomatic post, and All- 
 ston said of him : " Among the many persons 
 from wdiom I received attentions, during my 
 residence in London, I must not omit Colonel 
 Trumbull, who always treated me with the ut- 
 most courtesy.'' 
 
 In 1811 Leslie introduced Allston to William 
 Collins, who was afterwards a Royal Academi- 
 cian, famous for his landscapes, marines, and 
 genre pictures of rustic English children. The 
 American artist became very intimate vv^ith the 
 Collins family, and their friendship was kept up 
 to the end of life. In the biography of William 
 Collins, written by his illustrious son, Wilkie 
 Collins, many of his most important mental ac- 
 quisitions are referred to the effects of his inti- 
 macy with Allston and Coleridge. The great 
 novelist thus characterizes the Carolinian artist: 
 "To a profound and reflective intellect he 
 united an almost feminine delicacy of taste and 
 
SIR GEORGE BEAUMONT. 6 1 
 
 tenderness of heart, which gave a peculiar charm 
 to his conversation, and an unusual eloquence 
 to his opinions. . . . Mr. Collins owed to his 
 short personal intercourse with this valued com- 
 panion, not only much delightful communication 
 on the Art, but the explanation of many relig- 
 ious difficulties under which his mind then la- 
 bored, and the firm settlement of those religious 
 principles which were afterwards so apparent 
 in every action of his life." 
 
 About this time Sir George Beaumont, a friend 
 of Sir Joshua Reynolds and an accomplished 
 connoisseur, wrote a very complimentary letter 
 to Allston, having seen the sketch of his great 
 picture of ^ The Dead Man Revived.' He re- 
 quested the artist to paint another compostion 
 for the new church at Ashby de la Zouch, for 
 which he offered him 200. ^The Angel De- 
 livering St. Peter from Prison ' was the result 
 of this commission, to which the artist devoted 
 six months ; and was much admired by the noble 
 patron. At a later day, however, it was replaced 
 by a stained window, and remanded to one of 
 the garrets of Beaumont's mansion, whence it 
 was rescued by Dr. Hooper, an American ad- 
 
62 
 
 ALLSTON. 
 
 mirer of its author, and removed to Boston, and 
 subsequently to the chapel of the Massachusetts 
 Insane Asylum, at Worcester. The figures in 
 this composition are larger than life, and the 
 head of the angel is a portrait of Mrs. Allston. 
 The highly finished study for the head of St. 
 Peter was exhibited in Boston in 1837. 
 
 Allston said : " Among my English friends it 
 is no disparagement to place at their head Sir 
 George Beaumont. It is pleasant to think of 
 my obligations to such a man, a gentle77ian i?t his 
 very nature. Gentle, brilliant, generous, — I was 
 going to attempt his character, but I will not ; it 
 was so peculiar and finely textured that I know 
 but one man who could draw it, and that 's Cole- 
 ridge, who knew him well, — to know whom was 
 to honor." 
 
 Sir George was favored by the intimate friend- 
 ship of Wordsworth, who ■ first advised him to 
 visit Allston, giving as a reason that Coleridge 
 said that his picture of ' Cupid and Psyche ' 
 had not been surpassed in its coloring since the 
 days of Titian. In 1815 Beaumont asked B. R. 
 Haydon, Landseer's master, to go to Allston's 
 studio and see the ' St. Peter.' Haydon com- 
 
HOWARD PAYNE. 
 
 63 
 
 mended Allston for having abandoned portrait- 
 ure, and said that *'next to knowing what one 
 can do, the best acquisition for an artist is to 
 know what he can't.'" 
 
 Early in 1813 Mr. and Mrs. Allston, with 
 Leslie and Morse, enjoyed a pleasant trip to 
 Hampton Court, where they doubtless studied 
 the ancient pictures. At this time the brilliant 
 young American actor and dramatist, John How- 
 ard Payne, w^as playing at the Drury-Lane The- 
 atre with great success. He was a frequent 
 and welcome guest of the Allstons, who had 
 known him and his family very well in America. 
 In the beautiful spring season Leslie, Morse, 
 and the Allstons made a pleasant journey of ten 
 days to Windsor, Oxford, and Blenheim Palace, 
 enjoying uncommonly fine weather. 
 
 In 18 13 Morse wrote the following appreci- 
 ative sentences about his noble teacher : " I 
 cannot close this letter without telling you how 
 much I am indebted to that excellent man Mr. 
 Allston ; he is extremely partial to me, and has 
 often told me that he is proud of calling me his 
 pupil ; he visits me every evening, and our con- 
 versation is generally upon the inexhaustible 
 
64 
 
 ALLSTON. 
 
 subject of our divine art, and upon home^ which 
 is next in our thoughts. I know not in what 
 words to speak of Mr. Allston. I can truly say 
 I do not know the slightest imperfection in him ; 
 he is amiable, affectionate, learned, possessed of 
 the greatest powers of mind and genius, modest, 
 unassuming, and, above all, a religious man. 
 You may perhaps suppose that my partiality for 
 him blinds me to his faults j but no man could 
 conceal, on so long an acquaintance, every little 
 foible from one constantly in his company ; and, 
 during the whole of my acquaintance with Mr. 
 Allston, I never heard him speak a peevish word, 
 or utter a single inconsiderate sentence ; he is a 
 man of whom I cannot speak sufficiently, and 
 my love for him I can only compare to that love 
 which ought to subsist between brothers. He 
 is a man for whose genius I have the highest 
 veneration, for whose principles I have the great- 
 est respect, and for whose amiable properties I 
 have an increasing love. . . . You must recollect, 
 when you tell friends that I am studying in 
 England, that I am a pupil of Mr. Allston, and 
 not Mr. West; they will not long ask you who 
 Mr. Allston is ; he will very soon astonish the 
 
TROUBLE. 
 
 65 
 
 world. It is said by the greatest connoisseurs 
 in England, who have seen some of Mr. Allston's 
 works, that he is destined to revive the art of 
 painting in all its splendor, and that no age ever 
 boasted of so great a genius. It might be 
 deemed invidious were I to make public another 
 opinion of the first men in this country: it is, 
 that Mr. Allston will almost as far surpass Mr. 
 West as Mr. West has other artists, and this is 
 saying a great deal, considering the very high 
 standing which Mr. West enjoys at present." 
 
 During his abode in England Allston con- 
 formed to the custom of the country in regard 
 to late dinners, finding it favorable also to his 
 undisturbed studies. He dispensed with a mid- 
 day meal, and worked incessantly, often amid 
 great mental excitement, until his health was 
 shattered by these unwonted fasts and toils. A 
 serious and chronic derangement of the diges- 
 tive organs ensued, from which he never wholly 
 recovered ; and his pure and enthusiastic spirit 
 was henceforth chained to an inadequate physi- 
 cal constitution. His susceptible and highly ner- 
 vous temperament was from this time hampered 
 by material troubles, compelling him to long and 
 
66 
 
 ALLSTON. 
 
 frequent cessations from labor, and resulting in 
 occasional inequalities of execution. But the rest 
 given to the pencil was attended with an increased 
 activity of the mind, while new themes for illu- 
 mination were earnestly pondered, and new writ- 
 ings were prepared. 
 
 Allston's health became so seriously affected 
 by his unremitting labors, that, after several 
 months of great suffering, he was obliged to seek 
 a revival by a change of air. He had an uncle 
 living as the American Consul at Bristol, the city 
 of Coleridge, Southey, Chatterton, Sydney Smith, 
 and Robert Hall ; and he hastened towards the 
 adjacent watering-place of Clifton, in the hope 
 that the medicinal waters might aid in his recov- 
 ery. But when he reached Salt Hill, twenty-two 
 miles from London, the malady grew so vio- 
 lent that he was unable to proceed farther, and 
 was confined to a sick-bed for many days, ten- 
 derly cared for by his devoted wife. Morse and 
 Leslie attended him in the journey, and the 
 former hastened back to London, and brought 
 Coleridge thence to Salt Hill. Leslie narrates 
 how he occupied the same bed with the great poet, 
 who spent the hours, when he dared to leave All- 
 
"AN AMERICAN BOOKr 
 
 67 
 
 ston's room, in a fascinated perusal of " Knick- 
 erbocker's History of New York.'' Once he 
 left the sick-chamber at midnight, and took up 
 "Knickerbocker's History of New York " ("only 
 an American book "), and was found at ten 
 o'clock the next forenoon still buried in its pages, 
 with lights burning and shutters closed, unaware 
 of the lapse of time. Coleridge discharged the 
 utmost duties of friendship in a manner which 
 was surprising in a person of such constitutional 
 indolence, and thus manifested how ardent was 
 his love for his artist-friend. As soon as Allston 
 was able to be moved they carried him to Clifton, 
 the picturesque and far-viewing western suburb 
 of Brighton, whither Coleridge soon followed 
 him. King, the eminent surgeon. Miss Edge- 
 worth's brother-in law, was then at Clifton; and 
 Coleridge had induced Southey to write to him 
 about the artist's case. His ministrations were so 
 effectual that Allston ever afterwards attributed 
 his escape from death to him (under Providence). 
 But the process of recovery was slow and gradual, 
 and the artist was subjected to great annoyance 
 from his uncle, Vanderhorst, a kind-hearted and 
 generous man, but gouty and crotchety, and filled 
 
68 
 
 ALLSTON, 
 
 with an inveterate animosity against doctors, 
 Don't let one of those rascals enter your door," 
 he cried. " Follow my advice ; Uve well, and trust 
 to the air of Clifton. You see how well I am and 
 how healthy all my family are, and this is because 
 we never let a doct6r come near us." Vander- 
 horst or some member of his family called fre- 
 quently on their suffering kinsman, and Dr. King 
 came twice daily, so that Leslie and Coleridge 
 were forced to watch unceasingly lest the eccen- 
 tric uncle should meet and assail the surgeon. 
 King's visits were kept secret, and Vanderhorst 
 took the whole credit of his nephew's recovery. 
 
 Probably no small part of the artist's improve- 
 ment in health was due to the inspiration of the 
 beautiful scenery of Clifton and the lower Avon 
 River, beheld in the company of the cultured 
 and sensitive Coleridge and Southey. While en- 
 joying such society, amid these charming sur- 
 roundings, Allston solaced the long weeks of 
 his convalescence by composing several poems, 
 which were published in London soon afterwards, 
 in a duodecimo volume, entitled "The Sylphs of 
 the Seasons." This volume was republished in 
 Boston, in 1813, under the care of Professor Wil- 
 
* THE DEAD MAN REVIVED: 69 
 
 lard and Mr. Edmund T. Dana. An English 
 author says that Allston also published in Lon- 
 don a volume of " Hints to Young Practitioners 
 in the Study of Landscape Painting." Nagler 
 and Blanc both speak of this now forgotten 
 book. 
 
 As soon as Allston had passed from under the 
 stress of disease, though still an invalid, he re- 
 turned to London, and finished the picture of 
 ' The Dead Man Revived by Elisha's Bones.' 
 This great work was exhibited at the British 
 Institution in 18 14, where it obtained the first 
 prize of two hundred guineas ; and was after- 
 wards purchased by the Pennsylvania Academy 
 of Fine Arts for $3,500. The master wrote to 
 the friend who had managed the sale : " As 
 necessary and acceptable as the money is to 
 me, I assure you I think more of the honor con- 
 ferred by the Academy becoming purchasers 
 of my work." The composition is founded on 
 2 Judges xiii. 20-21 : "And the bands of the 
 Moabites invaded the land at the coming in of 
 the year. And it came to pass as they were 
 burying a man, that, behold, they spied a band 
 of men, and they cast the man into the sepulchre 
 
70 ALLSTON. 
 
 of Elisha ; and when the man was let down, 
 and touched the bones of Elisha, he revived." 
 
 While the master was working on ' The Dead 
 Man Revived ' he devoted four months to the 
 painting of a landscape, which he afterwards 
 sent to Philadelphia, to be sold for two hun- 
 dred guineas. He also painted a * Mother and 
 Child,' which was at first intended to repre- 
 sent the Madonna, but, failing to reach the art- 
 ist's ideal, received a less pretentious title. He 
 thought this one of his best pictures, and pre- 
 sented it to his friend McMurtrie, of Philadel- 
 phia. This gentleman also had some correspond- 
 ence with Allston about a picture of ^ Christ 
 Healing in the Temple,' which the artist had 
 designed and partly executed, but desisted from 
 when convinced of the inadequacy of the compo- 
 sition. He wrote : " I may here observe that 
 the universal failure of all painters, ancient and 
 modern, in their attempts to give even a tolera- 
 ble idea of the Saviour, has now determined me 
 never to attempt it. Besides, I think His char- 
 acter too holy and sacred to be attempted by the 
 pencil." Again, he said, when asked why he 
 had not painted Christ : " I have not done so, 
 
JOHN MARTIiV, 
 
 71 
 
 because of my convictions concerning the na- 
 ture, the mission, and the character of the 
 Saviour. These exalt Him so far beyond such 
 an apprehension as could alone enable me to 
 communicate any idea of Him I may strive to 
 reach, that I should fail if I attempted it. I 
 could not make Him a study for art." 
 
 During this year, 18 14, Leslie introduced All- 
 ston to John Martin, the painter of architectural 
 dreams," whose works were filled with poetic 
 fascination, terrible and brilliant weirdness, 
 and startling imagination. The American had 
 strongly desired to know Martin, ever since he 
 had seen his picture of * Sadak Seeking the 
 Waters of Oblivion.' Says Martin : " Thus, 
 twenty years ago, commenced a friendship which 
 caused me deeply to regret Allston's departure 
 for his native country ; for I have rarely met a 
 man whose cultivated and refined taste, com- 
 bined with a mild yet enthusiastic temper and 
 honorable mind, more excited my admiration 
 and esteem." 
 
 When the master was painting ^ The Dead 
 Man Revived,' he was visited by W^est, who 
 exclaimed, ^' Why, sir, this reminds me of the 
 
72 
 
 ALLSTON. 
 
 fifteenth century ; you have been studying in the 
 highest school of art. There are eyes in this 
 country that will be able to see so much excel- 
 lence.'^ He also noticed a head which Allston 
 had modelled in clay for one of his figures, and, 
 taking it for an antique, asked whose it was. 
 Upon finding by whom it had been modelled, he 
 carefully examined it, and expressed his opinion 
 that no sculptor in England could do as well. 
 Leslie says : " I never was more delighted in my 
 life than when I heard this praise coming from 
 Mr. West, and so perfectly agreeing with my own 
 opinion of Allston. He has been in high spirits 
 ever since, and his picture has advanced amaz- 
 ingly rapid for these two or three days.'' 
 
 West was delighted with Allston's ' Diana,' 
 which was exhibited at the British Gallery in 
 1814, and said to his son, "There, there, why, 
 there is nobody who does anything like that." 
 Young West answered, ^' It looks like a bit of 
 Titian." O, yes," exclaimed the venerable art- 
 ist, that 's Titian's flesh, that 's Titian's flesh." 
 He commended the landscape, composition, 
 drawing, and coloring; and advised his gifted 
 compatriot to follow it with others of similar 
 
WEST'S PORTRAIT. 
 
 73 
 
 small size and delicate finish. About this same 
 time Allston painted the head of West, for the 
 portrait which is now in the Boston Museum of 
 Fine Arts. Inness says : " How real seems that 
 portrait alongside of Stuart's pink fancy of 
 Washington ! and what a piece of bosh, by con- 
 trast, is the ' Portrait of Benjamin West, Esq.' 
 (I believe he was n't ' Sir'd '), ' President of the 
 Royal Academy,' by Sir Thomas LawTcnce." 
 
 In the autumn of 1814 Allston dwelt at Bris- 
 tol, and was busily engaged in portrait-painting, 
 meeting with indifferent success. Leslie WTote 
 deploring the absence of the master's family and 
 Morse from London, and saying that it made him 
 feel "as I used to when away from my mother 
 and sisters." Allston's uncle was the only pur- 
 chaser of his pictures, so that Morse said that 
 he might have starved for all the Bristol people 
 did to help him. But among the few portraits 
 which he had executed he ranked those of Cole- 
 ridge and Dr. King, painted at this time, as the 
 best. Wordswwth said of the former, *'It is the 
 only likeness that ever gave me any pleasure." 
 It was painted for Mr. Josiah Wade, and is now 
 in the British National Portrait Gallery. Allston 
 
74 
 
 ALLS TON. 
 
 himself wrote: "So far as I can judge of my own 
 production, the Hkeness is a true one, but it is 
 Coleridge in repose ; and, though not unstirred 
 by the perpetual ground-swell of his ever-working 
 intellect, and shadowing forth something of the 
 deep philosopher, it is not Coleridge in his high- 
 est mood, the poetic state. When in that state, 
 no face I ever saw was like to his; it seemed 
 almost spirit made visible, without a shadow of 
 the visible upon it. Could I then have fixed it 
 upon canvas! But it was beyond the reach of 
 my art." 
 
 It is said that at this same period Allston 
 painted a portrait of Robert Southey, another of 
 the great lake poets. He also executed two or 
 three fancy compositions, but no trace of them 
 can now be found. Another portrait of this period 
 represented Mrs. King, the surgeon's wife, who 
 was of the Edgeworth family, so famous in the 
 literature of that day. 
 
 Southey developed a warm intimacy with All- 
 ston, and frequently conversed with him about 
 artistic and literary subjects. ^'Have you many 
 old books in your country?" said he, one day. 
 "If not, I could not live there." He told Collins 
 
AMERICA TO GREAT BRITAIN. 75 
 
 that some of Allston's poems were among " the 
 finest productions of modern times." Coleridge 
 once said to Thomas Campbell that our master 
 had "poetic and artistic genius unsurpassed by 
 any man of his age." He also called him " the 
 first genius produced by the Western world." 
 
 Allston's poem, " America to Great Britain/' 
 which Charles Sumner calls " one of the choicest 
 lyrics in the language," received the honor of 
 being incorporated by Coleridge in his volume 
 of " Sibylline Leaves," which was published in 
 18 1 7. Our own Longfellow now possesses the 
 author's copy of this book, enriched by numerous 
 marginal notes in the handwriting of the great 
 lake poet, among which we find, alongside of 
 the "America to Great Britain," the following sen- 
 tence, in Coleridge's delicate chirography : " By 
 Washington Allston, a painter born to renew the 
 fifteenth century." Coleridge was very fond of 
 hearing the artist's weird and wonderful stories 
 of the supernatural, and in after years frequently 
 repeated one of them, whose scene was laid at 
 Harvard College. In the text of the " Sibylline 
 Leaves " Coleridge printed, as a note to the 
 "America to Great Britain": " This poem, written 
 
76 
 
 ALLSTON. 
 
 by an American gentleman, a valued and dear 
 friend, I communicate to the reader for its moral 
 no less than its patriotic spirit." 
 
 Allston now returned to London, and took a 
 house on Tinney Street, which he furnished and 
 fitted for his home. But it was ordained that 
 his cherished dreams of domestic joys in the 
 new domicile should fail of realization, and in 
 their place should arise one of the profoundest 
 sorrows of his life. Mrs. Allston had been inces- 
 sant in her care over her husband's sickness, and 
 returned to London with impaired health. After 
 entering the new house her illness became very 
 serious, and she died within two or three days. 
 Leslie says: She was never tired of talking of 
 *that little saint, William,' as she called him. The 
 very clay of which the Channings were formed 
 seemed to have religion in its composition. Mrs. 
 Allston told me that her brother, when a child, 
 used to turn a chair into a pulpit, and preach 
 little sermons to the other children of the family. 
 I saw Channing often during his short stay in 
 London, — and to see him was to love him. At 
 his request I accompanied him to the burying- 
 ground of St. Pancras Chapel, to show him his 
 
MRS. ALLS TON'S DEATH. 77 
 
 sister's grave." The only persons present at her 
 funeral were her husband, Leslie, Morse, and 
 John Howard Payne. The bereaved painter 
 wrote to a friend, " The death of my wife left me 
 nothing but my art, which then seemed to me as 
 nothing." 
 
 Morse wrote home, saying : " Mrs. Allston, the 
 wife of our beloved friend, died last evening, and 
 the event overwhelmed us all in the deepest 
 sorrow. As for Mr. Allston, for several hours 
 after the death of his wife he was almost bereft 
 of his reason. Mr. Leslie and I are applying 
 our whole attention to him, and we have so far 
 succeeded as to see him more composed." 
 
 When Mrs. Allston had passed away, the pleas- 
 ant prospects of the future life in the new house 
 seemed to have died with her, and the grieving 
 artist soon abandoned a place whose memories 
 were so painful. He went into lodgings in Buck- 
 ingham Place, Fitzroy Square, where Leslie and 
 Morse were living, in the centre of the artists' 
 quarter of London. Suffering under extreme de- 
 pression of spirits, his long and sleepless nights 
 were haunted by horrid thoughts, and diabolical 
 imprecations forced themselves into his mind. 
 
78 
 
 ALLSTOIsr. 
 
 Sincerely religious as he was, he was profoundly 
 distressed by these visitations, and desired Leslie 
 to consult Coleridge about his case. The great 
 poet was found walking bareheaded in the garden 
 at Highgate, and told Leslie : ^' Allston should 
 say to himself, 'Nothing is me but my will,'' 
 These thoughts, therefore, that force themselves 
 on my mind, are no part of me, and there can be 
 no guilt in them/ If he will make a strong 
 effort to become indifferent to their recurrence, 
 they will either cease, or cease to trouble him.'' 
 Much more he said, in sympathy with the sen- 
 sitive and suffering artist; and his messages 
 were blessed in the peace which their sugges- 
 tions procured for the unfortunate Allston. He 
 also sought for consolation from a higher source, 
 and was confirmed as a member of the Episco- 
 pal Church. 
 
 In 1815 Morse wrote of his master: "I never 
 felt so low-spirited as when he was ill. I often 
 thought, if he sliould be taken away at this time 
 what an irreparable loss it would be, not only 
 to me, but to America and to the world. Oh ! 
 he is an angel on earth. I cannot love him 
 too much. Excuse my warmth ; I never can 
 speak of Mr. Allston but in raptures." 
 
GHOST-STORIES, 
 
 79 
 
 Washington Irving visited him frequently, and 
 wrote : " Allston was dejected in spirits from the 
 loss of his wife, but I thought a dash of melan- 
 choly had increased the amiable and winning 
 graces of his character. I used to pass long 
 evenings with him and Leslie ; indeed Allston, 
 if any one would keep him company, would sit 
 up until cock-crowing, and it was hard to break 
 away from the charms of his conversation. He 
 was an admirable story-teller ; for a ghost-story, 
 none could surpass him. He acted the story as 
 well as told it.'' 
 
 During the summer of 1816 Allston painted 
 a picture of * Rebecca at the Well,' which the 
 London artists called one of his best works. 
 He sent it to his friend, Mr. Van Schaick, of 
 New York. The exhibition of this year con- 
 tained his ^ Morning in Italy ' ; and the preced- 
 ing one had been adorned with the ' Donna 
 Mencia in the Robbers' Cave ' {Gil Bias, Book 
 1. Chap. X.). 
 
 The scrupulous and sensitive conscience of the 
 master is illustrated by an incident occurring 
 at this time. He was in urgent need of money, 
 and had recently found a purchaser for one of 
 
8o 
 
 ALLS TON. 
 
 his pictures. But when he thought the matter 
 over, alone, at evening, he concluded that the 
 subject of the painting was such that it might 
 some time have an immoral effect on some per- 
 verted imagination. He immediately went to 
 his patron's house and paid back the money, 
 after which he took the picture home and de- 
 stroyed it. 
 
 In September, 1817, Allston went to Paris, via 
 Brighton and Dieppe, in company with Leslie 
 and William Collins. They all made studies in 
 the Louvre, and visited the houses of the chief 
 artists of the city. Gerard was the only one who 
 received them in person, and even he did not 
 show them his pictures. Leslie has described 
 the keen appreciation with which the party visit- 
 ed Notre Dame and the Louvre. Allston stayed 
 in the French capital six weeks, and then re- 
 turned to London. 
 
 Of the trip to Paris Collins wrote: "During 
 this visit I had of course the very best opportu- 
 nities of becoming acquainted with my friend's 
 real character, which, in every new view I took 
 of it, became more satisfactory. The sweetness 
 and subdued cheerfulness of his temper, under 
 
'URIEL IN THE SUN: 
 
 8l 
 
 the various little inconveniences of our journey, 
 was much to be admired ; and his great reverence 
 for sacred things, and the entire purity and in- 
 nocence of his conversation (coupled, as it was, 
 with power of intellect and imagination), I never 
 saw surpassed. Blessed be God, these qualities, 
 these gifts, were effectual to the pulling down of 
 many strongholds and vain imaginations on my 
 part. How then can I be too grateful to Heaven 
 for my acquaintance with one to whom, and to 
 whose example, I owe so much ? It is a source 
 of great comfort to me to know, that although we 
 were for so many years separated by the Atlantic, 
 he yet sometimes spoke of me ; and especially 
 that so short a time before his death he had me 
 in mind.'' 
 
 In December he sent his regards to Irving, in 
 Leslie's letter, wherein allusions are made to the 
 illustrations to "The Sketch Book" and " Knick- 
 erbocker's History," which Allston and Leslie 
 had contracted to design. The former furnished 
 but one of the eleven illustrations, a representa- 
 tion of Wouter Van Twiller deciding a lawsuit. 
 At this time Allston had just finished 'The 
 Angel Uriel in the Sun/ from which he omitted 
 
82 
 
 ALLSTON. 
 
 the positive colors of red, blue, and yellow, and 
 yet produced a picture of rich and glowing tone. 
 The angel's figure is colossal, though foreshortened 
 to a height of but nine feet; and his air and 
 attitude are very noble and heroic. The British 
 Institution gave the artist a prize of one hundred 
 and fifty guineas, on account of the picture, 
 which Leslie held as equal to the best works of 
 Paul Veronese. 
 
 It is said that one day he heard a knock at the 
 studio door, and arose to admit the visitor, who 
 desired to know where his picture of 'Uriel' 
 could be found. Allston brought out the glow- 
 ing canvas from a dusty corner of the studio, 
 and, when urged to state his price, declined, say- 
 ing that he had often done so, and found none 
 willing to pay it. "Would ^400 be an adequate 
 sum ? " asked the visitor ; and when the amazed 
 artist said that that was more than he had ever 
 asked, he gladly took the picture at that price. 
 This generous patron was the Marquis of Staf- 
 ford, who was ever afterward a warm friend and 
 protector of Allston. 
 
 Under the inspiration of his artistic surround- 
 ings in London, Allston worked with marvellous 
 
FLAXMAN AND ABERNETHY. 83 
 
 rapidity. The 'Uriel' was finished in six weeks, 
 and he said, "I painted it at a heat, — for the 
 Royal Academy Exhibition." The ' Elijah ' was 
 done in only three weeks. The 'Belshazzar,' 
 the source of most of the master's failure, was 
 sketched out before April, 18 17. During the 
 same year he painted the 'Clytie,' and at the 
 Exhibition of 18 18 he was represented by a 
 Shakespearian scene, * Hermia and Helena.' 
 Another work of this period was the * Falstaff 
 and his Ragged Recruits,' a picture about four 
 feet long and containing a dozen figures, most of 
 which were portraits of actors then on the Eng- 
 lish stage. 
 
 Flaxman once said to Allston, upon being 
 complimented on his designs from Homer and 
 Dante, " I will now show you the sources of many 
 of them " ; and proceeded to lay before him a 
 great variety of sketches from nature, which he 
 had made in the streets and houses of London. 
 Flaxman lived in the next house to that of All- 
 ston, on Fitzroy Square, and was very intimate 
 with his genial neighbor. 
 
 While Abernethy was at the summit of his 
 popularity Allston called on him to be treated 
 
84 
 
 ALLSTON. 
 
 for a pain in his thigh, and was met at the door 
 by a coarse-looking and shaggy-headed person, 
 whom he took for a servant. " Come in, come 
 in, mon," said this uncouth fellow, with a harsh 
 Scotch accent ; to w^hom the amazed artist an- 
 swered, "But Mr. Abernethy may be engaged; 
 perhaps I had better call another time." " Come 
 in, mon, I say," rejoined the person at the door ; 
 and pulling the visitor in, planted himself against 
 the closed door, and added, " Now tell me what 
 is your business with Mr. Abernethy, — I am 
 Mr. Abernethy." Allston said, " I have come to 
 consult you about an affection — " " What the 
 de'il hae I to do with your affections ? " cried the 
 blunt Scot ; and the gentle patient timidly re- 
 joined, " Perhaps, Mr. Abernethy, you are en- 
 gaged at present, and I had better call again." 
 " De'il the bit, mon, de'il the bit, — come in, 
 come in," said the great surgeon ; and led All- 
 ston and the attendant Morse into his office, 
 where he examined and prescribed for the case 
 with marvellous tenderness and skill. 
 
 After returning from Paris, Allston completed 
 his picture of 'Jacob's Dream,' wherein a vast 
 multitude of angels is seen, and the ladder to 
 
PETWORTH, 
 
 85 
 
 heaven appears as "immeasurable flights of 
 steps, with platform above platform, rising and 
 extending into space immeasurable/' Lord 
 Egremont purchased this picture, and told Leslie 
 that the figures therein reminded him more of 
 Raphael than anything else he had seen by any 
 modern artist. He was as much pleased with 
 the artist as with his pictures, and gave him an 
 urgent invitation to partake of the noble hospi- 
 talities of Petworth Castle, whose gates were ever 
 open wide to men of genius. He visited the 
 castle, and perhaps met Turner and Chantrey or 
 some other of the artists who were such frequent 
 guests there. He became an ardent admirer of 
 Turner, whom he characterized as the greatest 
 painter since the days of Claude. 
 
 In 1836 Freeman and Leslie visited Petworth, 
 and found the ^ Jacob's Dream ' in the garrets 
 of the mansion ; while in the Earl's library were 
 two of Allston's daintiest cabinet-pictures. Les- 
 lie did not class the ^ Jacob's Dream ' with the 
 best works of its author, though Tom Taylor says 
 that it was his masterpiece. The Earl said of 
 * The Repose in Egypt,' that it was " transcend- 
 ent in every artistic quality." 
 
86 
 
 ALLSTON. 
 
 In March, 1819, Coleridge wrote to Leslie, 
 inviting him to visit his house, and closing thus : 
 " Are we not always delighted to see you ? Now, 
 too, more than ever, since, in addition to your- 
 self, you are all we have of Allston." During 
 the latter part of his sojourn in England, the 
 artist had frequently visited the poet in the se- 
 cluded asylum at Highgate, near London, where 
 he was endeavoring, under Dr. Oilman's care, 
 to free himself from the opium-habit. Here he 
 used to meet Charles Lamb and other friends, 
 and join in their intellectual conversations. 
 
 When Coleridge's tragedy of " Remorse " was 
 first played, its author occupied a box near the 
 stage, with Allston, Morse, Leslie, King, and 
 Charles Lamb as his guests. In April, 1818, the 
 master dined with Lamb, Haydon, and H. C. 
 Robinson, and the latter said of him: "Allston 
 has a mild manner, a soft voice, and a senti- 
 mental air with him, — not at all Yankeeish ; 
 but his conversation does not indicate the talent 
 displayed in his paintings." 
 
 The Earl of Egremont had introduced himself 
 to Allston, and became one of his most munifi- 
 cent patrons. Before he left England he said 
 
EVENINGS OF STORIES. 
 
 87 
 
 to him, " I hear you are going to America, 
 — I am sorry for it. Well, if you do not meet 
 with the encouragement which you deserve, in 
 your own country, we shall all be very glad to 
 see you back again.'' 
 
 It has been said that when Allston was in 
 London he always ceased to work after he had 
 made a popular sensation with some great pic- 
 ture, and the public heard no more of him for 
 long periods, during which he rested himself by 
 social recreation. Instead of following up the 
 effect of a success, and keeping his name be- 
 fore the people, he gave himself up to long 
 evenings of story-telling, at which he was un- 
 rivalled, and richly entertained his many friends 
 with his delightful anecdotes and original tales. 
 He was not accustomed to retire early, and his 
 rest was eked out by sleeping until late in the 
 morning. These intervals of dolce fa?' 7iiente were 
 not the outgrowth of sluggishness or coldness 
 towards his art, but were necessitated by his 
 physical limitations and the lassitude following 
 extraordinary efforts. Towards evening his 
 spirits usually brightened, and until midnight 
 flowed free and sparkling. 
 
88 
 
 ALLSTON. 
 
 Men of taste and admirers of Allston's style 
 have lamented his return to America, believing 
 that if he had remained abroad, enjoying the 
 stimulus of the sympathy and fellowship of the 
 great British artists and literati, he might have 
 advanced to a lofty position among the Euro- 
 pean disciples of art, and awakened still further 
 the genial interest and patronage of the insular 
 nobility. But Irving was one of those who ad- 
 vised him to return home, arguing that it was 
 better to be the foremost artist in America than 
 one among the many masters in Europe. 
 
 Late in July, 1818, Irving wrote to Leslie: "I 
 shall try hard to see Allston before he sails. . . . 
 I regret exceedingly that he goes to America, 
 now that his prospects are opening so promis- 
 ingly in this country; but perhaps it is all for 
 the best. His 'Jacob's Dream ' was a particular 
 favorite of mine. I have gazed on it again and 
 again, and the more I gazed the more I was 
 delighted with it. I believe if I was a painter, 
 I could at this moment take, a pencil and delin- 
 eate the whole, with the attitude and expression 
 of every figure." 
 
 Irving once wrote : " The road to fame and for- 
 
IRVING' S LAMENT. 
 
 89 
 
 tune was now open to Allston ; he had but to 
 remain in England, and follow up the signal im- 
 pression he had made. Unfortunately, previous 
 to this recent success, he had been disheartened 
 by domestic affliction, and by the uncertainty of 
 his pecuniary prospects, and had made arrange- 
 ments to return to America. I arrived in Lon- 
 don a few days before his departure, full of 
 literary schemes, and delighted with the idea 
 of our pursuing our several arts in fellowship. 
 It was a sad blow to me to have this day-dream 
 again dispelled. I urged him to remain and 
 complete his grand painting of * Belshazzar's 
 Feast,' the study of which gave promise of the 
 highest kind of excellence. Some of the best 
 patrons of the art were equally urgent. He was 
 not to be persuaded, and I saw him depart wdth 
 still deeper and more painful regret than I had 
 parted with him in our youthful days at Rome. 
 I think our separation was a loss to both of us, 
 — to me a grievous one. The companionship 
 of such a man is invaluable. For his own part, 
 had he remained in England for a few years 
 longer, surrounded by everything to encourage 
 and stimulate him, I have no doubt he would 
 
90 
 
 ALLSTON. 
 
 have been at the head of his art. He appeared 
 to me to possess more than any contemporary 
 the spirit of the old masters ; and his merits were 
 becoming widely appreciated." 
 
 Irving had such a high opinion of his friend's 
 critical ability that he read to him the manu- 
 script of " The Sketch-Book/' to draw forth his 
 comments thereon. The author felt a doubt as 
 to whether he had better publish the Legend of 
 Sleepy Hollow, but Allston conferred a lasting 
 favor on American literature by persuading him 
 to do so. 
 
 Says Allston : " Next to my own country, 
 I love England, the land of my ancestors. I 
 should indeed be ungrateful if I did not love a 
 country from which I have never received other 
 than kindness ; in which, even during the late 
 war, I was never made to feel that I was a for- 
 eigner. By the English artists, among whom I 
 number some of my most valued friends, I was 
 uniformly treated with openness and liberality. 
 Out of the art, too, I found many fast and gener- 
 ous friends. 
 
 " Leslie, Irving, and Sir Thomas Lawrence 
 were the last persons I shook hands with on 
 
HOMEWARD BOUND. 
 
 91 
 
 leaving London. Irving and Leslie had accom- 
 panied me to the stage, and Sir Thomas, who was 
 passing by on his morning ride, kindly stopped 
 to offer me his good wishes. It is pleasant to 
 have the last interview with those whom we wish 
 to remember associated with kind feelings." 
 
 The homeward-bound artist crossed the ocean 
 in the ship Gakfi^ and met with much tempestu- 
 ous weather. During the height of one of the 
 worst gales of the season he remained on deck, 
 engaged in argument with the captain as to 
 whether two thirds of the ship's keel was not 
 thrown clear of the sea at one time, and main- 
 taining an unperturbed demeanor amid the ter- 
 rors of the storm. He sketched the Galen as 
 he supposed that she appeared in the heaviest 
 seas. 
 
92 
 
 ALLSTON, 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 The Studio at Bostcn. — Chester Harding. — Academic Honors. 
 — Horatio Greenough. — Washington Irving. -De Veaux.— 
 Morse. 
 
 Hear Allston's own sentences: "A homesick- 
 ness, which (in spite of some of the best and 
 kindest friends, and every encouragement that I 
 could wish as an artist) I could not overcome, 
 brought me back to my own country in 1818. 
 We made Boston Harbor on a clear evening in 
 October. It was an evening to remember! The 
 wind fell and left our ship almost stationary on 
 a long low swell, as smooth as glass, and undu- 
 lating under one of our gorgeous autumnal skies 
 like a prairie of amber. The moon looked dow^n 
 upon us like a living thing, as if to bid us welcome, 
 and the fanciful thought is still in my memory 
 that she broke her image on the water to make 
 partners for a dance of fire-flies, — and they did 
 dance, if I ever saw dancing. Another thought 
 recurs: that I had returned to a mighty empire, — 
 
BOSTON IN 1818. 
 
 93 
 
 that I was in the very waters which the gallant 
 Constiiution had first broken, whose building I 
 saw while at college, and whose 'slaughter-breath- 
 ing brass,' to use a quotation from worthy Cotton 
 Mather's Magnalia, but now ' grew hot and spoke ' 
 her 7iame among the nations." 
 
 At that time Boston was a compact little city, of 
 about 40,000 inhabitants, with a lucrative trade to 
 the East Indies and other remote shores, and en- 
 joying a dignified leisure which was undisturbed 
 by the intense commercial activities of to-day. 
 There were no such wide chasms between the 
 different divisions of society as now^ exist, for 
 there were no princely families on the one side, 
 nor paupers on the other. Many of the aristo- 
 crats had expatriated themselves when the royal 
 armies abandoned the city; and most of those 
 who remained were slowly and peacefully laying 
 the foundations of future social dynasties. 
 
 Allston's studio w^as established in the large 
 barn on John Prince's estate, near the northwest 
 corner of High Street and Pearl Street, and in 
 close proximity to the houses of the Quincys, 
 Perkinses, and Parsonses. His rooms were on 
 Sister Street, which ran out of Federal Street 
 
94 
 
 ALLSTON. 
 
 near Dr. Channing's church, and he got his 
 meals at the celebrated restaurant of Rouillard, 
 the successor of Monsieur Julien, at the corner 
 of Milk and Congress Streets. 
 
 On Chester Harding's return from Europe he 
 settled in Boston, and says, in his " Egotistogra- 
 phy": "I had now become intimately acquainted 
 with Mr. Allston. His habits were peculiar in 
 many respects. He lived alone, dining at six 
 o'clock, and sitting up far into the night. He 
 breakfasted at eleven or twelve. He usually 
 spent three or four evenings, or rather nights, at 
 my house every week ; and I greatly enjoyed his 
 conversation, which was of the most polished 
 and refined order, and always instructive. I 
 sometimes called at his studio. It was an old 
 barn, very large, and as cheerless as any anchorite 
 could desire. He never had it swept, and the 
 accumulation of the dust of many years was an 
 inch deep. You could see a track, leading 
 through it to some remote corner of the room, 
 as plainly as in new-fallen snow. He saw few 
 friends in his room ; lived almost in solitude, 
 with only his own great thoughts to sustain him.'* 
 Early in 1819 Allston wrote to Morse, saying: 
 
THE ROYAL ACADEMY, 
 
 95 
 
 " Something like encouragement seems to ap- 
 pear in our horizon ; and if we have any talents, 
 we owe something to our country when she is 
 disposed to foster them.'' At the same time he 
 received an official communication from the sec- 
 retary of the Royal Academy, stating that he 
 had been elected an associate of that body, at- 
 tended with congratulatory letters from Leslie 
 and Collins. He was justly proud of having 
 obtained this signal honor without canvassing, 
 or begging for votes. A few years later, on the 
 occurrence of a vacancy, he would have been 
 appointed an Academician, but that the laws 
 of the Royal Academy forbade that honor to 
 persons who were not residents of the United 
 Kingdom. 
 
 In November he received another letter from 
 Collins, congratulating him on his election to 
 the Academy, and sending him kind messages 
 from Wordsworth, Southey, Coleridge, and Sir 
 George Beaumont. In his answer, Allston ex- 
 cuses a delay, on the plea of his well-known 
 habits of procrastination, and says : I assure 
 you I have written you at least twenty letters 
 in my head^ whilst I have been smoking my 
 
96 
 
 ALLS TON. 
 
 usual evening cigar." He thus expresses his 
 gratification at the election . to the Academy : 
 " To my countrymen here, who value highly all 
 foreign honors, it seems to have given almost 
 as much pleasure as if it had been bestowed 
 on the country; it must, therefore, be no small 
 aid to my professional interests." He adds 
 that there is no probability of his returning to 
 England, since he had already met with most 
 liberal patronage in Boston, and hoped to found 
 there an English school of art. He believed 
 there was a quicker appreciation of art among 
 the Americans than in any other country. 
 
 About this time AUston was one of the leaders 
 in the movement which resulted in a statue of 
 Washington, by Chantrey, being placed in the 
 Massachusetts State House ; and was frequently 
 in communication with the jovial old sculptor, 
 who had been his friend while in England. 
 
 Allston's position on the vexed question of 
 his day was clearly defined on his return from 
 Europe, when he found that his step father had 
 recently died, having bequeathed him a young 
 negro woman named Diana. Instead of selling 
 her in the Charleston slave-market; for such a 
 
SOUTHERN ALLS TONS, 
 
 97 
 
 sum as would have delighted an impecunious 
 artist, he immediately emancipated her, and gave 
 her the legal free papers. 
 
 Allston had a violent dislike to President 
 Jackson, and once declined to paint a battle in 
 which he commanded, in terms almost of anger. 
 Governor Hamilton of South Carolina induced 
 Governor Everett of Massachusetts to attempt 
 his good offices in softening the obdurate painter, 
 but in vain. 
 
 The Allstons of South Carolina frequently 
 visited New England, and during one of these 
 sojourns the Hon. John A. Allston persuaded 
 Morse, his kinsman's protege^ to go to Charles- 
 ton and open a studio. There the young artist 
 met with great success, both socially and pro- 
 fessionally, and remained five months, painting 
 sixty-two portraits. John A. Allston owned a 
 fine picture gallery, and had Morse portray his 
 lovely daughter for it, draped in white, ordering 
 the addition of " the most superb landscape you 
 are capable of designing." The artist afterwards 
 presented his patron with the great painting 
 of 'The Judgment of Jupiter.' After Morse's 
 marriage he returned to Charleston, where he 
 
98 
 
 ALLSTON, 
 
 acted as the agent of his old master in dispos- 
 ing of certain pictures, and kept up an inter- 
 esting correspondence with him. 
 
 Governor R. F. W. Allston several times asked 
 his famous kinsman to paint him a picture, but 
 the only answer would be, " Robert, I must paint 
 for money," — as if the idea of taking money 
 from a relative was quite out of the reach of 
 possibility. 
 
 In July, 182 1, Allston became acquainted with 
 Thomas Sully, the eminent portrait-painter, who 
 spent several months in Boston, making a highly 
 finished copy of Mr. Wiggin's picture of ^ The 
 Capuchin Chapel,' painted by Granet. The 
 master was also a friend of Gilbert Stuart, then 
 nearly seventy years old, and in 1828 wrote an 
 eloquent and appreciative eulogy upon him, for 
 the Daily Advertiser. 
 
 When Dr. Channing went to Europe, in 1822, 
 he carried a letter of introduction from Allston 
 to Coleridge, and made such an impression upon 
 the latter that he spoke of the great Boston divine 
 as "a philosopher in both the possible renderings 
 of the V7ord, having the love of wisdom and the 
 wisdom of love." This celebrated phrase he 
 
GREENOUGIL 
 
 99 
 
 used in a letter to Allston, telling of his walks 
 and talks with Channing. 
 
 Horatio Greenough entered Harvard Univer- 
 sity in 182 1, and was soon made acquainted with 
 Allston, who became his master and intimate 
 companion. The cravings of the enthusiastic 
 youth for a life of noble achievement in art, 
 sometime coldly treated by practical friends, were 
 revived and stimulated in the presence of the lofty 
 soul and earnest purpose of the great painter, and 
 a marvellous sympathy grew up between the two. 
 Greenough dwelt with Edmund Dana, and met 
 Allston there every Saturday, when he was ac- 
 customed to visit his kinsman. Dana was en- 
 dowed with fine critical taste and a profound 
 knowledge of art and literature ; and the young 
 student gladly hailed the approach of every 
 seventh day, when he could listen to the inspir- 
 ing conversation of such serene and benevolent 
 sages. Greenough's mind was as elevated and 
 as finely tempered as his form was heroic and 
 symmetrical ; and Allston, rejoicing to find so 
 genial and respectful an auditor, impressed on 
 his susceptible spirit a lofty ideal of art, a feel- 
 ing of the dignity of his chosen profession, cour- 
 
lOO 
 
 ALLSrON. 
 
 age to meet its disciplining trials, and faith in 
 the ultimate reward. These frequent meetings 
 between the spiritual and prophet-like artist and 
 the radiant young disciple were heavy with 
 destiny for the latter, who wrote, many years 
 later : " Allston was to me a father in what con- 
 cerned my progress of every kind. He taught 
 me first how to discriminate, how to think, how 
 to feel. Before I knew him, I felt strongly, but 
 blindly ; and if I should never pass mediocrity, 
 I should attribute it to my absence from him, so 
 adapted did he seem to kindle and enlighten me, 
 making me no longer myself, but, as it were, an 
 emanation from his own soul." During his last 
 visit to America the great sculptor said, with emo- 
 tion, that the only thought which cast a shadow 
 over his heart was that Allston was dead. 
 
 Percival's poem on "The Mind,'' delivered 
 before the Connecticut Phi Beta Kappa in 1825, 
 closed with a lament that America should permit 
 so great an artist as Allston to be forced to earn 
 his living in painting small sentimental pictures, 
 while his greater capabilities were undeveloped. 
 
 In 1827 Allston received a favorable introduc- 
 tion to a wider circle of admirers, on displaying 
 
DE VEAUX, 
 
 lOI 
 
 several of his pictures in the exhibition at the 
 Boston Athenaeum. Among these were the 
 Jeremiah, Miriam, Florimel, and Valentine. He 
 was now entering on what many admirers call 
 his philosophical system of painting, to which he 
 devoted the last sixteen years of his life. 
 
 In 1828 William Collins induced Allston to 
 act as godfather by proxy to his second son, 
 who was named William Allston Collins ; and 
 many years later Collins wrote to Dana : " I 
 desire no better thing for him than that he may 
 follow the example of his namesake, both as a 
 painter and as a man." Mr. W. A. Collins is 
 now celebrated as an accomplished author. 
 
 In 1829 Allston was asked to take as a pupil 
 young De Veaux, of South Carolina, but de- 
 clined, with the statement that he was not accus- 
 tomed to receive students. He advised that his 
 young compatriot should be placed with Chester 
 Harding ; but Inman and Sully had the honor of 
 teaching " the gifted, the generous, the lost De 
 Veaux." Two years before his short life closed, 
 the art-student wrote, from Italy : " Sully is our 
 Reynolds, and Allston our wonder, — I would 
 not give him for less than Michael Angelo ! He 
 is as fine as all the old masters together." 
 
I02 
 
 ALLSTON, 
 
 Washington Irving visited Allston in 1830, 
 and found him " in the gray evening of life, ap- 
 parently much retired from the world." He 
 characterized him as " a man whose memory I 
 hold in reverence and affection, as one of the 
 purest, noblest, and most intellectual beings that 
 ever honored me with his friendship." Mr. Dix, 
 the last visitor at Sunnyside, a week before Irv- 
 ing's death, in 1859, chanced to speak of All- 
 ston, and thus describes the effect of that sweetly 
 remembered name : " It set his soul all glowing 
 with tender, affectionate enthusiasm. To hear 
 the great painter so praised by the great writer, 
 with a voice tremulous partly with infirmity but 
 more with emotion, was something to keep as 
 surely as if every word had been engraven with 
 the point of a diamond." 
 
 George W. Flagg was one of Allston's best- 
 beloved pupils, and one of whom he prophesied : 
 
 That boy, if I mistake not, will do great things 
 one of these days. A great thing in his favor 
 is, that his heart is as good as his head." The 
 youth was also a relative of his master, since 
 Allston's mother was his own grandmother. He 
 was born at New Haven, but passed his boyhood 
 
GEORGE W. FLAGG. 
 
 at Charleston, S. C, where he developed his 
 artistic tastes at a very early age, and made a 
 remarkable portrait of Bishop England when he 
 was but fourteen years old. He remained nearly 
 two years under the care of the great master, 
 enjoying his affectionate instructions and lofty 
 conversation, and learning not only the technic 
 of his art but also of its noble treasures and 
 vast possibilities. The teacher and pupil were 
 frequently seen walking together, the former im- 
 pressing high truths on his disciple's mind by 
 doctrine, analogy, and incident The religious 
 tendencies and conscientious aims of art were 
 developed in every way, with the necessity for 
 aspiration and industry ; and the youth was in- 
 structed in the characters of the interesting men 
 and beautiful women of Europe. One of All- 
 ston's sweetest poems was written for his kins- 
 man, designing to show him that the elevated 
 mind could find no satisfaction in mere pleasure, 
 sought for itself alone. He also restrained him 
 from inconsiderate criticism and the thoughtless 
 dogmatism of an unripened mind. 
 
 Flagg designed ' A Boy listening to a Ghost- 
 Story ' and ' A Young Greek ' while under All- 
 
I04 ALLS TON. 
 
 ston's care ; and at length painted ' Jacob and 
 Rachel at the Well/ whose merit was acknowl- 
 edged by the master in the words, " Now you 
 may consider yourself an artist. Afterwards 
 Flagg executed noteworthy pictures in Boston, 
 New Haven, and London ; but was prevented by 
 ill health from gaining the eminence which he 
 might otherwise have attained. 
 
 Flagg was with AUston, when he was painting 
 the ' Spalatro,' and testifies to the rapt attention 
 with which the artist regarded his work. He 
 frequently showed his nervous sympathy for the 
 characters he was portraying, by starting back 
 from the canvas and assuming the attitude of 
 the figure he was designing. This manner of 
 instinctive imitation was a constant habit of the 
 artist's, and illustrated his keen perception of 
 the sentiment under treatment, and his thorough 
 engrossment, physical and mental, in his work. 
 
 Another of AUston's pupils was Jared B. Flagg, 
 George's brother, whose artistic career lasted 
 nearly twenty years, or until 1854, when he took 
 orders in the Episcopal Church. He was a 
 member of the National Academy, and executed 
 several highly praised ideal works, besides many 
 
'ELIJAH IN THE DESERT: 105 
 
 portraits. Nor have his later pastoral duties 
 prevented him from making numerous excellent 
 pictures, and taking an active interest in the Yale 
 College Art Gallery. 
 
 Richard M. Staigg was another young artist 
 who was enriched by Allston's counsel and en- 
 couragement, which he won by his beautiful 
 miniature of Mrs. Amory, of Newport. Staigg 
 was brought up at Newport, where he was ac- 
 quainted with the relatives of Stuart and Mal- 
 bone ; and studied the rich scale of colors on 
 the palette of the former, and the exquisite min- 
 iature, 'The Hours,' of the latter. Allston's 
 instruction was highly beneficial to his young 
 disciple, who became eminent not only as a 
 portrait-painter but also as a designer of vigor- 
 ous and refined ideal pictures. One of his most 
 delicate and memorable miniatures portrays the 
 grand face of Allston ; and two others, represent- 
 ing Webster and Everett, have been exquisitely 
 engraved. 
 
 The ' Elijah in the Desert' is a large picture, 
 perhaps 6X4 feet in size, which Allston painted 
 in London and brought home with him. In this 
 great work the chief feature is a sublime and 
 
io6 
 
 ALLSTON. 
 
 illimitable desert-landscape, covered with rocks 
 and sand, bounded by black mountains, and 
 overhung with lowering clouds. The scene is 
 dark and melancholy, but impressive in its calm- 
 ness and silence. Elijah is a minor figure in the 
 picture, and is hidden away among the grotesque 
 and distorted roots of an enormous banyan-tree, 
 the only tree in the whole wide landscape, and 
 that dead and leafless. Hereunder flows the 
 brook Cherith ; and the ravens fly down with 
 food for the outcast prophet. It has been said 
 that this picture would have been far greater if 
 Elijah and his whimsical tree had been omitted, 
 leaving only the vast and solitary expanse of the 
 desert. 
 
 This composition was painted with colors 
 ground in milk, then varnished with copal, and 
 retouched in oil-colors. It remained at the 
 house of Allston's friend, Isaac P. Davis, until 
 it was purchased (for % 1,500) by an English 
 tourist, the Hon. Mr. Labouchere, M. P., who 
 carried it home. In 1870 Mrs. S. Hooper, of 
 Boston, repurchased the 'Elijah' (for $ 4,000), 
 and gave it to the Boston Museum of Fine 
 Arts. 
 
* Jeremiah: 
 
 107 
 
 The ' Jeremiah ' is a large and splendidly col- 
 ored picture, 8x5 feet in size, and is founded on 
 the thirty-sixth chapter of the Prophecy of Jere- 
 miah. There are but two figures, those of the 
 Prophet and Baruch his scribe. The former is 
 sitting with his head majestically upraised, and 
 lifts his right arm toward heaven, with the two 
 middle fingers of the hand bent down and the 
 others pointing upward, as if arrested suddenly 
 and unconsciously. The head is the noblest 
 and the expression the loftiest that Allston ever 
 executed, nor could we imagine a more worthy 
 conception as issuing from even Angelo's brain. 
 The unsandalled right foot of the Prophet is one 
 of the most noteworthy parts of the picture ; and 
 the temple architecture in the background, and 
 the partly draped stone jar in the foreground, 
 are executed with rare skill, the former in its 
 aerial perspective and the latter in its Flemish 
 minuteness of finish. Baruch's graceful figure 
 is back to the spectator, sitting in the shadow, 
 and bending over his tablets as if enthusiasti- 
 cally recording the Prophet's words. 
 
 The 'Jeremiah' has been likened to Beet- 
 hoven's Fifth Symphony, or to a rich sunset, 
 
io8 
 
 ALLSTOISr. 
 
 in the harmony with which its manifold tints 
 are blended into a delicious unity. Some critics 
 esteem it as the greatest painting by AUston's 
 hand. It was retained for fifty years by Miss 
 Gibbs, the Newport lady for whom it was painted, 
 and in 1866 was exposed for sale in the Red- 
 wood Library. Two years later it was pur- 
 chased by Professor S. F. B. Morse, for $ 7,000, 
 and presented to Yale College. 
 
 In 1830 the master married again, and his 
 second wife was a cousin of the first, being, 
 like her, a granddaughter of William Ellery, the 
 signer of the Declaration of Independence. 
 Her father was Francis Dana, the Chief Justice 
 of Massachusetts, who married Miss Elizabeth 
 Ellery; and one of her brothers was Richard 
 H. Dana, the poet. She was forty-six years old 
 when Allston married her, and survived him 
 until the year 1862. 
 
'THE valentine: 
 
 109 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 A Group of Pictures. — The Valentine, Rosalie, Beatrice, Spala- 
 tro, etc. — The ' Belshazzar's Feast.' 
 
 Mr. Allston painted between forty and fifty 
 pictures in Europe, of which by far the greater 
 number have disappeared. The choicest of his 
 works after returning to America are now pre- 
 served in Boston, some in the Museum of Fine 
 Arts, and others in the houses of some of the 
 elder families. A few of these are hereinafter 
 described. 
 
 'The Valentine' is a simply colored and com- 
 posed picture, in which a lady is seen reading a 
 letter, which she holds with both hands. It has 
 been carefully restored, without impairing the 
 merit of the coloring and its charming natural- 
 ness. It almost breathes, in the warm life which 
 the skilfully mingled hues simulate, and the deli- 
 cate gradations of the shadows. Ware says : " I 
 have never been able to invent the terms that 
 would sufficiently express my admiration of that 
 
no 
 
 ALLSTON. 
 
 picture. . . . The art can go no further, nor as 
 I believe has it ever gone any further." The 
 model for this picture was Mrs. Russell, a sister 
 of the first Mrs. Allston, a lady whom the artist 
 greatly admired in view of her beautiful charac- 
 ter, and whom he represented in several other 
 pictures. 
 
 The 'Rosalie' is a graceful and thoughtful 
 woman, sitting in the calm repose of deep contem- 
 plation, and twirling the golden chain that falls 
 from her neck, with an exquisitely delicate hand. 
 Ware has called this " one of the most graceful 
 conceptions that artist was ever able to copy 
 upon canvas.'' George W. Flagg attests that 
 the head of this noble picture was finished in 
 three hours, a marvellous celerity for such a slow 
 and careful artist. She appears to be listening 
 to music, passionate, yet peaceful, as if in the 
 words of the poet-painter's song of ' Rosalie ' : 
 
 " O, pour upon my soul again 
 
 That sad, unearthly strain, 
 That seems from other worlds to plain ; 
 Thus falling, falling from afar, 
 As if some melancholy star 
 Had mingled with her light her sighs. 
 
 And dropped them from the skies ! 
 
THE 'Beatrice: 
 
 III 
 
 The rapid rise in the price of Allston's pictures 
 after his death is seen in the fact that not long 
 after that sad event % 5,000 was offered for the 
 * Rosalie/ and was refused. 
 
 The ^ Beatrice ' is not unlike the ' Rosalie ' in 
 its calm and contemplative air, though its repose 
 is of a deeper and more permanent character. 
 The face is beautiful, being still and self-pos- 
 sessed ; and is English rather than Italian in its 
 powerful and transfigured sentiment. Her hair 
 and eyes are soft and brown ; her complexion is 
 suffused with tender rosy light ; and a strange 
 charm emanates from the radiant face, though it 
 is devoid of physical beauty. Mrs. Jameson calls 
 this picture " most lovely"; Mr. Jarves sees it as 
 "weak and pale''; and Dr. Holmes finds in it 
 "the simple ease of Raphael." 
 
 * The Flight of Florimel ' is based on an inci- 
 dent in Spenser's " Faerie Queen/' showing a 
 dimly lighted forest, without gloom or glare, 
 through which, in the foreground, Florimel is fly- 
 ing on a white horse. Her golden raiment and 
 fair hair form brilliant lights ; and her face, back- 
 ward turned towards the pursuer, is filled with 
 fright and consternation. This exquisite picture 
 
112 
 
 ALLSTON. 
 
 was painted for the artist's friend, Loammi Bald- 
 win. 
 
 ^The Triumphal Song of Miriam on the De- 
 struction of Pharaoh and his Hosts in the Red 
 Sea' is a three-quarter-length figure, with one 
 hand holding the timbrel and the other thrown 
 upward. The picture is filled with exultant life 
 and uplifting joy, and the dramatic effect is 
 powerful in its inspiration. The ^ Miriam ' was 
 originally bought by David Sears, for % i,ooo, 
 and is now owned by his son, Frederick R. 
 Sears. Holmes called its coloring Titianesque, 
 and preferred it to any of the master's other pic- 
 tures, holding it as a link between his scriptural 
 and ideal compositions. 
 
 ^The Spanish Girl/ one of Allston's most 
 famous works, is notable chiefly for the felici- 
 tous art of the landscape background, a dreamy 
 summer scene in the pastoral hill-country of 
 Spain, full of suggestions to the imagination and 
 the soul. The fair lady is sitting on the bank 
 of a lake, which is as calm as a mill-pond, and 
 the warm-tinted Sierra Morena rises beyond. 
 The motive of the scene was set forth by the 
 artist in a sweet poem, wherein Inez awaits by 
 
'THE EVENING HYMN: 
 
 "3 
 
 the lake the return of her Isidore from the 
 wars. 
 
 ' The Death of King John/ though unfinished, 
 was Allston's masterpiece in the expression of 
 emotion in faces, varying from the utter misery 
 of the conscience-stricken sovereign to the deep 
 compassion of the people about his bedside. 
 The design is true and simple, and the compo- 
 sition is complete. 
 
 * The Evening Hymn ^ is a rich and Claude- 
 like picture, in which a ruined Italian castle, by 
 the water-side, is seen in the warm sunset light. 
 On the moss-grown causeway a maiden is sitting, 
 guitar in hand, with her pure and impassioned 
 face upturned to heaven, as if the hymn was 
 already trembling on her lips. 
 
 ^ The Roman Lady ' is represented as reading 
 a book which she holds before her. The face 
 is hard and inanimate in its gravity and absorp- 
 tion ; but the hands are masterpieces of art, and 
 display the most splendid and natural coloring. 
 
 The ' Amy Robsart ' was painted for John A. 
 Lowell. It has been suggested that this work 
 illustrates the proverbial inequality of genius, 
 since it shows inferiority both in coloring and 
 
114 
 
 ALLSTON. 
 
 in design. On the other hand, Sumner, who 
 saw it while fresh and new, speaks of its beau- 
 tiful golden hair, and that sweet look of feeling 
 which you find in all Allston's pictures, particu- 
 larly of women, — qualejn decet esse sororumP 
 
 ' The Sisters ' is a picture of two young girls, 
 in three-quarter size, Titianesque in color, and 
 with the attitude of one of the figures taken 
 from Titian's portrait of his daughter, as Allston 
 frankly stated in the Catalogue. 
 
 ^ The Tuscan Girl ' is a fair maiden in a forest, 
 wrapped in meditation, and is described in All- 
 ston's poem, beginning, — 
 
 " How pleasant and how sad the turning tide 
 Of human life, where side by side 
 The child and youth begin to glide 
 Along the vale of years ; 
 The pure twin-being for a little space, 
 With lightsome heart, and yet a graver face, 
 Too young for woe, but not for tears ! " 
 
 The 'Lorenzo and Jessica' is one of the 
 master's smallest pictures, and one of his most 
 perfect, in the Giorgionesque manner. Therein 
 two lovers are seen sitting side by side, in the 
 hushed and cloudless twilight, gazing together 
 towards the glowing w^est Through the deep and 
 
LANDSCAPES. 
 
 "5 
 
 now sunken tones of the picture the Italian villa 
 in the background scarcely appears. About the 
 time that this picture was finished the artist was 
 visited by Charles Fraser, his old Carolina friend, 
 and Robert C. Winthrop, to whom he repeated 
 certain verses which he had composed about the 
 subject on which he had been engaged. 
 
 The ' Italian Landscape ' is a broad and brill- 
 iant composition, replete with music and per- 
 fume, and overspread with sweet sunshine and 
 poetic repose. It is a far-expanding plain, with a 
 round-arched bridge crossing a still river, a rugged 
 mountain rising majestically in the distance, and 
 a tall stone-pine in the foreground. The * Amer- 
 ican Scenery' is a smaller landscape, wrapped 
 in the haze of autumn, with a lonely horseman 
 riding through the rural solitudes. Other poetic 
 phases of nature which Allston illustrated were 
 * A Sunrise on the Mediterranean,' ' After Sun- 
 set,' 'Moonlight,' 'A Forest Scene,' and 'A 
 Mountain Landscape.' 
 
 The ' Swiss Landscape ' is a grand and shad- 
 O'.vy scene, where dark forms appear upon a dim 
 and solitary pathway, near a lake whose waters 
 reflect the stiff pines on the banks and the piles 
 
ii6 
 
 ALLSTON. 
 
 of rugged rocks above. Over all is spread the 
 clear and crystalline atmosphere of the Alps, 
 with stately mountain-forms looming into the 
 sky. 
 
 The picture of ' Spalatro's Vision of the Bloody 
 Hand ' is founded on a scene in Mrs. Radcliffe's 
 novel of " The Italian," when the monk Schedoni 
 and the assassin Spalatro are advancing through 
 a dark corridor to murder Elena, and Spalatro is 
 suddenly horrified by the apparition of a beckon- 
 ing bloody hand. He is seen half crouching, as 
 if frozen with intense supernatural fear, and his 
 eyes are dilated with horror ; while the undis- 
 mayed priest stands erect and haughty, holding 
 the lamp above his head, and looking forward 
 into the gloom with clear and steady eye. The 
 picture was but 2^X12^ feet in size, yet it may 
 well be doubted if any other painting whatever of 
 equal smallness was capable of producing such 
 powerful emotions. Allston justly regarded this 
 as one of his best works ; and nowhere else did 
 he show forth so clearly his intense realization of 
 the power of conscience, a feeling which always 
 swayed him with marvellous effect. The picture 
 was burned in 1873, ^ mansion on the Hudson. 
 
ENGRAVED DESIGNS. 
 
 117 
 
 The ^ Spalatro ' was painted for Mr. Ball of 
 South Carolina, who chose this from a number 
 of subjects proposed by the artist. Most of the 
 years 1830 and 183 1 were spent on this picture, 
 which afterwards for a time graced the Scollay 
 mansion, in Boston. The friends of the master 
 proposed to have it exhibited, for his benefit, 
 since the amount paid for it had been very inad- 
 equate to the labor. But he refused to consent 
 to such an exhibition, remarking also : " It was 
 said of Paul Veronese that when he painted for 
 convents he was sometimes paid half in money 
 and half in masses. In like manner I am some- 
 times content to be paid half in money and part 
 in praises.'^ 
 
 One of the most attractive and accessible 
 souvenirs of Allston is the series of certain of 
 his designs, published in Boston soon after his 
 death. This collection includes twenty plates, 
 the largest of which is 20 X 30 inches, from 
 outlines in umber and hasty sketches in chalk. 
 They are full of idealism and refinement, purity 
 and loftiness of conception ; and show a pro- 
 found knowledge of the human form, and the 
 beauty and grace of its best estate. The en- 
 
ii8 
 
 ALLS TON, 
 
 gravings were skilfully made by the Cheney 
 brothers, and the broad chalk lines were im- 
 itated by blending delicate parallel lines. There 
 are six plates from ' Michael Setting the Heav- 
 enly Watch,' and four (of angels) from * Jacob's 
 Dream.' Others represent ^ Uriel in the Sun,' 
 'A Sibyl,' ' Heliodorus,' 'Prometheus,' 'The 
 Prodigal Son,' ' Dido and ^neas,' and a ship 
 in a gale at sea. The latter was probably 
 taken from the sketch of which Mrs. Jameson 
 said, " It was a sea-piece, — a thunder-storm 
 retiring, and a frigate bending to the gale ; 
 it was merely a sketch in white chalk upon a 
 red ground, and about five feet high, as nearly as 
 I can recollect, — not even the dead coloring was 
 laid on ; I never saw such an effect produced by 
 such a vehicle, and had not mine own eyes seen 
 it, I could not have conceived or believed it pos- 
 sible. There was absolute motion in the clouds 
 and waves, — all the poetry, all the tumult of the 
 tempest were there ! — and, I repeat, it was a 
 sketch in white chalk, — not even a shadow!" 
 Another design in the book was the ' Fairies on 
 the Seashore,' a graceful fancy, with a column 
 of fairies rising from the sea-washed strand into 
 
' BELSHAZZAR'S FEASTJ II9 
 
 the bright sky. Mr. W. H. Prescott sent a copy 
 of this work to Lord Morpeth, praising it highly, 
 and quoting AUston's poetry freely. 
 
 The ^ Belshazzar's Feast ' took form in the 
 artist's mind as early as April, 18 17, as appears 
 in his letter of that date to Irving : " One of 
 these subjects (and the most important) is the 
 large picture, — the prophet Daniel interpreting 
 the handwriting on the wall before Belshazzar. 
 I have made a highly finished sketch of it. I 
 think the composition the best I have ever made. 
 It contains a multitude of figures, and (if I may 
 be allowed to say so) they are without confusion. 
 Don't you think it a fine subject ? I know not 
 any that so happily unites the magnificent and 
 the awful. A mighty sovereign, surrounded by 
 his whole court, intoxicated with his own state, 
 in the midst of his revelry palsied in a moment, 
 under the spell of a preternatural hand suddenly 
 tracing his doom on the wall before him ; his 
 powerless limbs, like a wounded spider's, shrunk 
 up to his body, while his heart, compressed to a 
 point, is only kept from vanishing by the terrific 
 suspense that animates it during the interpreta- 
 tion of his mysterious sentence. His less guilty 
 
I20 
 
 ALLSTON. 
 
 but scarcely less agitated queen, the panic-struck 
 courtiers and concubines, the splendid and de- 
 serted banquet-table, the half-arrogant, half-as- 
 tounded magicians, the holy vessels of the temple 
 (shining as it were in triumph through the 
 gloom), and the calm, solemn contrast of the 
 prophet, standing, like an animated pillar, in 
 the midst, breathing forth the oracular destruc- 
 tion of the empire ! " 
 
 The sketch alluded to is now in the possession 
 of Mr. Richard H. Dana, who also has the sketch 
 of ' Christ Healing the Sick,' a powerful one of the 
 head of Jeremiah, a portrait of Coleridge, a large 
 landscape, and several other unfinished works of 
 his famous kinsman. 
 
 The great painting of * Belshazzar's Feast ' 
 was begun in England, before 1818, on a canvas 
 16 X 12 feet in size. When the artist returned 
 to America, he said of it : " All the laborious 
 part is over, but there still remains about six or 
 eight months' more work to do to it." He little 
 dreamed that the twenty-five remaining years of 
 his life would not avail to finish it, and that 
 sixty years later it would be hung in the Boston 
 Museum of Fine Arts, still incomplete, though 
 
' BELSHAZZAR'S FEAST.* 
 
 121 
 
 glorious. This great composition was valued at 
 $ 10,000, held by several wealthy patrons in ten 
 shares, of which a certain percentage was paid in 
 advance. It must have been some unpleasant 
 experiences in this matter which led him to ad- 
 vise Sully, " O, do not undertake anything that 
 cannot be accomplished by your own means." 
 
 Immediately on his return from England All- 
 ston unrolled the almost finished picture, and 
 submitted it to the honest severity of Stuart's 
 criticism. That great painter pointed out cer- 
 tain radical errors in the work, which its author 
 acknowledged, and had perhaps foreseen ; and 
 Allston thereupon began the immense task of 
 reconstructing the entire design. He was obliged 
 to devote many weeks to changing the perspec- 
 tive, during which he made more than twenty 
 thousand chalk-lines in circles and arcs, to bring 
 the amended figures into correct drawing. The 
 operations of laying in the ground-colors and 
 finishing them with the glazing colors followed, 
 involving more labor than the painting of a new 
 picture on a fresh canvas would have cost, be- 
 sides the terrible mental strain and distress which 
 necessarily ensued. Stuart told Dr. Channing, 
 
122 
 
 ALLSTON. 
 
 at the beginning, that it would never be finished, 
 because of the rapid growth of the artist's mind, 
 so that the work of this month or year was felt 
 to be imperfect the next, under the better knowl- 
 edge of more time, and must be done over again, 
 or greatly altered, and, therefore, could never 
 come to an end." But this opinion seems un- 
 warranted, and had the great master's life been 
 spared a little longer he would doubtless have 
 linked the name of the Assyrian king with the 
 noblest achievement of American art. Charles 
 Sumner thought that if Allston's last illness had 
 been a lingering one, he would have ordered the 
 destruction of the unfinished picture. 
 
 Martin's famous picture of ' Belshazzar's Feast ' 
 was exhibited in London in 182 1, and Allston 
 wrote to its author that he "would not mind a 
 w^alk of ten miles, over a quickset hedge, before 
 breakfast, to see it." Martin said: "This is 
 something, from a bad walker and a worse riser." 
 The subject had been suggested to him by All- 
 ston, who held a conception of its proper compo- 
 sition totally different from his own, and the two 
 artists had a prolonged discussion on the ques- 
 tion. Allston suggested that Martin's conception 
 
'BELSHAZZAR'S FEAST: 1 23 
 
 was well set forth in a prize poem at Cambridge, 
 written byT. S. Hughes, which the English paint- 
 er afterwards read, and then determined to paint 
 the picture. Leslie and other friends endeavored 
 to dissuade him from his proposed treatment of 
 the subject, but in vain. It is said that he bor- 
 rowed Allston's idea of making the Hght in the 
 picture proceed from the miraculous inscription, 
 and that Allston abandoned his own version upon 
 hearing of this plagiarism. 
 
 In 1823 Allston showed to Chester Harding 
 and Jonathan Mason the great picture in his 
 studio. It was all finished then, except the sin- 
 gle figure of Daniel, and Allston told his visitors 
 to see Leslie when they reached England, and 
 describe the work to him, but to allow no one 
 else to hear of it. 
 
 When Harding went to Washington, in the win- 
 ter of 1828, he gave Allston the use of his spacious 
 studio, wherein to finish the ' Belshazzar's P'east ' : 
 " He painted all winter, instead, on a landscape ; 
 and when I came home, I found he had wiped 
 out his winter's work, saying it was not worthy of 
 him. He smoked incessantly, became nervous, 
 and was haunted by fears that his great picture 
 
124 
 
 ALLSTON. 
 
 would not come up to the standard of his high 
 reputation. One day he went to his friend Lo- 
 ammi Baldwin, and said, *I have to-day blotted 
 out my four years' work on my ^ Handwriting on 
 the Wall.' " 
 
 The delay in completing this immense compo- 
 sition ' was a circumstance which sorely troubled 
 the artist for years, and called forth many annoy- 
 ing inquiries from the public, if not from the sub- 
 scribers to the picture. But while thus vexed 
 by worldly cares and responsibilities, he was un- 
 able to consecrate his time to the great work, 
 and therefore it remained unfinished. He wrote : 
 " Indeed, I have already bestowed upon it as much 
 mental and manual labor as, under another state 
 of mind, would have completed several such pic- 
 tures. But to go into the subject of all the obsta- 
 cles and the hindrances upon my spirit would 
 hardly be consistent with delicacy and self- 
 respect." The public had formed exaggerated 
 ideas of the new picture, in view of the artist's 
 well-known genius and prolonged seclusion, and 
 Allston was alarmed by the general prediction that 
 the ' Belshazzar's Feast' was destined to be one 
 of the most brilliant triumphs of American art. 
 
'BELSHAZZAR'S FEAST? 125 
 
 Some of his friends had stood as models and 
 others had heard him describe his conception 
 of the proper treatment of the theme ; and from 
 these glowing accounts had been scattered abroad, 
 and the public was in an expectant attitude. 
 The dreary consciousness of pecuniary embar- 
 rassments, the lack of proper models and other 
 properties, and the delicate health of the artist 
 combined to persuade him, from time to time, 
 that he had undertaken a task too great for 
 his means and strength, and caused him to put 
 it aside in discouragement and dissatisfaction. 
 Thus, frequently abandoned and as often re- 
 newed, the work went on slowly for a quarter of 
 a century, and was finally left unfinished, a mere 
 fragment, yet the delight of later generations. 
 He was at work on this picture less than seven 
 hours before he died. 
 
 The amount of labor freely lavished on the ^ Bel- 
 shazzar's Feast ' was enormous, and for years the 
 slight and feeble figure of the artist moved up the 
 ladders and along the stagings before the great can- 
 vas, laden with the house-painter's brushes which 
 put on the priming coats, and then going through 
 the prolonged toils of finishing the work in its 
 
126 
 
 ALLS TON. 
 
 details. Most of this should have been done by 
 pupils, but of such there were none, and the task 
 was devolved all too heavily, ifi summer's heat 
 and winter's frost, on one weary pair of hands. 
 The architecture and objects of still-life in the 
 picture are worked up with infinite labor, and 
 wasted many golden days. The unnatural and 
 elongated human figures which still remain un- 
 changed and unfinished show the direction of 
 the artist's labors, and their exceeding complexity 
 and magnitude. 
 
 Perhaps he was led into the pursuit of concep- 
 tions alien to his nature by the overmastering 
 power with which the scene of the fifth chapter 
 of Daniel seized and excited him, in its artistic 
 potentialities. It may be, also, that he yielded 
 to the mania of British artists, in his time, for 
 painting huge canvases in the " grand style," as 
 West, Barry, and others had done. But the vast 
 works of Tintoretto were as far removed from 
 his manifestation of genius as the achievements 
 of the skilful stone-carver are from those of the 
 lapidary, — and for this great and stately, but 
 incomplete and unsatisfactory, ruin of art and 
 imagination, America has had to pay too dearly. 
 
'BELSHAZZAR'S FEASTJ 
 
 127 
 
 in the loss of many a delicate and highly polished 
 jewel of painting which might otherwise have 
 been hers. 
 
 In this great composition Allston attempted to 
 accomplish something to which his genius w^as 
 unsuited, though it was fully equal to it. Imagi- 
 nation, mental force, religious fervor, — all these 
 he had in sufBcient degree, but his preference 
 was for another kind of subject, and his monastic 
 spirit chose to pour itself more richly into simpler 
 subjects. In life he disliked crowds and any 
 manner of bustling confusion, and so also in art 
 he chose quiet scenes, of simple elements, single 
 figures, or solitary landscapes, and into these he 
 put himself with abundant faith and sympathy. 
 How different was the conception of his vast 
 illumination of the Assyrian drama ! 
 
 The scene represented is that sublime event 
 which is described in the fifth chapter of Daniel, 
 when " Belshazzar the king made a great feast to 
 a thousand of his lords, and drank wine before 
 the thousand''; and while he and his princes 
 and concubines are drinking from the golden 
 vessels plundered from the temple of Jehovah 
 at Jerusalem, a hand appears, writing on the 
 
128 
 
 ALLSTON. 
 
 wall of the palace. The terrified king and his 
 soothsayers cannot read the inscription, and 
 Daniel, in whom is the spirit of the holy gods," 
 is summoned, and interprets it as a prediction 
 of the speedy fall of the kingdom. The scene 
 shows the great palace-hall, with the enthroned 
 king, and the queen and her attendants, the 
 foreground being occupied by Daniel and the 
 astrologers, the middle distance by the feasters 
 around their table, and the remote background 
 by the vast interior of a temple, with the idol 
 thereof under a blazing circle of lights, and peo- 
 ple hurrying up the broad steps in terror. 
 
 The king's face is devoid of obvious and cari- 
 catured terror, but his whole form seems to be 
 cramped and frozen by unspeakable awe, — at 
 least, so the artist strove to represent it. The 
 form of Daniel is good, but the face is not en- 
 dowed with striking power, — nor does it repre- 
 sent Daniel Webster, as the gossips of those days 
 said that it would. The minor groups show some 
 faces convulsed with terror and others absolutely 
 unmoved and apparently without fear, concern- 
 ing which it is easier to believe that the artist's 
 design is not yet fully understood than that he 
 
' BELSHAZZAR'S FEAST: 
 
 129 
 
 has laboriously portrayed an absurdity, or avoided 
 a theatrical vulgarity by introducing an abnormal 
 apathy. The grandest face in the picture is that 
 of the queen, full of regal beauty and pride, 
 scornful and contemptuous, towering in heroic 
 self-dependence beside the sinking king, yet 
 holding her attendant's hand for support. Her 
 costume is magnificent, and was perfectly and 
 delicately finished. 
 
 The architecture of the palace-hall is marked 
 by rows of small columns, which Ware calls a 
 fatal blemish on the picture, as producing an 
 effect of littleness and meanness quite inadmis- 
 sible in Assyrian buildings, and foreign to gran- 
 deur and sublimity. The dimly seen and tower- 
 ing pillars of the idol's temple, with its countless 
 stairs, and the mysterious god, wrapped in a won- 
 derful atmosphere of distance, are set in the 
 strongest contrast, and exhibit a triumphant 
 excellence. 
 
 The grand and crowning excellence of the 
 picture is in its wealth of gorgeous Venetian 
 coloring, pure and harmonious, and in all parts 
 resplendent. The most notable points, in this 
 regard, are the figure of the queen, Daniel's 
 
I30 
 
 ALLS TON, 
 
 head, the malignant astrologer who looks out of 
 the picture, and the group of Jews in the centre. 
 The latter, though in the shadow, is finished with 
 the most exquisite delicacy and perfection, and 
 appears almost self-luminous. The harmony of 
 the entire composition seems the product of a 
 single day of inspired labor, when the great 
 thought at once took faultless form, rather than 
 the toilsome and oft-abandoned drudgery of 
 twenty-five years. 
 
 An eminent and competent critic has said that 
 if this picture had been finished " it would have 
 gone near to eclipse all that had gone before it,'' 
 claiming for it not only sublimity of conception 
 and richness of coloring, but also a rare minute- 
 ness of finish throughout the work, "which, 
 though so large, completed, would have had at 
 once all the truth and delicacy of a cabinet gem, 
 and the breadth and grandeur which belong to 
 colossal subjects ; which is just the truth of Na- 
 ture, whose works, though ever so large, are 
 never finished with any the less minuteness and 
 perfection." 
 
CAMBRIDGEPOR T. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 The Studio at Cambridgeport. — Lowell's Pen-Sketch. — Mrs. 
 Jameson. — The Exhibition. — Eminent Friends. — The Death 
 of Allston. 
 
 Early in 1831 Allston established himself in 
 a new painting-room, which he had built at Cam- 
 bridgeport, in which village he also made his 
 home. His former studio in Boston was con- 
 verted into a livery stable, and after that event 
 he had painted in a small chamber. The ^Bel- 
 shazzar's Feast' had been rolled up and put 
 away in a packing-case for three years, for the 
 artist had constant need of money, and must 
 needs paint small pictures to earn it. But he 
 said, at this time, that if he ever became free 
 from his debts and the pressing demands of 
 daily existence, he should devote the remainder 
 of his life to large paintings. In a letter to 
 McMurtrie he WTOte : " I have been married 
 about a year, and this village is now my home. 
 It is but two miles from Boston, where I can be 
 
132 
 
 ALLSTON. 
 
 at any time, by means of an hourly stage, in 
 twenty minutes. I am in better health, and cer- 
 tainly in better spirits, than I have been these 
 ten years.'' 
 
 He chose to settle in Cambridgeport on ac- 
 count of its close vicinity both to Boston and 
 to Harvard College, within easy walk of his 
 friends at either place. He needed a large 
 quantity of land for the new house and studio, 
 and could get it in that village at slight expense. 
 As to the unattractiveness of Cambridgeport as 
 a place of residence he cared but little, since he 
 was not affected by outside surroundings. In 
 all Cambridge there were but 6,000 inhabitants 
 at this time. The greater part of what is now 
 Cambridgeport was then (in the native dialect) 
 a huckleberry pas/ur. Woods were not wanting 
 on its outskirts, of pine and oak and maple, and 
 the rarer tupelo with downward limbs. Allston's 
 house was at the corner of Magazine and Au- 
 burn Streets ; and the studio was hard by, in the 
 rear of the Baptist Church of the village, hav- 
 ing but one door, and that on the side away 
 from the street, opening on a path which led 
 across the garden to the artist's house. There 
 
RELIGION. 
 
 133 
 
 were several small trees and bits of shrubbery 
 between the two buildings, and the studio door 
 was enarched with climbing vines. The painting- 
 room had but a single window, which opened 
 toward the garden, and was very long and 
 high. The children of the vicinity had many 
 a ghostly theory about this lone studio of New 
 England. Within, the room was surrounded by 
 cabinets, whose doors bore many a rude sketch 
 and inscription. 
 
 Mrs. AUston's means were not small, and 
 hence the dreamy artist was free from the deso- 
 lating apprehensions of want and poverty. 
 
 The Shepard Congregational Society was 
 formed in 1829, when the old First Parish in 
 Cambridge became Unitarian. In 1830-31 the 
 new society built a meeting-house, partly from 
 plans furnished by Allston, who used to lead out 
 his friends and visitors at evening to a point 
 about a third of a mile southeast of the building, 
 and bid them to admire it, repeating the lines : — 
 
 " If thou wouldst view fair Melrose aright, 
 Go visit it by the pale moonlight." 
 
 After leaving Boston, Allston usually attended 
 this church, with which his wife and her family 
 
134 
 
 ALLSTON. 
 
 were closely connected, finding there as strong a 
 defence of Trinitarianism as in his own Episcopal 
 Church. On saints' days and other high eccle- 
 siastical festivals he used to attend service at St. 
 Paul's, in Boston. He was fond of reading the 
 Bible and the works of the old Anglican divines, 
 and once wrote a long and able essay on Chris- 
 tianity as supplying an inherent want of human 
 nature. 
 
 Let us read James Russell Lowell's exquisite 
 pen-sketch of our Allston : " So refined was his 
 whole appearance, so fastidiously neat his ap- 
 parel, — but with a neatness that seemed less 
 the result of care and plan than a something as 
 proper to the man as whiteness to the lily, — that 
 you would have at once classed him with those 
 individuals, rarer than great captains and almost 
 as rare as great poets, whom Nature sends into 
 the world to fill the arduous ofiice of Gentleman. 
 . . . A nimbus of hair, fine as an infant's, and early 
 white, showing refinement of organization and 
 the predominance of the spiritual over the physi- 
 cal, undulated and floated around a face that 
 seemed like pale flame, and over which the flit- 
 ting shades of expression chased each other, 
 
LOWELVS DESCRIPTION. 135 
 
 fugitive and gleaming as waves upon a field of 
 rye. It was a countenance that, without any 
 beauty of feature, was very beautiful. I have 
 said that it looked like pale flame, and can find 
 no other words for the impression it gave. Here 
 was a man all soul, whose body seemed a lump 
 of finest clay, whose service was to feed with 
 magic oils, rare and fragrant, that wavering fire 
 which hovered over it. You, who are an adept 
 in such matters, would have detected in the eyes 
 that artist-look which seems to see pictures ever 
 in the air, and which, if it fall on you, makes you 
 feel as if all the world were a gallery, and you 
 yourself the rather indifferent Portrait of a Gen- 
 tleman hung therein. 
 
 "Allston carried thither [to Italy] a nature 
 open on the southern side, and brought it back 
 so steeped in rich Italian sunshine that the 
 east winds (whether physical or intellectual) of 
 Eoston and the dusts of Cambridgeport assailed 
 it in vain. To that bare wooden studio one might 
 go to breathe Venetian air, and, better yet, the 
 very spirit wherein the elder brothers of Art 
 labored, etherealized by metaphysical speculation 
 and sublimed by religious fervor. The beautiful 
 
136 
 
 ALLSTON. 
 
 old man ! Here was genius with no volcanic ex- 
 plosions (the mechanical result of vulgar gunpow- 
 der often), but lovely as a Lapland night ; here 
 was fame, not sought after nor worn in any cheap 
 French fashion as a ribbon at the button-hole, 
 but so gentle, so retiring, that it seemed no more 
 than an armored and emboldened modesty ; here 
 was ambition, undebased by rivalry and incapa- 
 ble of the sidelong look ; and all these massed 
 and harmonized together into a purity and depth 
 of character, into a ioiie^ which made the daily 
 life of the man the greatest masterpiece of the 
 artist.'' 
 
 Allston's life at Cambridgeport was one of 
 great seclusion, as became a scholar, an artist, 
 and an invalid. He had a small but choice 
 circle of friends, including his kindred and a few 
 intellectual companions, and frequently welcomed 
 artists and travellers to his studio. But the hos- 
 pitalities of the great families of Boston and 
 Cambridge, though freely offered to him, were 
 generally declined, since he preferred to devote 
 his life to nobler pursuits than those of mere 
 social pleasure. His high religious concentra- 
 tion and reverent consecration to the true and 
 
MRS. JAMESON. 
 
 137 
 
 the beautiful attracted to him the noblest minds 
 of New England, as they had previously drawn 
 the gentle Malbone, the philosophic Coleridge, 
 and the cultured Irving. He won the admiration 
 and homage of the choicest men and women of 
 his age and race ; and passed through life with 
 an earnest love for his fellows and a fearless 
 faith in God. 
 
 Mrs. Jameson visited Allston in Cambridge- 
 port, and said that the New Englanders "tri- 
 umphed in the astonishment and admiration of a 
 stranger who started to find Venetian sentiment, 
 grandeur, and color in the works of a Boston 
 painter, buried out of sight, almost out of mind, 
 for five-and-twenty years, — a whole generation of 
 European amateurs. . . . He was an admirable 
 narrator, his good stories being often invented for 
 the occasion. The vivacity of his conceptions, and 
 the glowing language in which he could clothe 
 them, rendered his conversation inexpressibly 
 delightful and exciting. I remember, after an 
 evening spent with him, returning home very, 
 very late (I think it was near three in the morn- 
 ing), with the feelings of one who had been mag- 
 netized." Such was still his custom, to spend a 
 
133 
 
 ALLSTON. 
 
 great part of the night in conversation, and then 
 to rise very late. Miss Clarke once informed him 
 that she was engaged in painting a sunrise scene, 
 and rose early in order to see the sun when it 
 passed above the horizon. "How does it look ?" 
 asked he, in perfect good faith. 
 
 In 1835 Allston's time was so thoroughly en- 
 gaged that he was obliged to decline several 
 commissions, and wrote to Hayward stating that 
 he had engagements on hand which would occupy 
 him for over two years in advance. The wealthy - 
 citizens of Boston were unsparing in their liber- 
 ality towards him, whom they admired as much 
 as a man as they respected as an artist. 
 
 Soon afterwards the master wrote : " I had a 
 delightful visit from Morse. Its only fault was 
 being too short. The same from my old friend 
 Fraser." Morse, the President of the National 
 Academy, on returning from this journey, ex- 
 claimed : I go to Allston as a comet goes to 
 the sun, not to add to his material, but to imbibe 
 light from him." Morse found his old master 
 delightfully situated at Cambridge, engrossed 
 by congenial studies and assiduous labors, and 
 prophesied that the ' Michael setting the Guard 
 
NO BATTLE-SCENES. 
 
 139 
 
 of the Heavenly Host at the Gates of Paradise,' 
 and other pictures then under way, would rank 
 him by the side of Raphael. In 1834 Dunlap — 
 shall we not call him the American Vasari ? — 
 placed Allston at the head of living artists. 
 
 When the Government was arranging the deco- 
 ration of the Rotunda in the Capitol, Allston was 
 commissioned to paint the great pictures for the 
 panels. He, however, declined this flattering 
 appointment, and urged the fitness of Morse, his 
 old pupil, then President of the National Acad- 
 emy of Design. But John Quincy Adams intro- 
 duced a resolution in Congress in favor of foreign 
 artists, alleging that there were no American 
 painters competent to the work ; and Fenimore 
 Cooper answered him with a severe and masterly 
 paper in the New York Evening Post. This reply 
 was attributed to Morse, whose name was there- 
 fore rejected by the committee; and Allston 
 hastened to offer his sympathy and consolation. 
 When the master was consulted, some years be- 
 fore, as to his willingness to paint pictures for 
 the Rotunda, he had replied: "I will undertake 
 one only, and I choose my own subject. No bat- 
 tle-piece." He often avowed his disinclination 
 
140 
 
 ALLSTON, 
 
 to paint battle scenes, — Charles Sumner has 
 borne witness to it, and who then can doubt? 
 
 Allston united with Cooper and Everett in 
 securing for Greenough the Government commis- 
 sion for the statue of Washington, which resulted 
 in the noble work now in the Capitol Park at 
 Washington. In later years he joined Sumner in 
 aiding Greenough and Crawford ; and on the very- 
 evening of his death he talked enthusiastically 
 of Crawford and his works. He was also very 
 friendly to G. P. A. Healy, who gave the master 
 one of his skilful copies after Titian. 
 
 In 1838 Allston frequently visited Harding's, 
 where he met N. P. Willis, then a handsome and 
 poetic young man, with a free and sparkling pen. 
 When these two skilful story-tellers met, the 
 winged hours flew rapidly by, and brought the 
 midnight full soon. About this same time Words- 
 worth inquired earnestly of Charles Sumner about 
 the welfare of Allston, whom he "regarded as 
 the first artist of the age, and was attached to 
 by twofold relations, — first, as his own friend, 
 and then as the affectionate friend of Coleridge." 
 Ticknor wrote home to Dana, There is not a 
 man in Europe who can paint a picture like All- 
 
MISS CLARKE. 
 
 ston/' Giulian C. Verplanck characterized the 
 artist as A?'te clarus, Uteris orfzaius, moribus pul- 
 c/irior. 
 
 Allston's chief pupil while at Cambridge was 
 Miss Sarah Clarke, the sister of James Freeman 
 Clarke, and now a resident of Rome. She was 
 an intimate friend of Margaret Fuller, who once 
 said of her : " Her neighborhood casts the mild- 
 ness and purity too of the moonbeam on the else 
 party-colored scene." 
 
 To a young man who asked his advice about 
 becoming an artist, he said : " It is a calling full 
 of delays and disappointments, and I can never 
 recommend any one to pursue it. If he must be 
 a painter, let him come prepared to bear up a 
 mighty burden.'* He advised a young artist 
 thus : " Do not be anxious, but put faith in your 
 fingers. When I paint, I often do not look at 
 my palette ; I take off my colors by a secret 
 sympathy between my hand and the pigments." 
 Another tyro in art submitted a landscape for 
 the master's criticism, and he remarked, "Your 
 trees do not look as if the birds could fly through 
 them." When some one asked him if a certain 
 picture of his own was not his favorite, he re- 
 joined, "I love all my children." 
 
142 
 
 ALLS TON. 
 
 In 1839 an exhibition of forty-two of Allston's 
 pictures was held in Harding's Gallery, in Bos- 
 ton ; and although his larger works were not 
 included, yet the beauty and exquisite finish of 
 those displayed created a profound impression 
 on all appreciative spectators. The originality 
 and versatility of these works attested the wide 
 range , of his conceptions, as w^ell as the indi- 
 viduality of his genius ; and American art for the 
 first time could display, in one group and from 
 one master-hand, the choicest excellences of 
 painting and design, thoroughly harmonious in 
 their perfect finish, noble conceptions, and per- 
 manent power. The artist himself was enrap- 
 tured to see once more the works of twoscore 
 years, many of which had been out of his sight 
 ever since they had left the studio. 
 
 Tuckerman has described this exhibition as 
 follows : " We turned from the impressive figure 
 of the ' Reviving Dead,' slowly renewing vitality 
 at the touch of the prophet's bones, to the pen- 
 sive beauty of ' Beatrice,' ineffably lovely and 
 sad j the countenance of ' Rosalie ' seemed kin- 
 dled hke that of the maiden described by Words- 
 worth, as if music * born of murmuring sound had 
 
MARGARET FULLER, 
 
 143 
 
 passed into her face ' ; aerial in her movement, 
 and embodied grace in her attitude and drapery, 
 ' Miriam ' sounded the timbrel ; the very foot of 
 the scribe appeared to hsten to Jeremiah, — stern, 
 venerable, and prophetic ; keenly glittered the 
 Alpine summits, and sweetly fell the moon- 
 beams, and darkly rose the forests in the land- 
 scapes, as if glimpses of real nature, instead of 
 their reflex, made alive the canvas ; full of char- 
 acter and dignity were the portraits ; magnificent 
 old Jews' heads, and exquisite brows of maidens, 
 and imposing forms of prophets, and marvellous 
 light and shade, deep, lucent, mellow hues, — all 
 flitted before the senses of the visitor, while each 
 picture formed an inexhaustible object of con- 
 templation, and became a permanently beautiful 
 and impressive reminiscence." 
 
 Margaret Fuller wrote a long article for " The 
 Dial,'' criticising the pictures in the Allston Ex- 
 hibition, and reflecting severely on the historical 
 compositions. The Dead Man was an offensive 
 subject; the Massacre of the Innocents had no 
 force j Jeremiah was a robust and angry Jew ; 
 Miriam was shallow-eyed and inadequate ; and 
 the Witch of Endor was attended by a stage- 
 
144 
 
 ALLSTON, 
 
 ghost and a degraded king. Therefore, as Miss 
 Fuller reasoned, Allston was not adapted to his- 
 toric works, but to the exposition of Beauty, in 
 which he showed rare subjective excellence, bland 
 delicacy, perfect equipoise, and unconscious self- 
 possession, with great skill in drapery and an 
 exquisite sensibility to color. In " The Dial " 
 for 1840 there was a long poem, contrasting the 
 Italian landscapes of Caspar Poussin, Domeni- 
 chino, and Allston. 
 
 Mr. Spear, the historical painter, a friend of 
 Allston's, states that about 1840 Allston told him 
 that Correggio was the master on whose works 
 he had modelled his style. He extolled the 
 " mottled " manner, and explained his own cus- 
 tom of painting with blue, red, and yellow mingled, 
 taking the color which he wished to be predomi- 
 nant as the last upon the brush, and carefully 
 stippling over the work. He repeatedly advised 
 Spear to " paint in the family of the ishes,^^ that 
 is, to avoid sharp and pronounced colors, and to 
 prefer reddish to red, bluish to blue, etc. 
 
 Harding's first portrait of Allston represented 
 him in his favorite blue coat with brass buttons 
 and buff waistcoat. One arm is placed akimbo 
 
LEARNED PUNDITS. 
 
 145 
 
 with such a martial air that the friends of the 
 sitter afterwards playfully entitled him " Colonel 
 Allston.'* About the year 1845 Harding painted 
 from memory an admirable portrait of Allston, 
 which was purchased by Mr. Batchelder a few 
 years later, and still remains in his mansion at 
 Cambridge. 
 
 Sumner visited the studio in 1840, and re- 
 ported that Allston had unrolled the ^Belshazzar's 
 Feast ' across one entire side-wall, but had care- 
 fully curtained it from view. It was during the 
 year 1840 that he painted 'The Bride.' 
 
 Allston was a great friend of George Ticknor, 
 and delighted to visit his famous library. In 1841 
 Mr. Ticknor wrote of a dinner at which Long- 
 fellow, Prescott, Hillard, and Allston were present 
 with him. The artist was a frequent visitor at 
 the mansion of Professor Norton, in Cambridge, 
 where some of his minor pictures are still pre- 
 served. 
 
 In 1 84 1 Wordsworth wrote from Rydal Mount 
 to Professor Reed of Philadelphia, telling how 
 many years ago he had been introduced to the 
 master by "our common friend Coleridge, who 
 had seen much of Mr. Allston when they were 
 
146 
 
 ALLSTON. 
 
 both living at Rome." After Wordsworth had 
 been apprized, by the Rev. Mr. AVaterston, of the 
 death of the artist at Cambridge, he wrote lament- 
 ing "the death of that admirable artist and amia- 
 ble man, my old friend Mr. Allston." 
 
 When Lord Morpeth (the Earl of Carlisle) vis- 
 ited Boston, in 1841, he was introduced to Story, 
 Channing, Longfellow, Bancroft, Ticknor, Emer- 
 son, and Prescott. Sumner also made him ac- 
 quainted with Allston. At this time Greenough 
 was urging Allston to come to Italy, and received 
 a letter from Sumner, telling how Longfellow and 
 himself had recently drawn out an evening's visit 
 at the artist's until midnight. He added that 
 Allston was then busily engaged on the ^Belshaz- 
 zar's Feast/ and would allow no one to enter the 
 studio. 
 
 In his American Notes, Dickens says that 
 "Washington Allston, the painter (who wrote 
 'Monaldi'), is a fine specimen of a glorious old 
 genius.'' Grattan, in his "Civilized America," 
 calls Allston "the foremost of American paint- 
 ers." 
 
 Griswold says of the master, "Not long before 
 his death I dined with him, and was astonished 
 
PROF, F ELTON. 
 
 147 
 
 when a companion intimated that it was after mid- 
 night. We had listened six or seven hours with- 
 out a thought of the lapse of time. His manners 
 were gentle and dignified. His dress was simple 
 and old-fashioned, — a blue coat with plain bright 
 buttons, a buff vest, and drab pantaloons. His 
 face was thin and serious, with remarkably ex- 
 pressive eyes; his hair, fine, long, and silvery 
 white, fell gracefully upon his shoulders ; and his 
 voice was soft, earnest, and musical.'^ 
 
 Allston read his lectures on art to Professors 
 Longfellow and Felton, during the last winter of 
 his life, and the latter thus describes the scene: 
 "It was a most interesting and impressive thing 
 to hear that beloved and venerated person, after 
 making all his peculiar arrangements, — placing 
 his lights each in a certain position, — setting his 
 footstool between his chair and the fire, warming 
 his feet, — lighting his cigar, and reducing his 
 manuscripts to order, — read on, hour a^ter hour, 
 those masterly expositions clothed in the richest 
 forms of language ; ... his large, mysterious eye 
 growing larger with the interest of his subject, his 
 voice increasing in volume and strength, his pale 
 countenance transfigured by his kindling soul to 
 
148 
 
 ALLSTON. 
 
 an almost supernatural expression, until, as he 
 uttered passage after passage of harmonious and 
 magnificent discourse, he seemed to become the 
 inspired prophet, declaring a new revelation of 
 the religion of art. . . . Mr. Allston's conversa- 
 tion was singularly attractive. The Graces, seek- 
 ing a shrine, certainly chose his soul for their 
 temple. His peculiar and striking personal ap- 
 pearance can never be forgotten. His tall and 
 slender figure, his pale countenance, the tower- 
 ing pile of his forehead, his regular and pleasing 
 features, his large hazel eye, the venerable locks 
 that waved in the solemn beauty of silvered age 
 from his shapely head, formed in their combina- 
 tion an image which he who has once seen sees 
 forever. His manners w^ere mild, sincere, urbane, 
 and warm, expressing all the blended softness, 
 grace, and dignity of his character. His voice was 
 the gentlest utterance that ever mortal spoke in." 
 
 Not many days before he died Allston received 
 a visit from his old friend, the Rev. R. C. Water- 
 ston, who bore him an invitation from Weir to 
 make a visit to the latter's residence at West 
 Point. He expressed a strong desire to accept 
 this pleasant .courtesy, but said that he was 
 
THE CLOSING SCENE. 
 
 149 
 
 too busy at painting ; and added, stretching forth 
 his arms, " My wrists are so tired every night 
 that they absolutely ache^ 
 
 The closing scenes of Allston's life cannot be 
 better described than in the words of the vener- 
 able poet, Richard H. Dana, in his letter to Pro- 
 fessor Morse : Your old friend, and one who 
 spoke of you with deep affection, was taken from 
 us most suddenly, and I may say most unexpect- 
 edly ; for, though he seemed to be failing fast, 
 his friends had no suspicion of a disease of the 
 organs that would take him away instantly. The 
 great arteries were not essentially impaired ; but 
 one or two that fed the heart itself were ossified. 
 While none of the intestinal organs could be 
 said to be in a healthy state, none, with the ex- 
 ception of those I have mentioned as being ossi- 
 fied, were in so diseased a condition that he 
 might not have lived some years longer. So 
 
 long ago as when took a bust of him his 
 
 friends thought he would not live long, but he 
 recruited. The winter before last he was se- 
 verely ill, and v/e feared for him then. From 
 that attack he but partially recovered, and from 
 that time was plainly, with short terms of a better 
 
ALLSTON. 
 
 state, a broken-down, failing man. His strength 
 was not sufficient for his labor; and, while his 
 intellect was as clear as ever, it was evident that 
 the servant, the body, was too much weakened 
 to do its appointed work. He spoke of himself 
 as an old, broken-down man. It was plain, his 
 wife says, from the dreadful depression he was 
 under for the last ten months, when his friends 
 were not around him, that he was suffering under 
 the apprehension that he should not have strength 
 to finish what he was about. God, in His mercy, 
 spared him from living on with this thought to 
 prey on him, and took him away in a moment, 
 but with a touch as gentle as the breaking morn- 
 ing light. Both my sisters and my daughter were 
 there, preparatory to leaving him for the sum- 
 mer. All but my daughter went to bed. She 
 sat talking to him. He was strongly attached 
 to her ; and had spoken of her most affec- 
 tionately, as he was wont to do, the last time 
 I saw him. 'I like to talk to her, for she al- 
 ways takes my meaning at once,' he said to 
 me. He said many kind things to her this last 
 night. ^You are my niece,' said he. ^ You 
 are more to me, — you are my child. There are 
 
REST COME TIL 
 
 relations nearer than those of blood.' Twice 
 he put his arms gently round her, and the second 
 time kissed her forehead, and then lowered his 
 head for her to kiss his cheek. He then looked 
 upward, and his eyes were as if he was seeing 
 into the world of holiness and all peace, and he 
 said, want you to be perfect, perfect. ... I 
 do not feel like talking,' he soon added, sat 
 down, drew a chair to him for her to sit by him, 
 took her hand, and occasionally spoke in some- 
 what the same strain. Between twelve and one 
 o'clock he complained of a pain in the chest ; he 
 had felt the same once before, about three weeks 
 previous to this. She advised his taking some- 
 thing for it, not thinking of it, however, as any- 
 thing of much importance ; so that, when he went 
 up to his wife's chamber to get what she recom- 
 mended, she herself went off to bed. He moved 
 about as usual, and when his wife offered to go 
 down and prepare something, he answered, * O, 
 no ! I can do it just as well myself.' He went 
 down again. She stopped to get something which 
 she thought he might want, and followed him in 
 five minutes. She found him sitting in his usual 
 place, with his writing apparatus, which he had 
 
ALLSTON. 
 
 just taken out, near him, his feet on the hearth, 
 and his head resting on the back of his chair, in 
 just the position in which he often took his nap. 
 She went up to him ; his eyes were open, and, 
 from their appearance, she thought he might have 
 fainted. They were all instantly with him. One 
 of my sisters said to him, ' Mr. Allston, we are 
 all here.' His eyes soon closed. A physician 
 was called, they, in the mean time, doing all they 
 could to revive him. There is very little doubt 
 that life had stopped when his wife reached him. 
 His physician says that he must have gone with- 
 out a moment's pain, — that it was a mere closing. 
 
 " So beautiful an expression as was on his face, 
 as he lay sleeping in Jesus, I never saw on the 
 face of man. Spirits were with his spirit. And 
 a most humble being he was before his God. In 
 Christ and the great Atonement was his only 
 trust. Trust, do I say ? it was his realized, fervid 
 life. Not a fortnight before his death he opened 
 his whole soul to the clergyman here, — a most 
 interesting man, — who told me that such child- 
 like, undoubting faith it was delightful to sit and 
 hear poured forth. ... I wish you could have 
 seen more of Allston, particularly within the last 
 
THE END. 153 
 
 year of his life. ... If ever heavenly-mindedness 
 showed itself in its life and beauty^ it made itself 
 visible to the mind of Allston, — humble, child- 
 hke, himself nothing, Christ all things, — love 
 overflowed him, and the harmony of the upper 
 world pervaded him, and harmonized for him all 
 nature and all art. These were not separated 
 from his religious life, because they were taken 
 up into it and sanctified and made beautiful." 
 
 While Clevenger was making Allston's bust 
 the master was suffering under almost continual 
 pain in the face, with a resulting expression of 
 distress and rigidity of muscles. But after his 
 decease Brackett took a cast from his face, 
 whereof Dana said : " So beautiful was the coun- 
 tenance after death, so softened the muscles, and 
 rounded and smoothed the face, that he looked 
 as he did years back, before disease and distress 
 of mind had so preyed upon him." Four years 
 later Allston's head was modelled by Paul Duggan, 
 for a medal struck by the American Art Union. 
 
 Professor Morse, who had always sustained 
 an almost filial relation to Allston, hastened from 
 Washington to Cambridge to pay the last honors 
 to his departed master. He secured as a pre- 
 
154 
 
 ALLSTON. 
 
 cious memento a brush with which he was paint- 
 ing the day he died, still moist with the paint 
 which he had been laying on ^ The Feast of 
 Belshazzar.' This relic was presented by Morse 
 to the National Academy of Design, where it is 
 still carefully preserved. 
 
 Richard H. Dana and Christopher P. Cranch 
 wrote obituary poems on Allston. Dr. Albro, 
 the pastor of the Shepard Congregational So- 
 ciety, delivered a long and appreciative sermon 
 on his illustrious parishioner, which was after- 
 wards printed and circulated. Albro applied to 
 the deceased artist the words of Jeremy Taylor 
 about the Countess of Carberry : " As if she 
 knew nothing of it, she had a low opinion of 
 herself ; and, like a fair taper, she shined to all 
 the room ; yet round about her own station she 
 cast a shadow and a cloud, and so shined to 
 everybody but herself." 
 
 Many relics of Allston are preserved with 
 pious care in Boston and Cambridge. Mr. Rich- 
 ard H. Dana, Jr., has his favorite chair, the last 
 quill-pen and painting-brush which he used, the 
 tortoise-shell tobacco-box which Collins gave 
 him, the plate on which he mixed his colors the 
 
THE UNMARKED TOMB. 155 
 
 day he died, and other rare mementoes. In 1863 
 Miss Judkins presented to the Massachusetts 
 Historical Society his blender for mingling colors. 
 
 Allston's remains were placed in the old Dana 
 tomb, in the churchyard opposite Harvard Col- 
 lege, where they still remain. The tomb is sub- 
 terranean, and has no mark by which it can be 
 recognized. The funeral was an impressive 
 ceremony, having occurred just after dark, when 
 the white moonlight streamed on the statuesque 
 face of the dead master, and the burial service 
 was read by the light of lanterns. Sumner, 
 Story, and other eminent men were present at 
 the grave. The first interment in this venerable 
 cemetery occurred before the year 1650, and 
 many professors of the college and venerable 
 scholars have been buried there. Among the 
 solemn graves are the tombs of the Vassals, the 
 Belchers, and other high families of the colonial 
 era. Sumner endeavored to raise % 2,000 for a 
 monument to Allston at Mount Auburn ; but the 
 movement failed, on account of Mrs. Allston's 
 opposition. Some memorial should be raised, 
 however humble and plain, over the Dana tomb, 
 in order that the pilgrim of art may find the 
 grave of the American Titian. 
 
156 
 
 ALLSTON, 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Allston as an Author. — " The Sylphs." — " The Two Painters." 
 — Minor Poems. — " Monaldi." — " Lectures on Art." — Studio 
 Aphorisms, 
 
 In literature Allston exemplified his wide cul- 
 ture by meritorious works as a poet, novelist, 
 essayist, metaphysician, and critic. He would 
 have made as great a success in letters as in art, 
 if he had devoted the same energy to the pen as 
 to the pencil. 
 
 The volume of poems published in London, 
 and republished in Boston, proves that the Cam- 
 bridge master had a high degree of inspiration in 
 that direction ; and well nigh takes rank with the 
 sonnets of Michael Angelo and the satires of Sal- 
 vator Rosa. The poems are light, spriglitly, and 
 gentle, full of particularity and truth, and showing 
 a fine appreciation of nature and a lively imagi- 
 nation. They do not stir the intenser passions, 
 nor open up realms of mystery or excitement, 
 but rest in the fair sunlight, amid the delicate 
 
A FAIRY SONG. 
 
 157 
 
 perfume of nature, placid and peaceful, and per- 
 ceiving, with the eyes of the spirit of love, the 
 beauty of the world beneath its outer incrusta- 
 tions of vice and hatred. Sometimes the inno- 
 cent muse ascends to inspiring realms of joyous 
 magnificence, in the dominion of the imagina- 
 tion, and sometimes flickering flashes of playful 
 satire play through the else shadowy passages. 
 Such poems as Rosalie " and " The Tuscan 
 Girl " illustrate his paintings in the most exquisite 
 manner, showing the individuality of the artist 
 and the purity of the man, and marking the unity 
 whereby genius harmonizes all expressions to a 
 common principle. 
 
 The first poem in the book is " The Sylphs of 
 the Seasons," containing sixty-nine stanzas, and 
 with minute felicity and deep introspection illus- 
 trating the effects of the scenery of the seasons 
 on the human mind. The poet first has a vision 
 of a desert cave, and then is carried in dream to 
 a lofty castle, lookmg down on a plain adorned 
 with scenery of every period, and with a double 
 throne in its great hall. Four fairies, represent- 
 ing the seasons, are grouped there, and inform 
 the poet that the throne is his, and he is to 
 
ALLSTON. 
 
 choose one of them to share it with him. Each 
 of them sings to him of her charms of person 
 and mind, beginning with Spring, who speaks cf 
 her cheerful influences on humanity. 
 
 " And next the Sylph of Summer fair ; 
 The while her crisped, golden hair 
 Half veiled her sunn)^ eyes," 
 
 derides the chilling fogs of Spring, and bids the 
 poet consider how her sweet languors, her rich 
 scenery, and her visionary nights had " made 
 the body's indolence the vigor of the mind." 
 
 " And now, in accents deep and low, 
 Like voice of fondly cherished woe, 
 The Sylph of Autumn sad," 
 
 declining to boast of her bright-hued fruits and 
 golden harvests and rainbow forests, bids the 
 poet consider how her falling leaves and stormy 
 seas and lurid sunsets taught him to muse on 
 the decay of earthly pleasures, the melancholy 
 advance of Death, and the sublimity of the life 
 immortal. Last comes the Sylph of Winter, with 
 piercing voice, vaunting the majestic and heart- 
 stirring influences of her wild tempests, when 
 from Old Hecla's cloudy height thou " 
 
''THE TWO painters:' 159 
 
 " Hast known my petrifying wind 
 Wild ocean's curling billows bind, 
 Like bending sheaves by harvest hind, 
 Erect in icy death." 
 
 She sings of Nature sleeping under her robes of 
 snowy plains, enriched by sunset with countless 
 colors ; of the exquisite beauty of her frost-work ; 
 and the refining and ennobling memories and 
 images, free from sensuousness, which arose in 
 her long and solemn nights. 
 
 The poet stood "all motionless and mute," 
 unable to choose between such multifarious and 
 seductive charms, until the break of day, when 
 he awoke under the light of a new sun. Some 
 of the descriptive passages are of the most fin- 
 ished and exquisite beauty and delicacy, and re- 
 veal the earnest working of a most sensitive and 
 creative imagination. 
 
 " The Two Painters " is a metric satire of six 
 hundred and forty lines, which Dana says "in 
 easy and narrative style reminds us of the tales 
 of Swift, Prior, and Gay." It is in ridicule of the 
 idea that artistic excellence in one department 
 alone, scorning the others, can reach perfection. 
 
 " Once on a time in Charon's wherry, 
 Two Painters met, on Styx's ferry, " 
 
i6o 
 
 ALLSTON. 
 
 the one a colorisf, and the other a painter of 
 7nmd, and wrangled so noisily that the grim boat- 
 man silenced them as ^'unmannered ghosts." 
 Deep-whizzing through the wave, amid the des- 
 olate cries of low-crouching spectre-birds, the 
 sheeted dead passed onward through the gloom, 
 and met the social shades of many other inquisi- 
 tive ghosts upon the further strand. Poets, paint- 
 ers, politicians, philosophers, and other whilom 
 great ones gathered round to ask how the world 
 still regarded their memories ; but they were hur- 
 ried to the judgment-seat of Minos, who chose 
 the spirit of Da Vinci to arbitrate their quarrel. 
 The colorist and the designer made long ad- 
 dresses before the judge, each extolling himself 
 and throwing contempt upon the other, and 
 finally demanding that the case should be de- 
 cided on the merits of their pictures. Mercury 
 is sent to get them, but learns that they are dead 
 and buried, and returns with a vast procession 
 of ghostly pictures, which the assembled spirits 
 criticise with sparkling wit. The shades of Soc- 
 rates and Alexander wax angry and sarcastic at 
 the anachronistic caricatures which had been 
 made of them, until the judge arose in ire, and 
 
''THE PAINT-KINCr i6i 
 
 bestowed bitter reprimands upon the two paint- 
 ers, bidding them consider Raphael, who united 
 nearly all the excellences of art by wise study of 
 his great contemporaries. He then sentenced 
 them to be bound in one yoke, to paint together 
 for five centuries, and then perhaps gracious Jove 
 would send them back to earth as one artist. 
 
 " For thus the eternal Fates decree : 
 * One leg alone shall never run, 
 Nor two Half-Painters make but one.' " 
 
 " Eccentricity " is a didactic poem of four hun- 
 dred and thirteen lines, portraying numerous ri- 
 diculous and affected characters such as are often 
 met by the student of humanity, in ponderous 
 and involved sentences which recall the profun- 
 dities of Pope or Cowper. The following is the 
 closing sentiment : — 
 
 " O task sublime, to till the human soil, 
 Where fruits immortal crown the laborer's toil ! 
 Where deathless flowers, in everlasting bloom. 
 May gales from heaven with odorous sweets perfume, 
 Whose fragrance still, when man's last work is done, 
 And hoary Time his final course has run. 
 Through ages back, with freshening power shall last, 
 Mark his long track, and linger where he passed ! " 
 
 "The Paint-King" is a weird and mock-roman- 
 tic poem of thirty eight stanzas, describing the 
 
l62 
 
 ALLSTON. 
 
 abduction of the fair Ellen by the Paint-King, who 
 captivated her in the guise of a fascinating youth, 
 with a mysterious picture of Pygmalion and Gal- 
 atea. He swept her away through the air to a 
 mountain- cave, and then appeared before her in 
 his true aspect, with a face "like a palette of 
 villanous dyes," sitting on a Titan's skull, and 
 smoking a pipe twice as big as the Eddystone 
 Lighthouse. He immersed her for seven days in 
 a jug of oil, and then ground her up, spreading on 
 his palette the blue of her eyes, the brown of her 
 hair, the red of her lips, etc., to paint therewith 
 the portrait of Geraldine the fairy. But he failed 
 in the picture, which was to give him the fairy for 
 a wife or to cost him his life, and Geraldine at once 
 slew him and released Ellen from her pulverized 
 state. As wild a fancy, surely, and as well wrought 
 out, as any Hawthorne ever dreamed of. 
 
 Following "The Paint-King" were two poems, 
 respectively " To a Lady, who Lamented that she 
 had never been in Love," and "To a Lady who 
 Spoke slightingly of Poets," — melodious stanzas, 
 full of delicate sentiment and active fancy. Next 
 came six sonnets, to West, Rembrandt, Tibaldi, 
 the Luxembourg Gallery, and the magnificent 
 
''MONALDi: 
 
 163 
 
 tributes to the falling group in Angelo's 'Last 
 Judgment ' and Raphael's ' Three Angels before 
 Abraham's Tent.' The London edition closed 
 with four simple and touching ballads. 
 
 Allston sent a volume of his poems to Lady 
 Beaumont, and Collins, who delivered it, wrote to 
 him : Southey said that, whatever defects some 
 of them might have, he had no hesitation in say- 
 ing that they could not have proceeded from any 
 but a poetic mind \ in which sentiment he was 
 most cordially supported by Wordsworth, who 
 was present at the time." 
 
 Monaldi is the title of an Italian romance 
 which Allston composed in 182 1 for pubUcation 
 in Richard H. Dana's serial of "The Idle Man." 
 The sudden suspension of the periodical caused 
 the author to throw his manuscript aside; but 
 twenty years later he sought it out and gave it to 
 the public. The story opens with an adventure 
 in the Abruzzi Mountains, which leads the narra- 
 tor to a secluded monastery wherein he discovers 
 a weird and mysterious painting of Satan, on a 
 golden throne, adored by an agonized mortal. 
 This incident is described with a graphic vigor 
 which confirms the author's renown as a teller 
 
164 
 
 ALLS TON. 
 
 of ghost-stories, and exemplifies how keenly he 
 enjoyed the supernatural and how eagerly he re- 
 ceived legendary and marvellous stories. These 
 traits appear still more richly in such pictures 
 as the Belshazzar and the Spalatro, the bandit- 
 haunted forests, the sorceress of Endor. After 
 its impressive beginning, the story is carried on 
 with an easy grace and a revealing power which 
 mark the author's masterly skill in construction, 
 and his comprehension of the secret and terrible 
 workings of love, jealousy, and revenge. In some 
 parts the situations are appalling in their tragic 
 power; but elsewhere there are bright and attrac- 
 tive passages on art and nature, in which the 
 experience and reflections of the writer during 
 his years of Roman life are vividly set forth. The 
 heroine of the story is an ideally lovely creation, 
 filled with spiritual life and strength, and recalling 
 the lineaments of certain of the master's pictures. 
 The hero is a painter, and his character is un- 
 folded with great vigor and masterly analysis. 
 The construction of the plot is faulty in parts, but 
 the style is concise and simple, and often becomes 
 eloquent and melodious. The book was trans- 
 lated into the German language. 
 
LECTURES ON ART, 
 
 Professor Felton thus criticises "Monaldi'^: 
 "The style of this work is flowing, melodious, pic- 
 turesque, and beautifully finished ; many of its 
 scenes are wrought up with a terrible power, 
 more of them sparkle with all the graces of im- 
 agination and taste. There are paragraphs in 
 that book in which the very soul of the author 
 seems to pour itself out in strains of the richest 
 melody ; there are innumerable passages of such 
 graphic beauty that no other hand could have 
 traced them but his whose marvellous cunning 
 painted for all coming time the Beatrice, Rosa- 
 lie, and Amy Robsart.'* 
 
 Soon after 1830 Mr. Allston began the prep- 
 aration of a series of lectures, which he was to 
 have delivered before a select audience in Bos- 
 ton. He completed four of these lectures, and 
 made the drafts of two others. They were edited 
 by Richard H. Dana, Jr., and published at New 
 York, in 1850, in a vojume which also included 
 Allston's poems. Professor Felton says that 
 they "contain the essence of Allston's entire 
 artistic life. . . . This is indeed a golden leg- 
 acy to the art and literature of our country." 
 
 A note preliminary to the lectures carefully 
 
i66 
 
 ALLS TON. 
 
 defined the word idea^ in the sense in which it 
 should be used therein, as ^' the highest or most 
 perfect form in which anything, whether of the 
 physical, the intellectual, or the spiritual, may 
 exist to the mind. There are two kinds of ideas, 
 self-afiirmed, and therefore not mere notions, — 
 the primary^ or manifestation of objective real- 
 ities ; and the secondary^ or the reflex products 
 of the mental constitution." 
 
 The " Introductory Discourse " opens with an 
 exaltation of the mental pleasures, and proceeds 
 to state and demonstrate the following proposi- 
 tion : " That the Pleasures in question have their 
 true source in One Intuitive Universal Principle 
 or living Power, and that the three Ideas of 
 Beauty, Truth, and Holiness, which we assume 
 to represent the perfect in the physical, intellec- 
 tual, and moral worlds, are but the several real- 
 ized phases of this sovereign principle, which we 
 shall call B'armo7iy.^^ This is attended with a 
 profound and philosophical analysis of the idea 
 of Beauty, with its powers and limitations ; a 
 consideration of the imperishable pleasure of 
 Truth, illustrated aptly in many ways ; and a 
 reverent contemplation of Goodness, and its re- 
 
ART AND NATURE. 
 
 sistless ultimate power. The divine harmony 
 in which these principles are united is then pro- 
 claimed, and the manner and efficacy of the syn- 
 thesis are set forth, — the argument ascending, 
 as it were, in a continuous spiral, and at last 
 resting above the stars. 
 
 The second lecture demonstrates that Art is 
 distinguished from Nature by four great charac- 
 teristics, namely, Originality; Human or Poetic 
 Truth, the verifying principle by which the first 
 is recognized; Invention, or the product of the 
 Imagination, as grounded on the first and ver- 
 ified by the second ; and Unity, the synthesis of 
 all. There is a fine comparison, in the course 
 of the argument, between Raphael and Ostade ; 
 and the power of Poetic Truth is demonstrated 
 by glowing allusions to Shakespeare's Caliban, 
 Sir Joshua Reynolds's Puck, the Farnese Her- 
 cules, and the Apollo Belvedere. 
 
 The third lecture was on the Human Form, 
 and contains the following propositions : " First, 
 that the notion of one or more standard Forms, 
 which shall in all cases serve as exemplars, is 
 essentially false, and of impracticable applica- 
 tion for any true purpose of Art ; secondly, that 
 
i68 
 
 ALLSTON. 
 
 the only approach to Science, which the subject 
 admits, is in a few general rules relating to Stat- 
 ure, and these, too, serving rather as convenient 
 expedients than exact guides, inasmuch as, in 
 most cases, they allow of indefinite variations ; 
 and, thirdly, that the only efficient Rule must be 
 found in the artist's mind, • — in those intuitive 
 Powers which are above, and beyond, both the 
 senses and the understanding ; which, neverthe- 
 less, are so far from precluding knowledge, as, 
 on the contrary, to require, as their effective 
 condition, the widest intimacy with the things 
 external, — without which their very existence 
 must remain unknown to the artist himself." 
 This thoughtful discourse closes with a brilliant 
 comparison of Raphael and Michael Angelo, 
 "the two great sovereigns of the two distinct 
 empires of Truth, — the Actual and the Imagi- 
 native.'' 
 
 The fourth and last lecture treats of Compo- 
 sition in Art, which contains the following char- 
 acteristics : " First, Unity of Purpose, as express- 
 ing the general sentiment or intention of the 
 Artist. Secondly, Variety of Parts, as expressed 
 in the diversity of shape, quantity, and Hne. 
 
STUDIO APHORISMS. 
 
 169 
 
 Thirdly, Continuity, as expressed by the connec- 
 tion of parts with each other, and their relation 
 to the whole. Fourthly, Harmony of Parts." 
 Variety is illustrated by Veronese's ' Marriage of 
 Cana'; and the systems of lines of Claude and 
 of Salvator Rosa are skilfully contrasted. Ra- 
 phael, Tintoretto, Poussin, and Claude are con- 
 sidered in their early imitative idea ; and Rey- 
 nolds's defence of borrowing is reprehended. 
 
 The walls of Allston's studio were marked with 
 over forty aphoristic sentences, which, as he told 
 Mrs. Jameson, served as " texts for reflection be- 
 fore he began his day's work." He sometimes 
 discussed their merits with visitors, and contin- 
 ually pondered them in his heart. From these 
 articles of his artistic creed we select a half-dozen, 
 almost at random, as expository of his character 
 and genius. 
 
 " If an Artist love his Art for its own sake, he 
 will delight in excellence wherever he meets it, as 
 well in the works of another as his own. This 
 is the test of a true love." 
 
 ^^The love of gain never made a Painter ; but 
 it has marred many." 
 
 " Distinction is the consequence, never the 
 object, of a great mind." 
 
ALLSTON. 
 
 "There is an essential meanness in the wish fo 
 get the better of any one. The only competition 
 worthy of a wise man is with himself.'' 
 
 "Make no man your idol, for the best man 
 must have faults ; and his faults will insensibly 
 become yours, in addition to your own. This is 
 as true in Art as in morals." 
 
 " What light is in the natural world, such is 
 fame in the intellectual ; both requiring an at- 
 mosphere in order to become perceptible. Hence 
 the fame of Michael Angelo is, to some minds, 
 a nonentity; even as the sun itself would be 
 invisible in vacuo ^ 
 
 As a word-painter Allston was almost as suc- 
 cessful as in his own profession, and few richer 
 pen-pictures can be found than those in which he 
 describes the scenery of the Apennines, or a hot 
 white summer noon in Rome, or the Alps at 
 morning around Lake Maggiore. His conversa- 
 tion was no less brilliant than his writings, full of 
 wisdom and sympathy and rich experience, and 
 alike improving and inspiring to all who heard it. 
 The colloquial accomplishment was not with him 
 a lost art, and the humble home at Cambridge- 
 port often heard marvellous discourses and remi- 
 
REMINISCENCES. 
 
 171 
 
 niscences. The varied and picturesque experi- 
 ences of an active lifetime in many lands were 
 freely poured forth in accents of grace and 
 vitality. One of his favorite themes was his 
 sojourn in Rome, with the august memories of 
 his friendship with Thorvvaldsen, Coleridge, and 
 Irving, and their rambles and discussions among 
 the ruins and palaces of the Eternal City. 
 
172 
 
 ALLSTON, 
 
 CHAPTER VIIL 
 
 Personal Traits. — System of Color. — Versatility. — Italianism. — 
 Slight Influence on American Art. 
 
 Allston's personal appearance was such as 
 would have distinguished him among a thousand. 
 His figure was slender, but straight and active, 
 and his air seemed serenely abstracted, when not 
 enlivened by conversation. His broad and spirit- 
 ual forehead was bordered by long white hair, 
 which descended upon his shoulders in waving 
 masses. His eyes appeared large and eloquent, 
 and were somewhat projecting. His chin was 
 short, but not receding. The general expression 
 of the face indicated mildness and sweetness, bor- 
 dering on effeminacy, yet there was that behind it 
 which rendered it impossible for visitors to show 
 undue familiarity or freedom. Mr. Allston's man- 
 ner was so dignified and courtly that Collins, the 
 Royal Academician, once said : " Were any one 
 to meet Washington Allston in the street, with a 
 sack of coals on his shoulders, he would at once 
 recognize him as a gentleman." 
 
SUMNER'S PEN-PORTRAIT, 17 3 
 
 John Howard Payne, in his later years, gave to 
 Washington Irving the following laconic descrip- 
 tion of the master : " Allston was always the 
 gentleman. Would talk by the hour. Liked to 
 talk. A capital teller of ghost-stories. Would act 
 them with voice, eyes, and gesture. Had touches 
 of gentle humor. Rather indolent. Would lie late 
 in bed. Smoked segars. A man of real genius. 
 A noble painter. It was a pity he came back (in 
 1818); he would have risen to the head of his 
 art, — been the greatest painter of his day.'* 
 Charles Sumner also said : " Allston was a good 
 man, with a soul refined by purity, exalted by 
 religion, softened by love. In manner he was 
 simple, yet courtly, — quiet, though anxious to 
 please, — kindly to all alike, the poor and lowly 
 not less than the rich and great. As he spoke, in 
 that voice of gentlest utterance, all were charmed 
 to listen ; and the airy-footed hours often tripped 
 on far towards the gates of morning before his 
 friends could break from his spell." 
 
 The delicate sensitiveness of the master was 
 shown in many and peculiar ways. AVhen india- 
 rubber overshoes began to be worn, he pur- 
 chased a pair, but could never put them on or 
 
174 
 
 ALLSTON, 
 
 remove them except with the tongs. He dis- 
 liked the touch of metallic door-knobs, and 
 usually interposed the skirt of his coat, or a 
 handkerchief, between his hand and the metal. 
 
 One of the singular customs of the artist's 
 household was that in relation to a fire on the 
 hearth, which was kept up throughout the year, 
 so that visitors were favored with the music of a 
 few crackling brands, even during the sufficient 
 heats of an August evening. 
 
 Allston was one of the most graceful dancers 
 ever seen in Massachusetts, having been distin- 
 guished for a rare suppleness and ease. The 
 cotillion was in high favor at that time, and happy 
 was the lady who could secure him as a partner. 
 He would sometimes find himself dancing almost 
 alone, the others having ceased in order to ob- 
 serve and admire his unrivalled grace. This 
 accomplishment was especially noticeable after 
 Allston's first visit to Europe, while he was still 
 young and delighted in society. 
 
 He was fond of reading metaphysical works, 
 and had no less pleasure in wild and supernat- 
 ural romances, tinged with diablerie. He perused 
 " The Five Nights of St. Alban's'' with a keen zest, 
 and exulted in the works of Mrs. Radcliffe. 
 
HARMONY. 
 
 175 
 
 Jarves enumerates Allston's faults as " inequal- 
 ity of execution, imperfect modelling at times, 
 not infrequent bad taste in details, and a forcible 
 realism of feature and pose in some of his great- 
 est figures, amounting almost to awkwardness 
 and ugliness." In 1878 George Inness said that 
 " Allston's misfortune was that the literary had 
 too strong hold upon his mind, creating in him 
 ideas which were grandiose.'' 
 
 Allston laid in his pictures in solid crude col- 
 ors, and put them by for months, while the vehi- 
 cle which he used hardened the pigments to a 
 stony surface. When the long process of drying 
 and hardening was over, he added tenderness 
 and richness to their solidity and strength by the 
 skilful application of transparent glazing colors. 
 Some of his unfinished works still remain in their 
 state of unrelieved hardness. He also experi- 
 mented to a hazardous degree, and some of his 
 works have already lost their subtlest qualities of 
 transparency and brilliancy. 
 
 A recent critic (Miss Sarah Clarke) thus 
 strikes the keynote of Allston's melodious sys- 
 tem : " The method of this artist was to suppress 
 all the coarser beauties which make up the sub- 
 
176 
 
 ALLSTON. 
 
 Stance of common pictures. He was the least 
 ad captaiidum of workers. He avoided bright 
 eyes, curls, and contours, glaring lights, strong 
 contrasts, and colors too crude for harmony. 
 He reduced his beauty to her elements, so that 
 an inner beauty might play through her features. 
 Like the Catholic discipline which pales the face 
 of the novice with vigils, seclusion, and fasting, 
 and thus makes room and clears the way for the 
 movements of the spirit, so in these figures every 
 vulgar grace is suppressed. No classic contours, 
 no languishing attitudes, no asking for admi- 
 ration, — but a severe and chaste restraint, a 
 modest sweetness, a slumbering intellectual at- 
 mosphere, a graceful self-possession, eyes so sin- 
 cere and pure that heaven's light shines through 
 them, and, beyond all, a hovering spiritual life 
 that makes each form a presence." 
 
 Ware attributes no small part of Allston's suc- 
 cess to his general cultivation of mind, which 
 enabled him to impart the vigor and elegance of 
 learning to his designs, and to give his charac- 
 ters a notable dignity. Joined to this broad 
 culture, and illuminating it, were the noble and 
 elevated traits of the artist's soul, earnest truth- 
 
ADVISES VERSATILITY. 1 77 
 
 fulness, unselfishness, simplicity, and consecra- 
 tion to the highest ends of art. It was impossi- 
 ble for a man who thus formed a conscience of 
 his art either to make many pictures or much 
 money. Another foundation of his fame was 
 that he so often painted life-size figures, which 
 gave him a correct and elevated manner of exe- 
 cution and a corresponding mental inspiration. 
 Yet these works, though rivalling the great medi- 
 aeval frescos in size, were finished with the con- 
 scientious exactness and minute finish of Dutch 
 cabinet-pictures. 
 
 He advised a young artist studying in Europe : 
 Do not be satisfied with being one thing. The 
 old masters did everything. They were sculp- 
 tors and architects, as well as painters. Nay, 
 they were poets and philosophers, as Michael 
 Angelo and Leonardo da Vinci. They painted, 
 also, all sorts of pictures, and succeeded in all 
 Titian, the best portrait, was also the best land- 
 scape, painter ; at least, he was inferior only to 
 Claude." 
 
 He could not endure the stilted allegorical 
 compositions of the schools of West and Fuseli, 
 and once said : " If you are going to paint a tub 
 
178 
 
 ALLSTON. 
 
 or a candlestick, paint a tub or a candlestick in 
 very truth, and not an allegory therefor." 
 
 The versatility of Allston in painting at will 
 historical compositions, portraits, ideal heads, 
 landscapes, marines, and genre pictures was ac- 
 companied with a minute and delicate finish be- 
 stowed on all alike. It was matter of wonder, 
 when his pictures were collected in Boston, how 
 so much work could have been crowded into one 
 short life, and that a crippled one. The grand 
 figures of his prophets and kings were not more 
 carefully and minutely painted than the accesso- 
 ries of still-life, — the vases, jewels, and back- 
 grounds. But this versatility was fatal to the 
 master's pre-eminence in American art, for life 
 is not long enough for the noblest mind and 
 deftest hand to attain illustrious excellence in 
 so many departments of endeavor. He should 
 have confined himself to small ideal subjects, 
 with which he had full sympathy. 
 
 Allston's love for sublimity was hardly less 
 than his devotion to beauty, though it was not so 
 often displayed in his art. Not often in Nature, 
 affluent chiefly in beauty, did he seek sublimity, 
 or attempt its delineation, but rather in the emo- 
 
EXPRESSION. 
 
 179 
 
 tions of the human mind, remorse, woe, super- 
 natural terror. In these themes he succeeded 
 marvellously well, insomuch that his pictures 
 leave an abiding and haunting impression in the 
 mind. The sharp manifestations of passionate 
 life are veiled in an atmosphere of divine glow 
 and profound mystery, inviting the study of the 
 most reflective and contemplative of men, and 
 rich in simple genuineness and magnetic charm. 
 Through this calm repose played the rhythmic 
 melody of delicate repetitions of color, in the 
 manner of Paul Veronese, forming what Allston 
 himself called an echo of colors. 
 
 In expression, or the power of portraying emo- 
 tions and dispositions, Allston found another of 
 his noble characteristics, though he withheld a 
 display of this gift in a majority of his pictures, 
 preferring to paint calm and passionless faces, 
 full of tender and thoughtful beauty, and giving 
 free scope to the imagination. Dignity is para- 
 mount, a grand abstraction, a passive majesty. 
 In his favorite domain of ideal female heads he 
 rarely represented faces as beautiful in the popu- 
 lar acceptation, but as introspective, reposeful, si- 
 lent, and inanimate. If beauty can exist without 
 
i8o 
 
 ALLSTON, 
 
 expression, it finds no more perfect exemplifica- 
 tions than Allston's ' Rosalie ' and ' Beatrice/ — 
 not even in Leonardo's/ Monna Lisa' nor Ra- 
 phael's ^Fornarina.' This attribute of repose 
 pervades almost all of the^ master's faces, and 
 fills them with the spirit of contemplation and 
 peace ; and herein is the highest triumph of what 
 Lord Napier of Merchiston called *^the incom- 
 parable pencil of Allston." 
 
 Mr. Allston once said, " I never let a picture 
 go out from my studio until I have finished it as 
 well as I can " ; and again (to Mrs. Jameson), 
 " My industry should be measured, not by the 
 pictures seen, but by those not seen." He took 
 exception to Dunlap's declaration that he was 
 indolent, saying, " I am famous among my ac- 
 quaintances for industry : I paint every day : 
 and never pass an hour without accomplishing 
 something." 
 
 Every part of Allston's pictures was executed 
 by his own hand, a fact which America has cause 
 to mourn. Had he possessed such assistants 
 as those of Raphael and other ancients to do the 
 mechanical work, laying in the first colorings, and 
 painting the unconsidered accessories, he might 
 
TUCKERMAN'S CRITICISM, i8i 
 
 have adorned his country with hundreds of his 
 noble conceptions, finished, in all essential parts, 
 by his own hand. Under such supervision as he 
 could have given, scores of young artists would 
 have flocked to his side, relieving him of his 
 day-laborer's drudgery and imbibing his spirit of 
 grace and beauty, and the Cambridge studio 
 would have been the birthplace of American art. 
 
 Tuckerman, one of the leading art-critics of 
 America, thus characterizes Allston : " With the 
 name of this great painter, painting reached its 
 acme of excellence among us. In genius, char- 
 acter, life, and feeling, he emulated the Italian 
 masters, partook of their spirit, and caught the 
 mellow richness of their tints. Around his re- 
 vered name cluster the most select and gratifying 
 associations of native art; in each department he 
 exhibited a mastery. . . . From an Alpine land- 
 scape, luminous with frosty atmosphere and sky- 
 piercing mountains, to moonbeams flickering 
 on a quiet stream, — from grand Scriptural to 
 delicate fairy figures, — from rugged and solemn 
 Jewish heads to the most ideal female concep- 
 tions, — from ' Jeremiah ' to ^ Beatrice,' and from 
 * Miriam ' to ^ Rosalie,' every phase of mellow and 
 
l82 
 
 ALLSTON. 
 
 transparent, — almost magnetic color, graceful 
 contours, deep expression, rich contrast of tints, 
 
 — the mature, satisfying, versatile triumph of 
 pictorial art, as we have known and loved it in 
 the Old World, then and there, justified the name 
 of American Titian, bestowed on Allston at 
 Rome j while the spiritual isolation and benig- 
 nity, the instructive and almost inspired dis- 
 course, the lofty ideal, the religious earnestness, 
 even the lithe frame, large, expressive eyes, and 
 white flowing locks of Allston, his character, his 
 life, conversation, presence, and memory, pro- 
 claimed the great artist." 
 
 Thirty-five years have passed since Allston's 
 pencil fell from his weary hand, and American 
 art has made noble progress. But whatever its 
 achievements in those departments which are 
 favored by modern taste, it has not yet surpassed 
 
 — it has not equalled — the grandeur of the 
 imaginative works of the great Carolinian. He 
 strove for excellence, and loved it for its own 
 sake, without thought of temporal considerations 
 and emoluments, save as beautifully expressed in 
 his own words : " Fame is the eternal shadow of ex- 
 cellence, from which it can never be separated." 
 
ITALIAN TRAITS. 
 
 183 
 
 Although a child of the New World and of 
 the railway age, AUston's life and works, his face 
 and manners, were those of another epoch, and 
 partook of the dignity and power of the old mas- 
 ters of Italian art. And this was not because he 
 had dwelt long amid the suggestive scenes of the 
 classic lands, for his abode in Southern Europe 
 was comparatively short in its duration, and 
 occurred in the earlier part of his life. Powers 
 became a dweller in Italy, yet never allowed his 
 quaint Yankee traits to be obliterated ; nor did 
 Cole's long residence near the Apennines force 
 him to forget the Catskills and the White Hills. 
 Yet here, in one of the least prepossessing of 
 New England villages we find an antique soul 
 developing characteristics which would have been 
 more congenial to the Greeks of the days of 
 Pericles or the Romans of the sixteenth Chris- 
 tian century. 
 
 The dignity and lofty aims of true art were 
 ever present in AUston's mind, and narrowed the 
 compass of his achievements by increasing the 
 conscientious demands which he made upon him- 
 self in the search after his exalted ideal. He 
 was dissatisfied with his best works, however 
 
ALLS TON, 
 
 glorious they certainly were, because they came 
 short of supreme excellence ; and hence arose 
 the frequent interruptions therein, as he laid 
 down the pencil in hopeless humility. But 
 although he was thus distrustful of his own 
 abilities, his magnanimity disposed him to be 
 an enlightened critic and a discriminating coun- 
 sellor; and many were the artists who profited 
 by his appreciative advice and sympathy, and 
 hailed him as Master. 
 
 Allston should have spent his life in Italy, in 
 the very presence of the works of his great 
 guides in art. The British school exercised no 
 influence upon his noble style, composed, as it 
 was, of a strong originality mingled with the 
 motives of the Italian leaders of the sixteenth 
 century. His return to America was an abnega- 
 tion of the wealth and distinction which awaited 
 him abroad, but served to light a section of the 
 home-land as from a high beacon. The atmos- 
 phere and the people were uncongenial to art, 
 but its disciple stood fast amid the practicalities 
 of the dullest era of American life, and lifted his 
 rush-light in the darkness. Boston was indeed 
 proud of him, and gave him generous orders ; 
 
THE RESULT. 185 
 
 but the melody of artistic inspiration had not yet 
 thrilled through the air of the Puritan common- 
 wealth, and Allston was bereft of adequate in- 
 citements. 
 
 And yet, when we consider the lofty genius of 
 Allston, his rich transatlantic years, his peace- 
 ful and tranquil life, and the enthusiastic appre- 
 ciation with which America received him, it is 
 impossible to avoid a feeling that the master did 
 not attain the best possible results. If he had 
 devoted to his profession all the time which was 
 wasted on dilettant diversions, and had avoided 
 that colossal rock of offence, the * Belshazzar's 
 Feast,' he might have gathered about him the 
 flower of American youth, and founded a new 
 and noble school of Western art, prolific in il- 
 lustrious works, and adding a Florentine or a 
 Venetian elegance to the martial glories of the 
 Republic. Herein he failed, through lack of 
 victory-compelling effort, and left but as many 
 pictures as could fill a large drawing-room ; while 
 American art still remains without a head, and 
 becomes an appanage of Paris. 
 
ALLSTON'S PAINTINGS, 187 
 
 A LIST OF THE CHIEF PAINTINGS OF WASH- 
 INGTON ALLSTON, WITH THE NAMES OF 
 THEIR PRESENT OWNERS. 
 
 The names of the owners are in italics. 
 
 Some of the pictu7'es herein noted are unfinished; and some 
 are highly finished studies. 
 
 UNITED STATES. 
 Boston. — Museum of Fine Arts, — Portrait of Mr. Har- 
 ris ; Elijah in the Desert, 181 7 ; Portrait of Allston, 1805 ; 
 Pilot-boat and Storm ; copy of Paul Veronese's ' Marriage 
 at Cana/ 1803 ; Landscape ; The Prophetess ; Una ; Dido ; 
 Study of Lorenzo and Jessica ; Female Head ; The Trou- 
 badour; The Death of King John; Cupid; Sketch of Bel- 
 shazzar's Feast; Sketch of Christ Healing the Sick. (Sev- 
 eral of these are unfinished, and pertain to the Dana family. 
 The new wing of the Museum, erected in 1878, contains the 
 so-called Allston Room, devoted to these pictures, and to 
 others by the same artist, loaned by their owners and by 
 the Athenaeum. ) Boston Athenceum, — Belshazzar's Feast ; 
 Landscape ; Isaac of York ; Polish Jew ; The Student ; The 
 Opening of the Casket, 1802 ; Portrait of Benjamin West, 
 1 8 1 4. Mrs, George M. Barnard, Jr. , — Landscape. Natha7i 
 Appleton, — Rosalie. Mrs. George Ticknor, — The Valen- 
 tine. Mrs. Stephen H. Bullard, — Beatrice. Richard Sul- 
 livan^ — A Lady. Miss E. Jackson, — Lorenzo and Jes- 
 sica. William Gray, — The Sisters. John A, Lowell, — 
 Amy Robsart. Dr. Thomas Dwight, — A Polish Jew. 
 //. W. Foote, — Italian Landscape. Miss Pratt, — Land- 
 
i88 
 
 ALLSTON. 
 
 scape. Mrs, John Codman, — Pilot-boat in a Storm. 
 Frederick R. Sears ^ — Tuscan Girl ; Miriam. Mrs, George 
 R, Baldwin^ — Polyphemus. Richard H. Dana, Jr., — 
 Ideal female figure. Richard H. Dana, — Sketch for Bel- 
 shazzar's Feast, 1817; Sketch for Christ Healing the Sick, 
 1817; Portrait of S. T.Coleridge (unfinished), 1805; Por- 
 trait of AUston (unfinished), 1805 ; Landscape ; Head of 
 Jeremiah ; Titania's Court. Mrs. S. Hooper, — The Even- 
 ing Hymn ; Swiss Landscape. Mrs. Paine, — The Young 
 Troubadour. Dr. Bigelow, — Landscape. Mrs. Benjamin 
 Greene, — Head of a Jew. Rev. J. F. W. Ware, — A 
 Child's Portrait. W H. Gardiner, — The Witch of Endor. 
 
 Milton. — Mrs. M. E. Eustis, — Mrs. AUston ; Wilham 
 Ellery C banning. Dorchester. — Mrs. Robert C. Hooper, 
 
 — Italian Shepherd Boy. Brookline. — Ignatius Sargent, 
 
 — Poor Author and Rich Publisher. Mrs. W. C. Cabot, — 
 Landscape. Mrs. y. E. Cabot, — Roman Lady. Mrs. 
 Judge Wells (Longwood), — The Indian Summer. James 
 M. Codman, — Landscape. Cambridge. — Prof. C. E. 
 Norton, •^T>2iY\di Playing the Harp before Saul, 1805 ; The 
 Romans and the Serpent of Epidaurus, 1805. Mrs. Gurney, 
 
 — The Mother and Child, 1814. AUston Heirs, — Jason 
 (an immense unfinished work). Medford. — E. T. Has- 
 tings, — Una (unfinished). Worcester. — Massachusetts 
 Insane Asylum, — The Angel Delivering St. Peter from 
 Prison, 181 2. 
 
 New Haven. — Yale College Art-Gallery, — Jeremiah. 
 Providence. — W. F. Channing, — Portrait of Francis 
 Channing, Newport. — Redwood Library, — Portrait of 
 
ALLSTON'S PAINTINGS, 
 
 189 
 
 Robert Rogers. Washington, D. C. — George Baticroft, 
 
 — Head of St. Peter. Philadelphia, Pa. — Academy of 
 Fine Arts^ — The Dead Man Revived by Elisha's Bones. 
 Mrs. General Bar stow, — Bandits (Donna Mencia t). New 
 York City. — George Sherman, — A Landscape. William 
 y. Flagg, — Moonlight Landscape. Fishkill-on-Hud- 
 SON. — Mrs. Headley, — Portrait of Mrs. William Chan- 
 ning. Schenectady. — Rev. Dr. Robert Lowell, — Land- 
 scape. Charleston, S. C. — Misses Allston,— A Land- 
 scape ; Portrait of Allston's Mother. 
 
 ENGLAND. 
 
 London. — British National Portrait Gallery, — Portrait 
 of Mr. S T. Coleridge. British Museum, — Several 
 sketches. Stafford House, — The Angel Uriel Standing in 
 the Sun. Petworth. — Jacob's Dream ; Contemplation ; 
 The Repose in Egypt ; two cabinet pictures. Cambridge. 
 
 — Jesus College, — Portrait of Coleridge. 
 
 MISSING. 
 
 Nine pictures painted before going abroad. — Portrait of 
 Mr. King ; Cardinal Bentivoglio (copy) ; young Mr. Wa- 
 terhouse ; W. E. Channing ; three other Channing por- 
 traits ; Head of Judas Iscariot ; St. Peter. 
 
 Twenty -six pictures painted in Europe. — French Sol- 
 dier; Rocky Coast; Landscape with Horsemen; The 
 Poet's Ordinary ; Landscape ; Cupid and Psyche ; Diana ; 
 Dr. King ; Robert Southey ; three ideal pictures at Bristol ; 
 Mrs. King; Rebecca at the Well; Morning in Italy; 
 Donna Mencia ; Clytie ; Hermia and Helena ; Falstaff ; 
 Samuel Williams ; Mediterranean Coast. 
 
190 
 
 ALLSTON. 
 
 Pictures painted after 181 8. — Florimel ; The Massacre 
 of the Innocents ; Gabriel Setting the Guard of the Heav- 
 enly Host ; The Spanish Girl ; Edwin ; Falstaff. 
 
 Several others have been destroyed by fire, and others 
 disappeared during the great Civil War. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Abernethy, 83. 
 
 Albro's Eulogy, 154. 
 
 Allston Family> The, 7, 97. 
 
 Allston quoted, 11, 16, 19, 28, 31, 
 35, 36, 37, 39, 41, 42, 45, 48, 54, 58, 
 62, 69, 70, 74, 90, 92, 95, 96, 102, 
 
 110, 114, 117, 119, I20, 121, 122, 
 124, 131, 137, 141, 149, 151, 158, 
 159, 161, 166-70, 177, 180, 182. 
 
 American Scenery, 115. 
 American Titian, The, 50, 72. 
 Amy Robsart, 113. 
 A ngel Delivering St, Peter y The, 
 61. 
 
 Angel Uriel, The, 81. 
 Angelo, Michael, 42, 46. 
 Antislavery, 96. 
 Artistic Raptures, 37, 41. 
 Authorship, 156. 
 
 Banditti, 29. 
 Beatrice, iii. 
 Beaumont, Sir George, 61. 
 Belshazzar''s Feast, 119, 146, 83. 
 Bentivoglio's Portrait, 19. 
 Boston Harbor, 92. 
 Boston in 1818, 93. 
 Boston Studios, 54, 93. 
 
 Caffe Greco, 43. 
 Cambridgeport, 131. 
 Carolina, Parting from, 27. 
 Channing, Dr. W. E., 18, 23, 52, 
 
 76, 98. 
 Chantry, 96. 
 Charleston, 25. 
 Childhood, 11. 
 
 Churchman, Allston a, 78, 134. 
 Clarke, Miss S., 141, 138, 175. 
 Classmates, 24. 
 
 Coleridge, S. T., 49, 62, 66, 73, 
 
 78, 86, 98. 
 College-life, ic. 
 
 Collins, William, 60, 80, 95, 1 
 
 163, 172. 
 Conversation, 170. 
 Crawford, the Sculptor, 140. 
 
 Dana, Chief Justice, 24, 108. 
 Dana, Richard H., 18, 149. 
 Dancing, 174. 
 
 Dead Man Revived, The, 69. 
 Death of Allston, 152. 
 Death of Mrs. Allston, 76. 
 Death of King John, 113. 
 Dear Old England, 90. 
 Decline, 149. 
 Designs Engraved, 117. 
 De Veaux, loi. 
 Dickens, Charles, 146. 
 
 Early Drawings, 16. 
 Elijah in the Desert, 105. 
 Evening Hymn, The, 113. 
 Exhibition of 1839, 142. 
 
 Fascination, 44. 
 
 Felton, Professor, 147, 165. 
 
 Flagg, G. W., 102. 
 
 Flagg, J. B., 104. 
 
 Flaxman, 83. 
 
 Florence, 40. 
 
 Florimel, iii. 
 
 Eraser, Charles, 25, 115. 
 
 Fuller, Margaret, 141, 143. 
 
 Fuseli, Henry, 32, 34. 
 
 Ghost-stories, 75, 79. 
 Government Commissions, 139. 
 Grave of Allston, The, 155. 
 
192 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Greenough, Horatio, 99, 140, 146. 
 Grief, 77. 
 
 Harding, Chester, 94, 123, 140, 144. 
 Harvard in 1796, 22. 
 Haydon, Benjamin R., 62. 
 Healy, G. P. A., 140. 
 Hogarthean Humor, 36. 
 Homesickness, 92. 
 Humboldts, The, 43. 
 
 Industry, 180. 
 
 Innocence, 79, 81. 
 
 Irving, Washington, 44, 53, 79, 81, 
 
 88, 102. 
 Ishes, The, 144. 
 Italiati Landscape .1 115. 
 Italy's Influence, 38, 135. 
 yacoVs Dream^ 84, 88. 
 Jameson, Mrs., 118, 137. 
 Jeremiah^ 107. 
 
 Lamb, Charles, 86, 
 Lawrence, Sir Thomas, 91. 
 Lectures on Art, 165. 
 Leslie, Charles R., 56-7, 59. 
 Liverpool, 55. 
 London, 33, 55. 
 
 Longfellow^, Henry W., 75, 145-7. 
 Lorenzo and Jessi yz, i 14. 
 Lowell's Pen-sketch, 131. 
 
 Madonna, A Modern, 70. 
 Malbone, 16, 20, 25, 31. 
 Marion's Cavalry, 9. 
 Marriage, 52, 108. 
 Martin, John, 71, 122. 
 Miriam, 112. 
 
 Mistake, The Great, 54, 88, 184. 
 Modelling, 49, 72. 
 Monaldi, 163. 
 Morning Years, 28. 
 Morse, Professor S. F. B., 53, 63, 
 77, 97» 138, 139. 153- 
 
 Napoleon's Trophies, 36. 
 Newport, 13. 
 Nobility, The British, 82. 
 Northcote, the Painter, 35. 
 
 Paint-King, The, 161. 
 Paris, Visits to, 36, 80. 
 Payne, John Howard, 63, 77, 173. 
 Percival, James Gates, 100. 
 Personal Appearance, 45, 131, 147, 
 148, 172. 
 
 Petworth, 85. 
 
 Physical Troubles, 65, 87. 
 
 Poetry, 25, 52, 68, 75, no, 114, 
 
 156.. 
 Portrait, 51, 
 
 Prescott, William H., 119, 145. 
 
 Raphael, 41. 
 Religion, 134, 152. 
 Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 32, 35. 
 Robinson, H. Crabbe, 86. 
 Roman Lady^ 113. 
 Rome, 40. 
 Rosalie., no. 
 
 Royal Academy, The, 31, 35, 95. 
 
 Sickness in England, 66. 
 Sisters, The, 114. 
 Southey, 67, 68, 74, 163. 
 Spalatro^s Vision, 116, 104. 
 Spanish Girl, The, 112. 
 Staigg, Richard M., 105. 
 Stuart, Gilbert, 98, 121. 
 Studios, 93, 132. 
 Sully, Thomas, 98, loi, 121. 
 Sumner, Charles, 38, 75, 114, 122, 
 
 145, 146, 155, 173. 
 Siiiiss Landscape, 115. 
 Switzerland, 39. 
 Sylphs of the Seasons, 68, 157. 
 
 Thorwaldsen, 43. 
 Ticknor, George, 140, 145. 
 Titianesque Color, 50. 
 Trumbull, John, 60. 
 Tuckerman, H T., 142, 181. 
 Turner, J. M. W., 39, 85. 
 Tuscan Girl, The, 114. 
 Two Painters, The, 159. 
 
 Valentine, The, 109. 
 Vanderlyn, 36, 40 
 Venetian Coloring, 37, 50, 57. 
 Veronese, Paul, 37, 57. 
 
 Waccamaw, 7, 9, 26. 
 Waterhouse. Dr., 23. 
 Waterston, Rev Dr., 22, 146, 148. 
 Weir, of West Point, 50, 148. 
 West, Benjamin, 31, 33, 54, 56, 65, 
 
 WnHs, N, P., 140. 
 W^ordsworth, William, 62, 73, 140, 
 145, 163. 
 
G^^^ENTERUBRARY