Most of the members of this group were in sharp contrast to West and Copley in temperament. Instead of the immense energy, application, and foresight which characterized their elders, the three most interesting ones, Gilbert Stuart, Trumbull, and Dunlap, were beset with the evil spirits of shiftlessness and adventure.

From the few letters which Stuart wrote, but chiefly from the impressions of his friends, notably Dr. Waterhouse and John Trumbull, we get a rather romantic picture of him and his activities. Arrived in London in 1775 with no definite plans, little money, and, as his only assets, considerable skill in the arts of painting and music, he lived a rather precarious existence for several years until he managed, quite accidentally, to procure a position as organist in a church. What money he had he seems to have expended on clothes, for he first presented himself to West in "a fashionable green coat."

This was in 1778. It would seem that even yet the young artist hesitated to apply to his elder for aid, for Waterhouse claims that, later in the same year, he was instrumental in bringing them together. At all events, in August, 1780, Trumbull found Stuart established at West's studio. Apparently Stuart not only differed from his teacher in temperament, but he also held contrary theories of art. Much less formal and precise, he imparted to his pictures a freedom of drawing which seemed improper to West. With Raphael West and Trumbull, he was given some special training in the evenings, but his lack of patience made this effort futile, probably much to the improvement of his later work.

The war does not seem to have had any marked effect on his career, but that of John Trumbull was twice interrupted. At its outbreak, while the latter was still in America, he gave

up his ambitions temporarily and enlisted in the army, soon becoming a colonel and aide-de-camp to Washington, but he resigned because he felt that his advancement was not commensurate with his abilities and the risks involved in his duties. In 1780, he proceeded to England and once more took up the study of painting. The story of his arrest at the instigation of loyalists, who had for long been trying to accomplish this end, has already been told. The threatened execution was changed to imprisonment, no doubt because of West's intercession, and he was given a choice of place for his incarceration. Tothill-fields Bridewell was the prison selected, and he gives in his autobiography a very full picture of his treatment:

"The building was a quadrangle of perhaps two hundred feet-an old and irregular building-the house of the keeper occupying one angle and part of a side. . . . After the first shock, during which I cared not where I slept or what I ate, I hired from Mr. Smith, the keeper, one of the rooms of his house, for which I paid a guinea a week. . . . The room was neatly furnished, and had a handsome bureau bed. I received my breakfast and dinner,-whatever I chose to order and pay for, from the little public house, called the tap. The prison allowance of the government was a penny worth of bread, and a penny a day; this I gave to the turnkey for brushing my hat, clothes and shoes. Besides these comforts I had the privilege of walking in the garden. Every evening when Mr. Smith went to his bed, he knocked at my door, looked in, saw that I was safe, wished me good night, locked the door, drew the bolts, put the key in his pocket, and withdrew. In the morning when he quitted his own apartment, he unlocked my door, looked in to see that all was safe, wished me a good morning, and went his way.'

Finally, through the kind offices of Charles James Fox,

Burke became interested in the case and obtained an order of the King in council to admit the prisoner to bail on condition that he leave the Kingdom within thirty days. Copley and West were his sureties, the condition was complied with, and he sailed for America, only to return in 1784 to, continue his studies.

On this second visit, he called upon Burke with a letter of thanks from his father, the Governor of Connecticut, for his earlier kindness in his behalf. After reading the letter, the statesman turned to Trumbull. "Your father speaks of painting as being the great object of your pursuit," the American quotes him as saying. "Do you not intend to study architecture also?" At Trumbull's answer that he knew enough of architecture already for use in backgrounds, Burke continued, "I do not mean that, Mr. Trumbull; you are aware that architecture is the eldest sister, that painting and sculpture are the youngest, and subservient to her; you must also be aware that you belong to a young nation, which will soon want public buildings; these must be erected before the decorations of painting and sculpture will be required. I would therefore strongly advise you to study architecture thoroughly and scientifically, in order to qualify yourself to superintend the erection of these national buildings-decorate them also, if you will." Trumbull had cause to regret not having followed this "wise and kind advice" when he was commissioned to do the Capitol paintings.

Although by his own testimony Trumbull was the successor of Stuart as the favorite pupil of West, and for more than thirty years was almost in the relationship of a son to him, there seems to have been some bitterness between the two men toward the end. The cause lay in Trumbull's lack of success as a historical painter in England, a circumstance fortunate in that it turned him to his own country. As an

artist he was probably inferior to his master, but he did much of what we may presume West would have accomplished for American historical painting, had he likewise been sufficiently tempted to return to his own country.

In his Rise and Progress of the Art of Design in the United States, William Dunlap discusses his own life and work in its proper chronological place among the biographies of these early American painters. He was, however, more of a historian than an artist, and our debt to him is greater for what he has recorded of the early development of art in America than for what he himself contributed to that development.

"Seeing that I aspired to be a painter, and talked of West and Copley, and read books on the art, my father looked out for an instructor for me," he says in this autobiography. The teacher engaged was a certain New York sign painter who had been a student of West, and Dunlap "commenced portrait-painter" in 1782. But, alas, "the world was a wilderness of roses" and he was not content from roving until he set sail for London in the spring of 1784. "Heretofore," he says, "going from America to England was called going home that time had nearly passed away—but I did not feel that I was going to a land of strangers."

In London he was introduced to West and began his studies in earnest. But the roving spirit was still upon him. "Many a day was wasted," he regretfully acknowledges, "in walking to the New York Coffee House, near the Royal Exchange, under pretense of looking for letters from home. The morning lounged away, I dined at the Cock eatinghouse, where the master with a white apron waited upon me to know if all was satisfactory, and then (the business of the day over), rolled away in his coach to his country seat. Dining and port wine over, there was no use in going home,

the theatres stood midway; and when the play was over, I might rest from a lost day, and not dream that I had been doing wrong or neglecting right."

This may not be a very good way to make painters, but it makes admirable gossips and writers of personal histories and memoirs. Dunlap was preparing for his real profession during his stay in England, even though he did not know it at the time.

It is worthy of note that not only did this first group of West's students return and spend the greater part of their careers in the United States, but they likewise did much to forward the beginnings of art in this country. Charles Willson Peale, almost a contemporary, but also one of West's earliest students, succeeded after repeated failures in establishing in 1809 the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and Robert Fulton, who studied under West in 1786, not only made efforts toward the same end, but arranged for the sale of all his master's paintings to his countrymen, a plan, which, if it had succeeded, might have brought West himself back to America. His failure to return was, however, due to no lack of interest in his country's artistic future, for, in a letter to William Rawle, September, 1805, he shows great concern for American art, particularly for Philadelphia as its center, and offers both advice and casts for copying by students."

III

The second group of artists who went to London for study may scarcely be called more than foster sons of Ben. They arrived after the year 1800 when West was at the height of his influence but in the decline of his powers. Art Ms. in the possession of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.