Well, from nursing those portraits so long, I have
come at last to have a perfect infatuation for art.
I have a teacher now, and my enthusiasm continually
and tumultuously grows, as I learn to use with more
and more facility the pencil, brush, and graver.
I am studying under De Mellville, the house and portrait
painter. [His name was Smith when he lived in the
West.] He does any kind of artist work a body wants,
having a genius that is universal, like Michael Angelo.
Resembles that great artist, in fact. The back
of his head is like this, and he wears his hat-brim
tilted down on his nose to expose it.
I have been studying under De Mellville several months
now. The first month I painted fences, and gave
general satisfaction. The next month I white-washed
a barn. The third, I was doing tin roofs; the
forth, common signs; the fifth, statuary to stand
before cigar shops. This present month is only
the sixth, and I am already in portraits!
The humble offering which accompanies these remarks
[see figure] —the portrait of his Majesty
William III., King of Prussia —is my fifth
attempt in portraits, and my greatest success.
It has received unbounded praise from all classes of
the community, but that which gratifies me most is
the frequent and cordial verdict that it resembles
the galaxy portraits. Those were my first
love, my earliest admiration, the original source
and incentive of my art-ambition. Whatever I
am in Art today, I owe to these portraits. I
ask no credit for myself—I deserve none.
And I never take any, either. Many a stranger
has come to my exhibition (for I have had my portrait
of King William on exhibition at one dollar a ticket),
and would have gone away blessing me, if I had
let him, but I never did. I always stated where
I got the idea.
King William wears large bushy side-whiskers, and
some critics have thought that this portrait would
be more complete if they were added. But it was
not possible. There was not room for side-whiskers
and epaulets both, and so I let the whiskers go, and
put in the epaulets, for the sake of style.
That thing on his hat is an eagle. The Prussian
eagle—it is a national emblem. When
I say hat I mean helmet; but it seems impossible to
make a picture of a helmet that a body can have confidence
in.
I wish kind friends everywhere would aid me in my
endeavor to attract a little attention to the galaxy
portraits. I feel persuaded it can be accomplished,
if the course to be pursued be chosen with judgment.
I write for that magazine all the time, and so do many
abler men, and if I can get these portraits into universal
favor, it is all I ask; the reading-matter will take
care of itself.
There is nothing like it in the Vatican. Pius
IX.
It has none of that vagueness, that dreamy spirituality
about it, which many of the first critics of Arkansas
have objected to in the Murillo school of Art.
Ruskin.
