LITTLE BIOGRAPHIES.—HOW SUCCESS LS WON.

Work is a stimulus to work, and loafing a stimulus
to Jaziness.”

While in Paris, he became enthusiastically fond
of Jean Francois Millet who was then struggling
with poverty.

“For years,” said Mr. Hunt, “ Millet painted
beautiful things and nobody looked at them.
They fascinated me, and I would go to Barbison,
his home, and spend all the money I could get in
buying his pictures. I brought them to Boston.
‘What is that horrid thing?’ ‘Oh, it is a sketch
by a friend of mine.’ Now, he is the greatest
painter in Europe.”

When Mr. Hunt was thirty-one, he came back
to America to live. He had then painted his
great painting of the Prodigal Son, leaning on the
breast of his father, his exquisite Marguerite
plucking leaves from a daisy, and several other
works now well known. There was less art cul-
ture among our people then than now, but he had
courage and hope. He opened a studio in Néw-
port, and for seven years painted portraits mostly.
His standard was high. He lived in his art; was
wedded to it. He said, “You want a picture to
seize you as forcibly as if a man had seized you
by the shoulder! Strive for simplicity ; not com-
plexity! Don’t talk of what you are going to do!
Dor” There is a man for you who was building
his fame upon the foundation of thorough work.

Once, when asked by a lady how long it had
taken to draw a charcoal picture, he replied, “I
think it took me an hour or two; but I suppose I
ought to say that it took me forty years, as I’ve
been drawing about that length of time.”

Witty and brilliant in conversation, kind to

everybody, especially to young artists, he became
the centre of a circle of charming and earnest
people. He hated shams and affectations.
when asked what he thought of a young painter of
foppish appearance, he replied, “I don’t know
him. I know his clothes. I can have nothing to
do with such a man when I meet him; [I look
right through, and beyond, and around him.” But
he criticised all work tenderly as all great masters
do, saying, “‘ Don’t look too hard except for some-
thing agreeable. We can find all the disagreeable
things in the world between our own hats and
boots.”

He was as genuinely simple, too, as he was gen-
uinely great. One morning as he came out of his
studio on Tremont street, he met an old woman
on the stairs carrying down a big box of ashes.
He at once assisted, and together they placed it
on the sidewalk, quite to the surprise of some of
his kid-gloved admirers. :

When our artist was forty-three, and fame and
wealth had both been won, and time was precious,
he gladly opened his best studio to teach a large
class of women. How it broadened and beautified
the lives of those learners! How small seemed

Once.

293

the round of shopping and making calls, after
studying with such a master! His presence was
magnetic, raying out inspiration. One of his
ablest pupils (Miss Helen M. Knowlton) now a
well-known artist, used to jot down on bits of
paper in the class-room some of his brilliant words
and suggestions ; and so important were they that
in book form they have been heartily welcomed
both in Europe and America. Indeed the volume
is used as an art text-book in some of the normal
schools.

Five years after this, the great Boston fire swept
away much of the tangible labor of his lifetime,
but he met his loss bravely, and began work afresh,
toiling harder than ever. He said, “ Painting, for
me, is the only work worth doing, and there is no
other play.” “Draw whatever fascinates you.
Love something and paint it,” was often his ad-
vice. Sometimes envious people spoke of him as
the one-man-power in art in Boston.” But in his
modesty he has been heard to say, “I’ve been at
painting all my life, and I don’t feel to-day that I
know anything. I’m not sure that I can go on
with a single one of these portraits that I have
begun.”

He studied incessantly. Veronese, Michael
Angelo, Titian and Velasquez were his teachers
among the old masters, and Millet, Delacroix,
Corot and Turner among the modern. Of the
latter he said, “One hundred years from now, Tur-
ner will be counted the greatest painter who ever
lived. His coloris wonderful! His color is iri-
descent. The Venetians could get such color only
by painting transparently, but Turner is solid,
clear, throughout.”

In 1878 he was asked to paint two large pic-
tures upon the walls of the grand State House at
Albany, N. Y. He accepted, though shrinking
from it, and for five mouths, before beginning the
work, wrought at his plans. One of these great
mural paintings represents the Goddess of Night in
her cloud chariot ; before her three restive horses,
and behind her asleeping mother and child. Inthe
other, is depicted Columbus, standing in a boat
in mid-ocean, with Hope at the prow and Fortune
at the helm. So careful was he in the execution
of these paintings that thirty charcoal drawings
were made, also twenty oil paintings, and the col-
ors were tested on stone sent from Albany. Then
for fifty-five days, Mr. Hunt and his assistants
painted on the walls from early morning till late
at night standing on scaffolding.

When completed, in coloring and finish, the pic-
tures were a triumph of art, but the artist had broken
down in health. He sought the Isles of Shoals,
hoping to find renewal of strength from the brac-
ing and restful ocean breezes, but it was too late,
One September morning the country was shocked
to hear that the great artist was found lying peace-
fully in a little pool back of the cottages, dead. It