Boston: Williams
& Everett.
_Durand's Portrait of Bryant_. Engraved by Schoff & Jones. New York:
Published by the Century Club.
_Barry's Portrait of Whittier_. Published in Photograph. Boston:
Brainard.
Almost one of the lost arts is that of portraiture. Raised by Titian and
his contemporaries to the position of one of the noblest walks of Art,
and in the generations following depressed to the position of minister
to vanity and foolish pride, it has remained, during the most of the
years since, one of the lowest and least reputable of the fields
of artistic labor. The lost vein was broken into by Reynolds and
Gainsborough, who left a golden glory in all they did for us; but no
one came to inherit, and in England no one has since appeared worthy of
comparison with them. In all Europe there is no school of portraiture
worth notice; the so-called portrait-painters are only likeness-makers,
comparing with the true portraitist as a topographical draughtsman does
with a landscape artist. The intellectual elements of the artistic
character, which successful portraiture insists on, are some of its very
greatest,--if we admit, as it seems to us that we must, that imagination
is not strictly intellectual, but an inspiration, an exaltation of the
whole nature.
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