Prominent among the American students in the French school was ROBERT WYLIE, a native of the Isle of Man, who was brought to the United States when a child, and died in Brittany at the age of about forty years in 1877. His _Death of a Breton Chieftain_, in the Metropolitan Museum of New York, and _Breton Story-Teller_, in the Pennsylvania Academy, two very fine pictures, although somewhat heavy in colour, show him to have been a careful observer, with a power of characterisation hardly approached by any other American painter.
[Illustration: LAMBS ON THE MOUNTAIN-SIDE. _By_ WILLIAM MORRIS HUNT.]
As a remarkable artist, belonging also to the French-American school, although he never left his native land, we must mention R. H. FULLER, of Boston, who died comparatively young in 1871. Fuller had a most extraordinary career and displayed extraordinary talent. Originally a cigar-maker, and later a night watchman, he was almost entirely self-taught, his study consisting in carefully looking at the French landscapes on exhibition at the stores, and then attempting to reproduce them at home. The knowledge thus gained he applied to the rendering of American landscapes, and he had so assimilated the methods of his French exemplars, that his creations, while they often clearly betrayed by what master they had been inspired, were yet thoroughly American.
This sketch of the history of painting in America is necessarily very fragmentary, by reason of its shortness, as well as by the limitation imposed by the plan of this book, which excludes all living artists. Many prominent representatives of the various tendencies to which the reader's attention has been called, have, therefore, had to be omitted. It is believed, nevertheless, that, while the mention of additional names would have made the record fuller, the general proportions of the outline would not have been materially changed thereby. Nor is the apparently critical tone, the repeated dwelling on the lack of originality in subject as well as method, to be taken as an expression of disparagement. A fact has simply been stated which admits of a ready explanation, hinted at in the introductory remarks, but which must be kept steadily in view if American Art is ever to assume a more distinctive character. The painters of America, considering the circumstances by which they have been surrounded, have no reason to be ashamed of their past record. They have shown considerable aptitude in the acquisition of technical attainments, and the diligence and enthusiasm in the pursuit of their studies on the part of the younger artists, promise well for the future. It rests altogether with the nation itself whether this promise shall be fulfilled.
