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LIVING AMERICAN ARTISTS.                          43

Academy of Design, just then inaugurated. It was the portrait of his child, and attracted some attention. Although his taste drew him more towards landscape than portrait or figure painting, subjects for the latter were more available, as he was now, comparatively, imprisoned in the city; and then there was the young father's love, no doubt, to inspire the work on this first offering to the muse.

From this time he continued to send contributions to the Academy exhibitions, landscape or figure subjects, steadily pursuing his work as an engraver with characteristic energy and with most flattering results. His engraving of Vanderlyn's painting of "Ariadne" crowned his efforts in his direction, for it ranked him the first engraver of the New World, and secured him a European reputation.

But it is less with the engraver than with the painter that we have now to do, and so we proceed, having suggested the light and shade of our picture, to lay the color on.

Durand exhibited at the National Academy, of which he was a founder, for nine successive years, each year his landscapes attracting more and more attention. In 1834, and not till then, he abandoned the graver, completely, for the pencil and the palette. He was then Recording Secretary of the Academy, which office he held during six years. In 1844 he was chosen Vice-President, and in the following year President, which last-named office he held for sixteen years, when he declined the honor, again proffered him, in favor of Prof. Morse, who had just then returned for a brief time to his brother artists from his successful labors in Electric Telegraphy, and to whom this compliment was as touching, doubtless, as the applause of the outside world then ringing in his ears.

In this re-election, year after year, to the presidency of the first Art Institute of the country, until he himself resigned the office in favor of a distinguished brother artist, the young watchmaker of Jefferson village, the engraver of New York, the rising landscape painter, had received the highest honors in the gift of the most cultured of his fellow countrymen. His life of industry and perseverance, his early-born and never-waning love of art, was fully crowned.

It now remains for us but to name a few of his works most highly prized, then close this brief biography. Of these, those which attracted most attention at the Exhibitions, and for which he received the most generous prices, are:—

"An Old Man's Reminiscences," painting in 1845; "Passage in the Life of Woman," in 1846; "The Beeches," in 1846; "Kindred Spirits," in 1849; "Progress," in 1853; "Primeval Forest," in 1854; "June Shower," in 1854; "In the Woods," in 1855; "The Symbol," in 1856; "Lake Hamlet," in 1857; "Sunday Morning," in 1860; "Francisca Notch," "Thanatopsis," "Lake George," "Berkshire," and "Mountain Forest," since then—the two last-named in 1870.

But need we say, as we glance through our records of the Academy, and other sources of information available to us, that we might compile a list of Mr. Durand's works to cover many of these pages—portraits, figure subjects, and landscapes. Few artists of any country have been more prolific of good work, carried religion to completion. There have been and are those from whose easels the canvases have passed much more rapidly, it is true; but few to whom it has been vouch-safed to follow their loving labor for half a century. How the results of even the most fastidious worker accumulate in fifty years! There is no collection in the country without its example or examples of Durand; few of the homes of our cultured people unadorned with some charming bit of forest loveliness or peaceful pastoral from his pencil. In all of these there is the irresistible charm of subtle truthfulness. Be it but a passage of tree forms or a brook's bed, there is that in it which tells of the depth of the artist's love for Nature, the evidences of his search for her minutest beauties.

There are those who dazzle us with strong effects of color, and seize upon our admiration without preface, as Durand does not; but we have non who have been more successful in the translation of Nature's more frequent joys—of her hours of calm repose; at the still noontide in her shady places, or at that yet more peaceful hour—

"When the bright sunset fills
The silver woods with light, the green slope throws
Its shadows on the hollows of the hills,
And wide the upland glows."