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APPLETONS' JOURNAL
OF LITERATURE SCIENCE AND ART

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by D. APPLETON & Co., in the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington.

No. 140–VOL. VI.] SATURDAY, DECEMBER 2, 1871. [PRICE TEN CENTS.

THE PRESIDENT OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY.

[[image]] Engraving [[/image]]
WILLIAM PAGE.
 
WILLIAM PAGE, one of the greatest of American painters, and president of the National Academy of Design, was born at Albany, January 23, 1811. His father, Levi Page, was the son of a farmer in Coventry, Connecticut, and, after leaving the homestead, followed a singular variety of pursuits, being by turns a mail-carrier on horseback, a printer, a shopke, a navigator on the Hudson, and finally a plane-maker. He was a man of much natural intelligence, and, though imperfectly educated, displayed through life considerable mathematical talent.  His wanderings led him to Albany, where he became acquainted with and married a widow named Dunnell, who had several children by her first husband, and whose maiden name was Tamar Gale, and her birthplace Worcester County,  Massachusetts.

William was the only child of this second marriage.  He received the rudiments of his education at Albany, whence, at the age of nine, he removed with his parents to New York, where he was placed as a pupil with Joseph Hoxie, who kept a somewhat noted school in the Bowery, and who was afterward popular as a politician and as a fluent and humorous speaker at public meetings.  He remained under Hoxie's care about a year, and was then transferred to one of the public schools.  Almost as soon as he could handle a pencil, he had shown a marked talent for art, which developed so rapidly that, at the age of eleven, he made a drawing in India-ink of a portrait of Louis XIV of France, which the principal of his school carried for exhibition to the American Institute, by which a prize was awarded to the youthful draughtsman.  In those days, however, art was little appreciated in this country, and was hardly regarded as a regular profession--certainly not as one by which a living could be made.  In spite, therefore, of his manifest proclivity for its pursuit, his parents determined to make him a lawyer, and at the age of fourteen he was entered at the office of Frederick De Peyster, a genial and accomplished gentleman, who, while successfully practising law, was himself not without a taste for art, and was then the secretary of the American Academy of the Fine Arts, which had been founded in 1807, under the auspices of Livingston, Clinton, Fulton, and other prominent citizens.  Mr. De Peyster soon discovered that his pupil, 

[[note]] 30 cents [[/note]]