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618   THE PRESIDENT OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY. [DECEMBER

instead of diligently reading Blackstone and Coke, and copying legal documents, was occupying himself in the more congenial task of copying the prints and pictures which adorned the lawyer's office. He took some of his pupil's drawings to Colonel Trumbull, the painter of the "Signing of the Declaration of Independence," who was then the president of the Academy, and asked his opinion of their merits. The veteran painter, after examining them, declared that the boy had unquestionable talent, but asked Mr. De Peyster if he could make a lawyer of him.  Mr. De Peyster replied that he thought he could ; he "had brains enough for any profession."
"Tell him, then," said Trumbull, "to stick to the law, for in that he may attain wealth and fame. As an artist in this country, he can have little expectation of either."
And yet Colonel Trumbull, at this period, was certainly the most successful of our artists. Congress had paid him for his four pictures in the rotunda of the capitol at Washington thirty-two thousand dollars, a sum at that time probably equivalent to four times its present value.
Page, however, was determined to be an artist, and the praise of Trumbull far outweighed, in his youthful and ardent mind, the prudent discouragement of the disappointed and somewhat morbid old man. He quitted forever the lawyer's office, and engaged himself as an apprentice to a portrait-painter named Herring, a man of mediocre ability and not very agreeable character, who turned the talents of his pupil to pecuniary profit by making him paint banners, transparencies, and similar rubbish, for which there was then more popular demand than for real works of art. From this drudgery, however, the boy learned something, and at the end of a year or so obtained admission to the studio of Morse, since famous as the inventor of the electric telegraph, and at that time an artist of genuine skill, who had studied in England under the care of Allston, and had been the pupil of West and Copley. The American Academy, having come to an end by internal dissensions, and by a conflagration which destroyed the best part of its models and drawings, was reorganized in 1828, as the National Academy of Design, chiefly by the influence of Morse, who was elected its first president. Page, whom he treated with great kindness, and who had rapidly improved under his instruction, entered himself a student of the Academy, where the excellence of his drawings from the antique was rewarded by a large silver medal the first premium given by the Academy to any one. He was then in his seventeenth year. 
Just at this period, in the midst of his enthusiasm for art, and with a brilliant career apparently opening before him, he became impressed with strong religious convictions, and joined the Presbyterian Church. With characteristic ardor and sense of duty, he resolved to abandon his cherished avocation and become a minister of the Gospel. He accordingly went to Andover, Massachusetts, to study theology in its celebrated school, and resided there, and afterward at Amherst College, engaged in preparatory studies, supporting himself meanwhile by painting miniatures, for which he got twenty or thirty dollars apiece. At the end of two years of study, however, he found himself in a state of mental doubt on religious matters, which gradually deepened into almost entire disbelief of what he then supposed to be the leading doctrines of Christian faith, and he, of course, renounced all idea of entering the ministry, and abandoned his theological studies. The state of unbelief into which he fell at this period continued for nearly twenty years, until at Florence, Italy, he became acquainted with the writings of Swedenborg, and adopted the doctrines of the New Church, which have ever since had a controlling influence, not only on his life and opinions, but on the style and method of his art.
From Amherst, Page went to Albany, where he opened a studio, and painted portraits with great [[ability?]] and success, his works being recognized as equally remarkable for brilliancy of color and accuracy of drawing. He now resolved to go to Europe, and for that purpose went to New York, where he met with a young lady of whom he became enamoured, and whom he suddenly married while he was yet under the age of twenty-one. This connection put an end for the time to his project of going abroad, and he opened a studio on Broadway, was elected a member of the National Academy, and took at once a high position in portraiture and as a colorist. He was selected by the city government to paint a full-length likeness of Governor Marcy for the gallery in the City Hall, and Boston sent for him to paint the portrait of John Quincy Adams for Faneuil Hall. Besides portraits, he painted at this time a Holy Family, now in the Boston Athenæum a prison-scene, called "The Wife's Last Visit to Her Condemned Husband," which was exhibited with great success and added largely to his reputation, but which was afterward burnt in a fire that consumed the house of its purchaser. He painted also a picture representing the infancy of Henry IV. of France, which is now, we believe in a private collection in this city.
In the midst of these labors, while his genius was steadily developing and his fame rapidly growing, his marriage, which had produced three daughters, was terminated, through no fault of his own, a flagrant misconduct on the part of his wife, for which the law promptly gave him a divorce. He married again in 1840, we believe a young lady of distinguished beauty, and, after a short residence on [[Staten?]] Island, removed to Boston, where he established his studio on Tremont Street, and his residence in Brookline, one of the suburbs of the city.
Page had made several visits to Boston previous to his [[illegible]] thither, and had formed intimacies with many of its most cultured and distinguished people. He associated particularly and had [[illegible]] with a brilliant circle of young men, mostly graduates of Harvard College in the class of 1838, among whom were the poet Lowell, sculptor and poet Story, and the witty and accomplished Nathan Hale. His life hitherto had been somewhat isolated, so far as intellectual sympathy was concerned; but in Boston he found himself surrounded by companions of the highest calibre, interested, like himself, in the profoundest questions of art, philosophy, and society, and fully competent to their thorough discussion. The friendships there are to have, for the most part, continued unbroken for thirty years, and have had a predominant influence in the formation and development of tastes, character, and principles, not only as a man, but as an artist.
In 1844 Lowell published the first collected edition of his [[poems?]] to which he prefixed a dedication addressed to Page, in which he said, "Sure I am that no nobler, gentler, or purer spirit than yours ever anointed by the eternal beauty to bear that part of her message which it belongs to the great painter to reveal. The sympathy of sister pursuits, of an agreeing artistic faith, and, yet [[men have?]] common hope for the final destiny of man, has not been [[illegible]] to us, and now you will forgive the pride I feel in having this advantage over you, namely, of telling that admiration never stinted to utter in private."
Before his removal from New York, Page had painted, in that [[illegible]] part of 1842, an admirable portrait of Lowell, who was then on a transient visit to the metropolis. It now hangs in the hall of Elmwood, the poet's residence in Cambridge, which contains also a portrait of the artist himself, painted at the same time. While in Boston, he painted a number of portraits of distinguished citizens, among them two of the venerable Josiah Quincy, then president of Harvard University, one of which now hangs in the college gallery.
In 1847 he returned to New York, where he remained two years, and then went to Europe. He resided abroad about eleven years, chiefly in Florence and Rome. In the latter city, the circle of his intimate friends was enlarged by the addition of the Brownings, with whom he formed relations of the warmest friendship, and of whom he painted admirable portraits. Mrs. Browning speaks of him admiringly in "Aurora Leigh;" and, in his poem of "Cleon," Browning has delineated his character and genius at considerable length, though under a fictitious name. 
At Rome, also, he experienced a second domestic calamity, his wife became estranged from him, apparently from no other [[illegible]] his part than an intense devotion to art, which did not please a [[illegible]] and frivolous woman. She separated from him under circumstances which, properly attested, enabled him without difficulty to again cure a divorce in the court of his native State, which never granted divorces without a good cause. He made a brief visit to New York for this purpose, and on returning to Rome, undeterred by these recent infelicities, incredibly married a third wife, with whom he came back in 1860 to his native country, where he has since remained. After his return he resided for four or five years at Eagleswood, near Perth Amboy, New Jersey, where he had a studio, and since then has built a house in a secluded situation at the lower end of Staten Island, where he continues to live happily with a devoted and congenial wife and six young children, the offspring of his latest marriage.  
The upper part of this house was planned for a studio, but has never been used for that purpose, as Page has established his painting 

Transcription Notes:
This page has been transcribed to completion; however, some text remains illegible due to the tape on the paper. Thus, many question marks [[?]]remain. Assistance with these words would be helpful. Thank you. Don't use indentations. Nathan Hale, Jr., Story and Lowell became friends at Harvard College. <<https://www.jstor.org/stable/40753570>>