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small prints were copied from large English engravings, but some from original paintings.

The "Dull Lecture," after Newton's charming picture, at that time in the collection of Philip Hone, now in the Lenox Library, and "Ann Page, Slender and Shallow," after Leslie's fine group, also then telonging to Philip Hone, but unfortunately not now in this country — these small engravings are gems of beauty. So are also "The Sisters," after Morse, and "The Power of Love," representing Cupid riding and controlling a dragon, after a renaissance design. The painting belonged to a noted dealer and restorer known as "old Paff," in whose dimly lighted and musty den the connoisseurs of early New York congregated to wonder at the "Raphaels, Corregios, and stuff" which the lean and keen-eyed "Paff" had raked up, begrimed and daubed over, in some obscure pawnbroker's shop, and cleaned and brought in gemmy brilliance, and over whose beauties he would expatiate enthusiastically for hours.

From 1822 to 1836 Durand was mainly an engraver, but was constantly improving by the practice of drawing, chiefly during the evenings at home, also at the old American Academy, and then again in the schools of the National Academy after its foundation in 1826, 



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he having been actively engaged in originating that institution. 

I remember well the careful and accurate drawings he made as lately as 1836 and 1837, soon after the first life-school was opened at the Academy rooms in Beekman St. (Clinton Hall). He was then an established artist, forty years old, but was a devoted student of the figure in the life-class. 

When he first came to New York (in 1812) he said there was but one store in which the most ordinary print could be found for sale, and a lithograph he saw seemed to him an extraordinary masterpiece of art. There were no shops for plaster casts, but already the American Academy of Arts had a collection of casts of statues and busts, purchased for them by Mr. Rob. R. Livingston, then our minister to France. Dunlap speaks of Durand as drawing from these casts in 1817, and notices his proficiency at that time. These studies of antique sculpture strongly influenced the style of bank-note engraving, in which Durand was actively engaged during some years. His designs for this purpose show a refined and classical taste which he may be said to have introduced, and which corresponded with a theory he often expressed, that the mind and feeling of the artist, and not a mere imitation of natural objects, inclined the intelligent observer to