Page:An Elementary History of Art.djvu/684

 >4 Painting to America in 1826 he devoted himself to portraying birds, just in the same manner as Catlin gave himself up to the painting of American Indians. He published, in Edinburgh, a book containing more than one thousand birds' portraits, the originals of which are now in the possession of the New York Historical Society. Having exhausted the feathered tribe, Audubon was engaged on a work on the quadrupeds of America, when he died. Chester Harding (1792 — 1866) began his career in painting as a sign-painter, at Pittsburgh, but subsequently turned his attention to portraiture, in which he afterwards became successful. From Pittsburgh he went to Phila- delphia, thence to S. Louis, and then to Boston, where he became the fashionable portrait-painter of the day. In 1823, Harding paid a visit to England, where he received much patronage from the nobility. He afterwards revisited England, but died at Boston, U. S. Of his portraits, that of Daniel Webster, in the possession of the Bar Association, New York, is the most famous. George Catlin (1796 — 1872), the painter of the abo- riginal Indians, was originally intended for the law, but abandoned that profession in favour of painting, and established himself in Philadelphia. In 1832 he started on a journey among the tribes of American Indians, and made the acquaintance of no less than forty-eight of them. On his return to civilization in 1839, he pub- lished the result of his journey in the form of a book with illustrations by his own hand. He resided for eight years in Europe. Many of his Indian sketches were exhibited at Philadelphia in 1876. Robert Charles Leslie (1794 — 1859), who was born of American parents in Clerkenwell, was taken when quite a