Page:Anecdotes of painters, engravers, sculptors and architects, and curiosities of art (IA anecdotesofpaint01spoo).pdf/85

 the contempt of critics, depressed spirits induced by pecuniary embarrassments, blast their hopes, enervate their energies, and deprive them of the potency to cope with the heartless world.

Men there are who would visit the generous Allston with censure, because, while laboring under disappointments, ill health, and crushed anticipations, he failed to finish his painting of Belshazzar's Feast, a theme that possibly became uncongenial to his pencil. May their ill feeling be forgotten, and, if the fountain of their sympathies be not wholly dried up, may it yield a little lenity towards one of America's noblest sons.

It may not be inappropriate to insert a tribute to the memory of Allston, which will serve to vindicate his character from his aspersers, and exhibit it as traced by one for many years connected with him by the dearest ties of friendship:

', November, 1843.

The Duke de Luynes, a French nobleman, has lately given a commission to Monsieur Ingres, the painter, recently Director of the French Academy of Arts in Rome, to decorate his palace at Dampierre with a series of pictures, the subjects of which I have not heard. One hundred thousand francs are allowed to the artist for this work. M. Ingres was a student at Rome, pensioned by his government, at the time Mr. W. Allston and my