Page:Anecdotes of painters, engravers, sculptors and architects, and curiosities of art (IA anecdotesofpaint01spoo).pdf/86



however, aided by a government.
 * self were there pursuing the same studies—not,

When the melancholy news of the death of my much regretted friend and fellow artist reached here, which was about the time the above favor was granted to M. Ingres, I could not but reflect on the less fortunate destiny of our highly accomplished countryman, whose muse, alas! was doomed to linger out a languid existence in a state of society unfavorable to the arts, or at least where there was little to encourage and sustain them, compared with the capitals in Europe where he had lived and studied. Such an indifference to the arts is not confined to one section of our country, but pervades the whole United States.

It is indeed a subject of regret that so highly-gifted an artist should not have been commissioned to ornament some public building, or private mansion of opulence, with a series of pictures in the free style of fresco, comprising poetical designs and landscapes, in which he was so superior, instead of being subjected to finish a picture which, from some cause, he had become dissatisfied with, for the prosecution of which he found himself debarred of even the advantages of models and costume, not to mention those of a less material nature—the absence of all the great models of art to kindle and inspire his genius, etc. A work of the kind before suggested would admit of a free execution, independent in a degree of models and costume. Such a commis