Page:Masterpieces of the sea (Morris, Richards, 1912).djvu/32

WILLIAM T. RICHARDS II.

William T. Richards (the middle initial standing for Trost) was born in Philadelphia on November 14, 1833. I know little about his early education, nor about the family traits that may have inclined him to art in an arid and unprofitable day. But Miss Fidelia Bridges, a pupil and life-long friend, tells of the unusual skill of his grandfather Trost, a Dutch goldsmith, from whom he may have inherited his manual dexterity and his phenomenal patience.

Sully was about fifty when Richards was born, and Stuart had died five years earlier, leaving the field to Neagle and Otis and Inman and the younger Peales; but by the time young Richards took up his brush these had passed, and their successors were mostly the "idle singers of an empty day." Thus he emerged upon a barren horizon, and he made for himself those 18