George Fuller. 39
one with a sympathy whose keenness is yet in some strange way seems the only
even bitter, and excite a deep respect proper title for the work to which it is
and love for the man who could paint attached, came out of the artist's own
with so mucla. simplicity and power. It mind. His Priscilla was started as
is not strange that when the news of an Elsie Venner, but he found it
his death became known, many who impossible to work upon the lines
had never seen him, but had studied another had laid down without too
the pictures in his latest exhibition, much cramping his own fancy ; when
should have come, with tears in their half done he thought of calling it
eyes, to the studios which neighbored Lady Wentworth, and at last gave, it
his, to learn something of his history. its present name by chance of having
Such works are not struck out in a taken up The Blithedale Romance, heat, but grow and develop like human and noting with pleased surprise how lives, and it will not surprise many to closely Hawthorne's account of his know that most of them were labored heroine fitted his own creation. The on for years. With Fuller, a picture Nydia was started with the idea of was never completed. His idea was presenting the helplessness of blind- constantly in advance of his work, and ness, with a hint of the exaltation of persisted in new suggestions, so that the other senses that is consequent the Winifred Dysart was two years upon the loss of sight, and showed in the painting, the Arethusa five, at first merely a girl groping along a and The Gatherer of Simples and wall in search of a door ; and the Are- tha Witch, after an even longer thusa was the outgrowth of a general course of labor, were held by him at inspiration caused by a reading of Spen- his death as not yet satisfactory. The ser's Faerie Queen, and did not receive figures in the two works last mentioned its present very appropriate name until have suffered almost no change since its exhibition made some designation first put upon the canvas, but they necessary.
have from time to time appeared in at I have devoted this study on of
least a dozen different landscapes, and Mr. Fuller to his quality as an artist
would doubtless have been placed in as rather than to his character as a man,
many more before he had satisfied his but shall have written in vain if some
fastidious and exacting taste. hint has not been given of the loveli-
The artist found as much difficulty ness of his disposition, the modesty of
in naming his pictures when they were his spirit, the chaste force of his mind,
done as he did in painting them. It is A man inevitably paints as he himself
a prevalent, but quite erroneous, impres- is, and shows his nature in his works :
sion that his habit was to select a sub- Fuller's pictures are founded upon
ject from some literary work, and then purity of thought, and painted with
attempt to paint it in the light of the dignity and single-heartedness, and
author's ideas. His practice exactly the grace of his life dwells in them.
reversed this method : he painted his —
picture first, and then tried to evolve [George Fuller was born in Deer-
or find a name that would fit it. The field, Massachusetts, in 1822. He was
name Winifred Dysart, which is with- descended from old Puritan stock, and
out literary origin or meaning, and his ancesters were among the early
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