XL Painting in America. The last School of Painting which claims our atten- tion, both from its merit and its promise of future ex- cellence is that which, during the last hundred years, has sprung up in America. Beginning, as in England, with portraiture, this school has progressed until it now numbers in its ranks many very excellent figure and landscape painters. Indeed, if American Art can be said to have a bias in favour of one branch of subjects rather than the others, it must be said to be of landscape painting. American works are constantly brought to Europe to be exhibited, and are received with the greatest admiration. In an article on American Art, Mr. S. G. W. Benjamin (to whose writings we are indebted for much information contained in the following short notice) says — There is one fact connected with the early growth of our art which is entirely contrary to the laws which have else- where governed the progress of art, and is undoubtedly due to the new and anomalous features of our social economy. Elsewhere the art feeling has undeviatingly sought expression first with earthenware or plastic art, then with architecture and sculpture, and finally with painting. We have entirely reversed this order. The unsettled character of the population, especially at the time when emigration from the Eastern to the Western States caused a general movement from State to State, together with the abundance of lumber at that time, evidently offered no opportunity or demand for any but the rudest and most rapidly constructed buildings, and
