Page:Men of Mark in America vol 2.djvu/61

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AUGUSTUS GEORGE HEATON
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Fair stamp in 1893. He painted a portrait of Bishop Bowman for Cornell college, Iowa, 1885; of Paul Tulane, for Tulane university, 1892, and "The Promoters of the New Congressional Library Building," eighteen prominent statesmen, 1888. His picture "Hardships of Emigration," is on the ten-cent Omaha stamp. He has painted many portraits. In 1884 he selected Washington, District of Columbia as his place of residence. He painted pictures from frontier and Indian life in the West, 1896-99.

Mr. Heaton is an associate of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, a member of the National Academy of Science, of the National Geographic Society, of the Columbia Historical Society, of the Numismatic and Archeological Society of New York, of the Pennsylvania Historical Society, and of the Metropolitan and Cosmos clubs of Washington, District of Columbia. He was president of the American Numismatic Association, 1894-96.

He is a member of the Republican party. His reading has been varied. It includes standard English and French poetry, biography and history and very many authorities on Art, especially Da Vinci's Treatise on Art, and Montabert on Art. He is an excellent French scholar and has a fair knowledge of Spanish. His preference for his vocation he attributes to the fact that Rembrandt Peale was a maternal ancestor, and to his reading art biographies and poetry in his boyhood. He was restrained from boyish sports in childhood, but played cricket, and later had some gymnasium practice and a saddle horse. He enjoys the best of health through very temperate living.

He says of his own career, that "great reserve, a dignified disposition, disinclination to rivalry, the lack of necessity for hard struggle financially, and the dislike of urging patronage, have been strong influences." He emphasizes to young Americans, the need of "working in the line of one's best capacity, with perseverance, cheerfulness, system, honesty, intelligence and sociability." He is a member of the Protestant Episcopal church (Low church) but is broad and sympathetic in his views. In 1900 he published a religious epic, "The Heart of David," which has been very highly commended, and "Fancies and Thoughts in Verse," 1904. In 1893 he produced "Mint Marks," a numismatic work. As a numismatist he has made a fine collection of coins. He has traveled widely.

He was married to Adelaide Whiting Griswold in 1874. They had three sons living in 1905.