“ When only twenty years of age, Mr. Bicknell was well established in Boston as a portrait painter, but desire for studying art in foreign countries induced him to go abroad, and in 1861 he crossed the Atlantic, and entered the studio of Thomas Couture and L'École des Beaux-Arts, where he remained an earnest student for two years, and afterwards spent two years in visiting art centres of Europe, and in the pursuance of his studies. ”