Various

“ The death of George Fuller has removed a strong and original figure from the activity of American art, and added a weighty name to its history. To speak of him now, while his work is fresh in the public mind, is a labor of some peril; so easy is it, when the sense of loss is keen, to make mistakes in judgment, and to allow the friendly spirit to prevail over the judicial, in an estimation of him as a man and a painter. ”

“ Thus, friends and citizens, did the kind hand of over-ruling Providence conduct us, through toils, fatigues and dangers, to Independence and Peace. If piety be the rational exercise of the human soul, if religion be not a chimera, and if the vestiges of heavenly assistance are clearly traced in those events, which mark the annals of our nation, it becomes us, on this day, in consideration of the great things, which the LORD has done for us, to render the tribute of unfeigned thanks, to that GOD, who superintends the Universe, and holds aloft the scale, that weighs the destinies of nations. ”

“ Every American cannot but blush to look upon it, so simple and dignified is its rebuke of the nation's long perversity and guilt. The artist's next important effort was the famous Winifred Dysart, as far removed in purpose from The Quadroon as it could well be, yet akin to it by its added testimony to the painter's constant sympathy with weak and beseeching things, and worthy to stand at an equal height with the picture of the slave by virtue of its beauty of conception, loveliness of character, and pathetic appeal to the interest. ”

“ Finally, to close the sanguinary conflict, to grant America the blessings of an honorable peace, and clothe her heroes with laurels, CORNWALLIS, at whose feet the kings and princes of Asia have since thrown their diadems, was compelled to submit to the sword of our father WASHINGTON.—The great drama is now completed—our Independence is now acknowledged; and the hopes of our enemies are blasted forever!—Columbia is now seated in the forum of nations and the empires of the world are loft in the bright effulgence of her glory! ”

“ Britain, twice humbled for her aggressions, has at length been taught to respect us. But France, once our ally, has dared to insult us! she has violated her obligations; she has depredated our commerce—she has abused our government, and riveted the chains of bondage on our unhappy fellow citizens! Not content with ravaging and depopulating the fairest countries of Europe, not yet satiated with the contortions of expiring republics, the convulsive agonies of subjugated nations, and the groans of her own slaughtered citizens, she has spouted her fury across the Atlantic ”

“ Declining therefore a dissertation on the principles of civil polity, you will indulge me in slightly sketching on those events, which have originated, nurtured, and raised to its present grandeur the empire of Columbia.
As no nation on the globe can rival us in the rapidity of our growth, since the conclusion of the revolutionary war—so none, perhaps, ever endured greater hardships, and distresses, than the people of this country, previous to that period.
We behold a feeble band of colonists, engaged in the arduous undertaking of a new settlement, in the wilds of North America. ”

“ He perceived the truth that nature without man is naught, even as there is no color without light, and strove earnestly to show in his art the relations that they sustain to each other. He saw, also, that the material in each is nothing without the spirit which they share in common, and thus he painted not places, but the influence of places, even as he painted not persons merely, but their natures and minds. ”

“ COUNTRYMEN, BRETHREN, AND FATHERS,
We are now assembled to celebrate an anniversary, ever to be held in dear remembrance by the sons of freedom. Nothing less than the birth of a nation, nothing less than the emancipation of three millions of people, from the degrading chains of foreign dominion, is the event we commemorate.
Twenty four years have this day elapsed, since United Columbia first raised the standard of Liberty, and echoed the shouts of Independence! ”

“ Most painters who resort to Europe to study the old art find there one or two men whose works make the strongest appeals to their liking, and, devoting their attention chiefly to these, they show ever after the marks of an influence that is easily traced to its source; Fuller, however, observed with broader and more penetrating view, and, as his works show, seems to have studied men less than principles, and to have been filled with admiration, not so much for particular practices as for the common and lofty spirit in which the greatest of the world's painters labored. ”

“ Where are the Missisippis and the Amazons, the Alleganies and the Andes of Europe, Asia or Africa? The natural superiority of America clearly indicates, that it was designed to be inhabited by a nobler race of men, possessing a superior form of government, superior patriotism, superior talents, and superior virtues. Let then the nations of the East vainly waste their strength in destroying each other. Let them aspire at conquest, and contend for dominion, till their continent is deluged in blood. ”

“ Perchance a dearly-loved daughter is carrying New-England ideas to some dark corner of the South or West, leading the young idea, or surrounded by ideas of her own,—what more appropriate present to the absent one than THE BAY STATE MONTHLY?
In the old-fashioned farm-house where your youth was passed so happily, there may be the dim, spectacled eyes of the good father and mother—perhaps one without the other—awaiting the approach of spring and summer, to welcome home their child. ”

“ It became a governing principle with him never to seek to outdo any one, or to feel anything but pleasure at another's success, for he was not a man who could fail to recognize the truth that envy is fatal to a fine mood in any labor. Few artists, we may well believe, study the great art of the world in this spirit, or derive from it such a lesson.
On his return to America, he betook himself to his native town of Deerfield, to assume for a time the care of the ancestral farm, which the death of his father had placed in his hands. ”

“ It becomes us, on whom the defence of our country will ere long devolve, this day, most seriously to reflect on the duties incumbent upon us. Our ancestors bravely snached expiring liberty from the grasp of Britain, whose touch is poison; shall we now consign it to France, whose embrace is death? We have seen our fathers, in the days of Columbia's trouble, assume the rough habiliments of war, and seek the hostile field. ”

“ Having reached the summit of the hill, we come abreast of the five-and-a-half-acre pasture of Governor John Hancock, the first signer of the immortal Declaration of American Independence, extending from Mount Vernon Street to Joy Street, and northerly to Derne Street, embracing the Capitol lot, and also the reservoir lot, for which last two he paid, in 1752, the modest sum of eleven hundred dollars! It is now worth a thousand times as much. ”

“ The hoary headed patriot of '76 still tells the mournful story to the listening infant, till the loss of his country touches his heart, and patriotism fires his breath. The aged matron still laments the loss of the man, beneath whose banners her husband has fought, or her son has fallen.—At the name of WASHINGTON, the sympathetic tear still glistens in the eye of every youthful hero, nor does the tender sigh yet cease to heave, in the fair bosom of Columbia's daughters. ”

“ It is for this reason that, although we see in all his pictures where landscape finds a place the meadows, trees, and skies of Deerfield, we also see much more,—the general and unlocated spirit of New-England scenery.
This is the true impressionism—a system to which Fuller was always constant in later life, and which he developed grandly. He was, however, as far removed as possible from that cheap, shallow, and idealess school of French painters whose wrongful appropriation of the name "Impressionist" has prejudiced us against the principle that it involves. ”

“ A great Republic, composed of different States, whose interest in all respects could not be perfectly compatible, then came deliberately forward, discarded one system of government and adopted another, without the loss of one man's blood. ”

“ They grew out of his consciousness in a strange way whose secret he could not grasp; to the end of his life he was an inquirer, always hesitating, and never confident in anything except that art was truth, and that he who followed it must walk in modesty and humbleness of spirit before the greatness of its mystery. ”

“ We cannot close our eyes to Fuller's technical faults and weaknesses, but his pictures would undeniably be a less precious heritage to American art than they now are, if he had not been great enough to perceive that academic skill becomes weak by just so much as it is magnified, and is strong only when viewed in its just relation, as the means to an end. We perplex and confuse ourselves in studying his work, and are naturally a little irritated that he keeps his secret of power so well ”

“ You cannot follow the young man whose honesty and clear-headedness is of such consequence to you. God has put it into the heart of this association to try and care for those men, upon whom your success largely depends. Can you be blind to its value? Every individual man who employs commercial travelers should aid the work. But how is all this great work for young men carried on? It requires now thirty thousand dollars a year to do it. Of this sum New York pays more than one half, Pennsylvania about one sixth, and Massachusetts less than one fifteenth. ”

“ It may be said without disrespect to his undoubted powers, that he would have been less esteemed in his own day if his art had not been largely conventional, and thus easily understood by those who had studied the accepted masters of painting. He lacked positive force of idea, as his works clearly show,—that quality which was among the most characteristic traits of Fuller's method, and made him at once the greatest genius, and the man most misunderstood, among contemporary American painters. ”

“ If the saying that those nations are the happiest that have no history is true of men, Mr. Fuller's life must be regarded as exceptionally fortunate. Considered by itself, it was quiet and uneventful, and had little to excite general interest; but when viewed in its relation to the practice of his art, it is found to be full of eloquent suggestions to all who, like him, have been appointed to win success through suffering. ”

“ The schools, which glorify manual skill and the swift and exhilarating production of effects, cannot appreciate it, for all their teaching is opposed to the principle that makes technique subordinate to idea, and they cannot look with favor upon a man who boldly reverses everything. The perfect art undoubtedly rests upon a combination of sublime thought and entire command of resources, but while we wait for this we shall not make mistake if we consider the effective, even if unlicensed, expression of idea superior to a facility that has become cheap from hundreds mastering it yearly. ”

“ A man of ideas and sentiment, remote from the clamor of schools and the complaints of critics, with recollections of the grandest art of the world in his mind, and beautiful aspects of nature continually before his eyes, he could hardly fail to work out a style of marked originality. The effort, however, was slow; one does not erase on the instant the impressions that [pg 373] eighteen years of study and practice have made, and Fuller found his life at Deerfield none too long to rid him of his respect for formulas. ”

“ Cephas Brainerd, a lawyer of New York City, a direct descendant of the Brainerds of Connecticut, and present owner of the homestead, has always been chairman of the committee, and, from a very large practice, has managed to take an immense amount of time for this work, which has more and more taken hold on his heart,—and here let me say that I know no work, not even that of foreign missions, which takes such a grip upon those who enter upon it. Time, means, energy, strength, have been lavishly poured out by them. ”

“ That art can give such power of suggestion to its creations is a marvel and a delight.
Following these two works—and at some distance, although near enough to confirm and even increase the painter's fame—came the Priscilla, Evening; Lorette, Nydia, Boy and Bird, Hannah, Psyche, and others, ending this year with the Arethusa, whose glowing and chastened loveliness makes it his strongest purely artistic work, and confirms the technical value of his method as completely as The Quadroon and Winifred Dysart do his habit of thought. ”

“ On December 16, 1862, General Butler formally surrendered the command of the department of the Gulf to General Banks. What General Butler did at New Orleans during the months he was in command in that city is a matter of history, and has been ably chronicled by James Parton. He there displayed those wonderful qualities of command which made him the most hated, as well as the most respected, Northern man who ever visited the South. He did more to subject the Southern people to the inevitable consequence of the war than a division of a hundred thousand soldiers. ”

“ Then he betook himself to his studio, and there worked from the impression that his mind had formed under the guiding-hand of his fancy, the result being that nature and human thought appeared together upon the canvas, giving a double grace and power. The process was subtle, and not to be described clearly even by the painter himself, who found his work so largely a matter of inspiration that he was never able to make copies of his pictures. ”

“ Fuller to his quality as an artist rather than to his character as a man, but shall have written in vain if some hint has not been given of the loveliness of his disposition, the modesty of his spirit, the chaste force of his mind. ”

“ Founder of Young Men's Christian Associations.
There is an old French proverb which runs: "L'homme propose, et Dieu dispose," which is but the echo of the Scripture, "A man's heart deviseth his way, but the Lord directeth his steps." In truth, God alone sees the end from the beginning.
From the beginning men have been constantly building better than they knew. No unprejudiced man who looks at history can fail to see from how small and apparently unimportant an event has sprung the greatest results to the individual, the nation, and the world. ”