heir preeminent
ability drew after them, we perceive the dominant impulse to be of alien
origin; Fuller alone, of all the great ones in our art, was in thought
and action purely and simply American. The influence that led others
into the error of imitation, seems to have been exerted unavailingly
upon his self-reliant mind. We shall search vainly if we look elsewhere
than within himself for the suggestions upon which his art was
established. Superficial resemblances to other painters are sometimes to
be noted in his works, but in governing principle and habit of thought
he was serenely and grandly alone.

We must regard him thus if we would study him understandingly, and gain
from our observation a correct estimate of his power. We think of our
other painters as in the crowd, and amid the affairs of men, and detect
in their art a certain uneasiness which the bustle about them
necessarily caused. We perceive this most in Hunt, who was emphatically
a man of the world, and in Stuart, who shows in some of his later work
that his position as the court painter of America, while it aided his
purse and reputation, harmed his repose; least in Allston, whose tastes
were literary, whose love was in retirement, and who would have been a
poet had not circumstances first placed a brush and palette in his
hands. Allston, however, enjoyed popularity, and was courted by the best
society of his time, and was not permitted, although he doubtless longed
for it, to indulge to its full extent his chaste and dreamy fancy. 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.

Although men who have not had "advantages" in life are naturally prone
to regret their deprivation, they frequently owe their success to this
seeming bar against opportunity. We have often seen illustrated in our
art the fact that favorable circumstances do not necessarily insure
success, and now from the life of Fuller we gain the still more
important truth, that power is never so well aroused as in the face of
obstacles. Few men en