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GEORGE FULLER.

BY SIDNEY DICKINSON.


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. Yet
he has gone in and out before us long enough to make a study of him
profitable, and to give us, even now, some occasion for an opinion as to
the place he is likely to occupy in the annals of our native art. Mr.
Fuller held a peculiar position in American painting, and one which
seems likely to remain hereafter unfilled. He followed no one, and had
no followers; his art was the outgrowth of personal temperament and
experience, rather than the result of teaching, and although he studied
others, he was himself his only master. In other men whose names are
prominent in our art, we seem to see the direction of an outside
influence. Stuart and Copley confessed to the teaching of the English
school of their day--a school brilliant but formal, and holding close
guiding-reins over its disciples; Benjamin West became denationalized,
so far as his art was concerned; Allston showed the impression of
England, Italy, and Flanders, all at once, in his refined and thoughtful
style, and Hunt manifested in every stroke of his brilliant brush the
learned and facile methods that are in vogue in the leading ateliers of
modern Paris. In these men, and in the followers whom their preëminent