Hilton and presented to the city of New York.

There are in all about seventy-five pictures by Meissonier owned in
America. Several of his pieces are in the Vanderbilt collection, others
are owned by collectors in Chicago, Cleveland and Saint Louis.

There are various glib sayings to the effect that the work of great men
is not appreciated until after they are dead. This may be so and it may
not. It depends upon the man and the age. Meissonier enjoyed full half a
century of the highest and most complete success that was ever bestowed
upon an artist.

The strong intellect and marked personality of the man won him friends
wherever he chose to make them; and it probably would have been better
for his art if a degree of public indifference had been his portion in
those earlier years. His success was too great: the calm judgment of
posterity can never quite endorse the plaudits paid the living man. He
is one of the greatest artists the Nineteenth Century has produced, but
that his name can rank among the great artists of all time is not at all
probable.

William Michael Rossetti has summed the matter up well by saying:
"Perfection is so rare in this world that when we find it we must pause
and pay it the tribute of our silent admiration. It is very easy to say
that Meissonier should have put in this and omitted that. Had he painted
differently he would have been some one else. The work is faultless, and
such genius as he showed must ever command the homage of those who know
by experience the supreme difficulty of having the hand materialize the
conceptions of the mind. And yet Meissonier's conceptions outmatched his
brush: he was greater than his work. He was a great artist, and better