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648 Painting anything like architecture and decorative work was natur- ally relegated to a later period ; and foi the same reason, apparently, the art of sculpture showed no sign of demand- ing expression here until after the art of painting had already formulated itself into societies and clubs, and been represented by numerous artists of respectable abilities." We here give a short account of those painters who have, hitherto, been most distinguished ; regretting that the plan of our book does not permit us to include the names of living artists. In spite of the stern Puritan feeling of the early settlers in America which was most unfavourable to the culture of the Fine Arts — there existed, as works still remaining testify, portrait painters in America at a very early period : but they were principally foreigners, and those of them who were natives were influenced in a great measure by such works of Van Dyck, Lely or Kneller, as the settlers in the New World had taken out with them. John Watson (1685 — 1768), a native of Scotland, who emigrated to America in 1715, and painted portraits in Philadelphia; and John Smybert (died 1751), who left England and settled in Boston about ten years later, are but two of the most prominent of a crowd of foreigners of more or less merit, who earned a living by painting portraits in America in the early years of the eighteenth century. Smybert took with him to America a copy, done by himself, of a work by Van Dyck, and this picture is said to have produced great impression on the minds of Trumbull, Allston and other famous painters. Robert Feke, of Newport — a town which produced several early American painters of note — who acquired a little knowledge of art in