MEN I HAVE PAINTED
Pale Horse and Christ before Pilate and others were stored out of sight, and the plaster casts and the students removed to temporary quarters in various parts of the city, until the projected new Academy could be built on Broad Street, from the designs of Frank Furness.
Thouron and I moved with the casts, and placed ourselves under the guidance of Professor Schüssele, from Düsseldorf. It was here that Edwin Abbey pursued his studies, and I can remember a charcoal drawing, of Hamlet soliloquizing, that he submitted to the professor of composition. Henry Thouron gave his attention from the beginning to composition. The grouping of figures in masses and their relation to the surrounding architecture or landscape inspired him from the start, and after a long career as professor of composition, at the Academy, he finished it in Rome, by executing the second of two large decorative panels which he designed for the cathedral in Logan Square.
In Philadelphia we were in constant companionship, and I could not have failed to benefit by the example of a conduct so straightforward, so disinterested, and so ingenuous, or from the observation of a mind whose charity and goodwill were surpassed only by its purity and nobility.
In Europe we drifted apart, Thouron having selected Bonnat's studio, in Paris, as his workshop, while I, by adventure, or misadventure perhaps, wandered to the Flemish Academy of Antwerp. But we were in constant correspondence, and for a short period found ourselves again associated in Paris.
It was here that I was able to consider more closely the restraining influence of religious faith upon a nature that was in its undertones both ardent and passionate.
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