DAVID CROAL THOMSON
appeared in the columns of the American Art News, disparaging the work of Duveneck, who had received a special gold medal at the request of the international jurors for his exhibition of portraits and pictures at the Panama-Pacific Exposition, at San Francisco, in 1915—an honour unique in character, and spontaneously offered in recognition of his unusual talents. Mr. Thomson had seen Duveneck's work, in Cincinnati, some time before this, and admired it. With the feeling that an injustice had been done a great painter, he wrote a long letter in praise of Duveneck's Art, and posted it to New York. He had no acknowledgment from the American Art News, and never saw the letter again: but three years afterwards he received, from Cincinnati, a note announcing a proposed memorial to Duveneck, who had died in the interval. The writer said that the family and friends of the painter had never forgotten the generous and courageous defence of his work offered by Mr. Thomson in reply to his detractors. My old friend continued this narrative by telling me that, in one of the galleries at Venice, he and Mrs. Thomson had seen, many years before, a man making a copy of an angel in one of Titian's pictures, and Mrs. Thomson had said enthusiastically, "Look, what a fine copy it is; it is better than the original!" The painter, turning to them, answered, with an American accent and intonation, "I am glad you like it, and I thank you." This was Duveneck—living through the great and sorrowful romance of his youth. He never worked after the romance ended: but he lived forty years more, and saw the work of his youth honoured.
From an early age Mr. Croal Thomson has taken a prominent and an intimate part in the Art life of London. In addition to his connection with the Paris house of Goupil
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