intimate knowledge of the form, structure, action, expression, and character of these strange models. In watching their movements and mode of life during his early morning visits to the Park he frequently finds valuable suggestions for pictorial elaboration. Many ideas for pictures, pictures that tell a story, have come to him from these wild captive friends in the menagerie cages, That he is perfectly sincere and devoid of affectation in his art expression cannot be questioned, and this sincerity of purpose is evident in his methods of outdoor

summer heat, in rain, and exposed to the winter cold.

Mr. Church was one of the founders of the Art Students' League of New York in 1875, an incorporator of the society in 1878, and one of the authors of the constitution under which this most democratic and American of art academies has developed and prospered for three decades. While chairman of the art committee on the Board of Control of the League he inaugurated the impromptu special exhibitions held in connection with the monthly receptions

study. A tireless, indefatigable student of nature, his sketches are always drawn with the greatest care, and no trouble is too great for him to take in arriving at the desired result. Not unfrequently a single picture is the result of hundreds of pencil drawings of some difficult model at the zoological garden. He has accumulated a wealth of original landscape, plant, and flower studies. The distinctly American character of the landscape settings of his paintings is the result of thorough familiarity with every phase of outdoor life. He has been a most diligent explorer of the woodlands, lakes, riversides, and ocean beaches in the environs of the metropolis, which he knows like a woodsman, and has painted in

which have become a feature of art life in New York, by bringing the studio studies and sketches of leading painters, sculptors, and illustrators before the students. Notable among the works brought together by Mr. Church during these initial exhibitions were examples of studies by La Farge, Vedder, Inness, Shirlaw, Chase, Dielman, Dannat, Duveneck, Currier, Reinhart, Twachtman, Brown, Abbey, Whistler, and St. Gaudens.

During six years' service on the council of the National Academy of Design, he served as a member of the committee having direction of the art schools. Here, as at the League, he proved one of the active workers who have developed our American institutions of art instruction

to their present high standard of efficiency. Himself one of the most unconventional and least academic of draughtsmen, he has always maintained the importance of thorough academic training in drawing during the student's school career, recognizing this training as giving the solid foundation of knowledge upon which personal and individual style must ultimately be built.

Mr. Church was one of the early members of the Society of American Artists, and was for many years an active officer of the American WaterColor Society and of the New York Etching Club. He was a trustee of the Harper Fund for aiding young artists in their studies at home and abroad, until this endowment was placed in charge of the Academy.

For a painter so engrossed in his art Mr. Church is a most faithful letterwriter, and his brief notes, with their strongly individual chirography, decorative spacing, crisp conversational style, and never-failing flow of humor, are often treasured for the correspondent's autograph collection. These epistles are frequently adorned with sketches or marginal remarques illustrating and illuminating the text. One favored correspondent, Dr. Dudley Tenney, has gathered into a thick, richly bound quarto volume a variety of such illustrated autograph letters, together with many original sketches, first projects for pictures, wood engravings, artists' proof etchings, portraits, engraved and autographic, together with many of the published biographical and critical notices that have been printed concerning the painter and his work. In addition to several double-page engravings translated by the sympathetic burin of Mr. F. S. King, there are many reproductions of paintings, and a number of old illustrated brochures, some almost forgotten by the artist. All of these are mounted, or inset, in the uniform pages of the volume with infinite care, making a unique example of skillful grangerizing, for which the collector, it is said, recently refused the price of an Academy picture.

As an occasional contributor to periodical literature, Mr. Church has written and illustrated some short stories of

singular liveliness of fancy and vivid imaginative power-strange. echoes of the melancholy music of northern pine woods, of the folk-lore of frontiersmen, quaint, weird traditions of solitary trappers dwelling in the shades of the haunted forest. Contrasting with these legends of Western woods and lakes is the illustrated story of the experiences of "An Artist Among Animals," recounted in an easy conversational style which flows as naturally as the talk around a studio fireside. A fascinating suggestion of the unexpected and preternatural in these short stories holds the attention and stimulates the curiosity. The narrative starts in on a plane of such simple, unaffected, every-day reality that there is something a little uncanny in finding the fancy gradually entangled in some perplexing psychological puzzle or. obscure enigma of reincarnation. Appreciating, however, that 'twas not by words Apelles charm'd mankind," most of this artist's problems are expressed in the painter's proper language of color and shadow and mystery.

Mr. Church's work as a painter-etcher quickly gained recognition abroad. Connoisseurs in Paris and London were prompt to appreciate the bold, personal, and characteristic handling of the needlepoint, of an etcher bringing fresh inspiration from the life of American fields and woods and waters. These plates showed imaginative invention and simple directness of technique, guided by a never-failing sense of the limitations of this art, which are at once its handicap and its strength, an appreciation of the infinite decorative possibilities of the etched line and its spontaneous expressiveness in the hands of a master of style.

Recently a number of strongly individualized portraits of the painter's friends have revealed a phase of his talent which should yield rich results if the vein were more fully developed. These portraits possess intimate character, grace, and naturalness of movement, and much delicacy in their color schemes, which are varied and appropriate for the individual portrayed. As a rule, they suggest genre compositions rather more than the portrait of conventional tradition.