ideas of history and events calling for the record of the palette;
or there has been wrought in the studio of some resident painter a
composition in which landscape has been employed as accessory.

In many instances there have been produced works which reflect the
highest honor upon our country. As it is foreign to the purpose of
the present paper to deal with other than the different phases of
landscape-painting, we forbear to speak as their merits suggest of the
figure portions of the works of Mr. Rothermel, the result of his brief
sojourn in Italy. In any passage of scenery, and particularly in sky
forms and tones, the expression and character are always such as
support vigorously the action of his group. We say vigorously; for Mr.
Rothermel, in his Italian pictures, revealed an artistic nature related
to humanity in its most agitated moods, as in the "Lear," and in the
"Saint Agnese,"--this beautiful picture being, however, a higher
conception, inasmuch as in it the spirit might find some rest in the
stillness of the maiden Agnese, already saint and about to be martyr,
and in the deep blue sky, on whose field linger white clouds, like lambs
"shepherded by the slow unwilling winds."

Brief mention was made, in our allusion to Mr. Page's picture of the
"Flight into Egypt," to its landscape. This work was executed in Rome,
and its peculiar tone excited much interest among the friends of Mr.
Field, its fortunate possessor. A beautiful, yet not altogether original
idea, finds expression in the foreground group, where Mary, poised upon
the back of the ass, folds the child in her arms, the animal snatches at
a wayside weed, Joseph, drawing tightly the long rope by which he
leads, bends away into the desert with weird energy. In all other
representations of this subject the accessory landscape has usually been
living with full-foliaged trees, abundant herbage, and copious streams.