George P. A. Healy: Perspective

"Nathaniel Hawthorne" by George Healy

"As I look back upon my long life, as I think of the early years in Paris at the time when Delacroix, that audacious young innovator, excited the anger and contempt of Ingres, when the landscapes of Corot were refused at the Salon, when my old and dear friend Couture was considered a revolutionary spirit not to be encouraged by the authorities, I can but smile - a little sadly, perhaps - at the violence of the young men of our day, who in their turn will be looked upon as old fogies by the youths of thirty or forty years hence.

And so the world goes on! Fashion changes. The beautiful of yesterday is the grotesque of today. What matters it? Each generation as it comes to life does its best, struggles, suffers, hopes, or despairs. It adds its little stone to the big edifice which is ever being built. The little stone is lost among other, forgotten, overlooked, but it has helped nevertheless to make the wall solid and beautiful. And that surely is something."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Reminiscences of a Portrait Painter" by G. P. A. Healy.)