In the winter of 1885 Walter Cranston Larned, author of the “Churches and Castles of Mediaeval France,” then the art critic for the News, contributed to it a series of papers on the Walters gallery in Baltimore.  These attracted no small attention at the time, and were the subject of animated discussion in art circles in Chicago.  They were twelve in number, and ran along on the editorial page of the News from February 23d till March 10th.  At first we of the editorial staff took only a passing interest in Mr. Larned’s contributions.  But one day Field, Ballantyne, and I, from a discussion of the general value of art criticism in a daily newspaper, were led to question whether it conveyed an intelligible impression of the subject, and more particularly of the paintings commented on, to the ordinary reader.  The point was raised as to the practicability of artists themselves reproducing any recognizable approach to the original paintings by following Mr. Larned’s verbal descriptions.  Thereupon we deliberately set about, in a spirit of frolic to be sure, to attempt what we each and all considered a highly improbable feat.

Armed with the best water colors we could find in Abbott’s art store, we converted my bachelor quarters in the Sherman House into an amateur studio, where we daily labored for an hour or so in producing most remarkable counterfeits of the masterpieces in Mr. Walters’s gallery as seen through Mr. Larned’s text.  We were innocent of the first principles of drawing and knew absolutely nothing about the most rudimentary use of water colors.  Somehow, Field made a worse botch in mixing and applying the colors than did either Ballantyne or I. They would never produce the effects intended.  He made the most whimsical drawings, only to obliterate every semblance to his original conception in the coloring.  To prevent his going on a strike, I ransacked Chicago for colored inks to match those required in the pictures that had been assigned to him.  This inspired him with renewed enthusiasm, and he devoted himself to the task of realizing Mr. Larned’s descriptions in colored inks with the zest that produces the masterpieces over which artists and critics rave.

His first work in this line was a reproduction—­or shall I call it a restoration—­of Corot’s “St. Sebastian.”  In speaking of this as one of the noteworthy paintings in the Walters gallery, Mr. Larned had said that it was a landscape in which the figures were quite subordinate and seemed merely intended to illustrate the deeper meaning of the painter in his rendition of nature.  According to the critic’s detailed description, it was a forest scene.  “Great trees rise on the right to the top of the canvas.  On the left are also some smaller trees, whose upper branches reach across and make, with the trees on the right, a sort of arch through which is seen a wonderful stretch of sky.  A rocky path leads away from the foreground beneath the overhanging trees, sloping upward until