window of a pretty design, and such fur- | at work," I remark, for want of a better

niture as the room contains is old marquetry.

thought at the moment. "What a delightful contrast to that of an author at work, or a poet, even when his eyes are in a fine frenzy rolling!"

"But the author has the advantage," he answers, "in having people all over the world contemplating his pictures at the same time."

Boughton works as though he is indeed engaged upon a labor of love, step

Boughton's is just the studio we can imagine it to have been the dream of his life to build and to furnish. His art is human and tender; it deals chiefly with the gentle and domestic side of life; it has in it an element of the poetry of Longfellow, and is capable of portraying the patient sweetness of Hawthorne's woman of The Scarlet Letter; it is in sym-ping back now and then to see the effect pathy with the gray English landscapes of those touches he is pleased to call acciand village comedies, and is at home with dental, but which are strokes of technical the simple humor and humble courtships skillfulness. of Dutch fishermen and Friesland maidens; it revels in the detail of a Hollander's costume as well as in the grass-grown wharves and picturesque barges of the dead cities. Comedy and tragedy go on close together in real life, and if Boughton steps aside from the bowl and dagger, he has nevertheless shown sufficient dramatic power for a strong theme, as witness his "Pilgrims going to Church," the sedate force of several of his illustrations of peasant life in Brittany, and the gloom of his Hester Prynne on a mission of mercy to a house stricken with the plague.

"And in the case of a landscape," he says, taking me by the arm, "look here. I open the door; I walk out to the very head of the staircase; and I can see my work as far away as you can get from it at the Academy."

This is a great advantage, and it is only one of the points which have entered into the artist's calculation in the designing of his workshop. There is no kind of light he can not command-north or south, high or low, straight light or cross light. The walls of the room are a warm gray in color, not distempered, nor painted, nor As I enter his studio, one end (the papered, but the plaster colored in process north) nearly filled with a window, the of mixing-the artist's own idea, and one other with a gallery, like the place for the that may yet lead to some interesting musicians in an old banqueting room, and changes in regard to the decoration of an alcove of cushions beneath it, I find the walls. On the west side of the room is an master intently at work, his model for the alcove just sufficient to hold a comfortaFriesland skating girl posed more particu-ble settee, and display some fine rugs upon larly for the head. His touches were of the lightest and finest, and as often made with the tip of his little finger as with his brush.

The finger is sensitive," he says, as if I had asked a question. "There can be no rule for its application; just a touch and go, the effect of which is more or less accidental, more or less knack, a sort of instinct."

the floor and a golden ceiling. The most gratifying bits of color in the studio are seen in the Persian, Turkish, and other rugs that find suitable places for both use and ornament on floor, couches, and chairs. A small but well-filled book-case, a

writing-desk, and shelves full of pamphlets, papers, magazines, works in miscellaneous literature, French and Eng"Something more than instinct," I sug-lish, give an air of sociability to the room. gest, "is required to deal with a palette so full of color."

"There is nothing that requires so many colors for its representation as the human face," he answers. "You can not lay the brush upon a part of this palette that has not been used on this face."

He was putting in the shadow of the dainty under lip, and it was a lesson to see how deftly he flecked off its redundance and softened the edges of it with his finger.

"It is very entertaining to see an artist

A bust of Dante on a pedestal, a rough sketch of the bird sacred to Minerva, a Japanese cabinet, a bit of old blue from Delft, and other miscellaneous incidents of decoration are accidentally, as it were, dropped here and there into the general story; and the tapestry of the staircase is repeated here and there in the gallery at the south end and on the eastern wall. A work-room, living-room, recreation-room, reception-room, is this sensibly furnished studio, in which Mr. Boughton gives form and color to his elaborate studies.

"I notice that you make many and tries claim. He was brought from Engcareful sketches," I remark.

"Yes, I have note-books full of themsketches, studies, and memoranda, though

land to Albany, New York, by his parents when four years old, opened his studio there at sixteen, and grew up as an Amer

al distinction of being an N.A. and an A.R.A.

I rarely refer to them afterward," he re- ican artist. He enjoys thus the unusuplies. "The fact that I have them, can lay my hand upon them at any time, seems to be sufficient; and in treatment, though perhaps not in spirit, I invariably depart wholly from my first suggestions and sketches for picture subjects."

Boughton is an artist whom two coun

At work Boughton as a rule wears an ordinary gray suit of clothes with a velvet cap, and is never put out by the companionship of a familiar friend, even when absorbed in one of the difficulties of his

English, Queen Anne, to our climate and to our modern requirements."

Mrs. Boughton occasionally annexes the studio for social gatherings and receptions. Forbes lectured here on the eve of his American tour. A fancy ball forms another agreeable reminiscence of the place, and then the gallery was occupied by musicians. This utilization of studios for the purposes of society reunions is a pleasant feature of artistic London, varied as it is by smoking parties in bachelors' quarters and weekly "evenings."

labors. He is as genial as many of his latter-day subjects, notably one upon his easel at my visit, a buxom young Dutchwoman running the gauntlet of the idle badinage of half a dozen sailors or bargemen smoking their pipes on the sunny side of a canal quay wall. It is an uncommon face the artist turns toward you, marked with lines of thought, the brown eyes partially hidden while he is at work by spectacles, the mouth by a brown mustache. The model is presently dismissed with kindly words, and we sit down to coffee and cigarettes. "You were speaking of artists' houses," says Boughton-"why Among the notable "at homes" of Lonshould we not have handsome places? don, for instance, are the Tuesdays' at Mr. The old masters, so much, and many so | Alma-Tadema's, Townshend House, near deservedly, worshipped, had. Teniers had the North Gate, Regent's Park, where the a fine place; so had Rubens; so had Wou- artist's amiable wife charmingly presides vermans. Rembrandt's pictures of studi- over a house which is unique in its repetios show one that it was a common thing tion of many of the bits of detail which are for the artists of his time to have mag- so lovingly rendered in the painter's best nificent places. Paul Veronese had a works. The light in this quarter of Lonlovely house; but Roberts the best of all. don and at Hampstead falls earlier upon Holbein did not paint in a garret, but at the many north windows constructed to Whitehall and Hampton Court. Look receive it, and dwells longer in its gentle at the surroundings of Velasquez, as merging into night than at Kensington. conveyed in his own and contemporary The Regent's Park and St. John's Wood disworks, and also at Raphael. Titian's trict have always been favorite localities house is a show place even to-day. Sir both for art and literary workers. One Joshua Reynolds lived in fine style in recalls among the famous residents of this Leicester Square; Hogarth was handsome- neighborhood, Landseer, Douglas Jerrold, ly lodged; Benjamin West had several George Eliot, Tom Hood, Shirley Brooks, galleries attached to his house in Newman Hepworth Dixon, besides many distinStreet. There is no want of precedent for guished vocalists, notably Mlle. Titiens artists to have suitable houses and fine and Mr. Santley. Mr. Alma-Tadema takes studios, and precedent is a great matter great delight in the furnishing and orin England. Thank goodness, the garret namentation of his house. An ordinary era is passed both for writers and painters and somewhat commonplace London resi-passed with the Georges and their nar- dence, he has converted it into a perfect row days!" art gem, every bit of it a study and an example of his great knowledge, his love of antiquities, and his cultivated taste. He has entirely transformed the interior, even to reconstructing the staircases, and build"People forget the commercial value of ing into one of the rooms a groined roof the movement, its influence on trade and to suit his furnishing. This is what he manufactures. For example: we used to calls the Panel Room, or, as his friends go to France for stuffs and paper-hang- have christened it, "the Burgomaster's ings and dyes; we not only do so no long- Room" - a perfect little Dutch interior, but France is coming to us for these windows, panelling, seats, floor, jugs, and very things. As for the brick houses all, with a sofa upon which you feel inwhich are now being built, they are emi-clined to sit and dream of the days of Van nently suitable to the climate. It is perhaps a misnomer to call them Queen Anne; we use the term to cover a long series of years. The modern artistic house might be called Norman Shaw's adaptation of the best features of Flemish, Dutch, old

I mention the so-called æsthetic movement, and after the expression of regrets at the misuse of a word full of noble significance, Boughton remarks:

er,

Tromp and the Dutch battles for freedom, of the grand old burgomasters and their robust wives, and of Holland's triumphs over sea and wind, that are even greater than her glorious struggles against Spain. One steps from this room presently into