V.

Some years ago the management of a large and popular hotel in this city, having added an elaborate public room to the house, hit upon the idea of attracting attention to it by filling it up with pictures and objects of art. Among the former the most prominent was a world-famous, large canvas by Bouguereau, the "Nymphs Teasing a Satyr," as the artist christened it, or "Nymphs and Satyr" as it is most generally known, and the painting by which Luis Falero effectively established his reputation, "The Vision of Faust." These pictures alone, and they were but part of a number more, cost many thousands of dollars. It has been estimated, by one of the heads of the house, that they alone have paid some ten times their cost in the amount of custom they have attracted, and relatively to the advance in market value of modern paintings of the first class, they could now be sold for double what was paid for them. The picture, in a technical sense, is cerainly Falero's masterpiece, as far as his productiveness has yet proceeded.

Laurens Alma-Tadema, one of the foremost figure painters of the century, and one of the most successful in every material sense, was born in Belgium, at the town of Drourp in the province of Friesland, in 1836. His father was a notary, with a quite prosperous practice, and, purposing that his son should continue his business, he educated him with this point in view. The boy was sent to the college

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Chapter 5 Text

Luis Ricardo Falero