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Twenty-one-year-old George Fuller (1822-1884) wrote this letter to his former teacher, sculptor Henry Kirke Brown (1814-1886) in 1837. It reveals Fuller's early love of art and the influences that served to forge his taste. Brown had begun his own artistic career as a painter, but turned to sculpture after a five-year period of study in Italy after which he established himself in New York. George Fuller confides in Brown that all his study and observation of the work of others has caused him to determine to see nature "for myself through the eye of no one else and to put my trust in God awaiting the result." Like Kirke and many other American artists, George Fuller would be profoundly influenced by his own travels in Europe and exposure to European art.