Boston Aug. 1843—

My Dear Mr. and Mrs. Brown
One year has past since your
departure from Albany – as I have not heard direct
from you within that time I shall try to provoke
an answer as the surest means of obtaining my wish

When I bade you farewell on the steamboat I could not
but feel that the means which bore you lands more favored
to our own in art, to places you had long wished
to visit as connected with that nearest your soul left
me indeed alone there were things I wished to say to
you but at that moment I could not. I watched you
at a short distance, and obtained a last look at you both
on the promenad deck as you moved slow and surely on
your way – your uniform kindness to me made that parting
more acutely felt, at the time, and the interm of one
short year has taught me – still more strongly to
appreciate it – I look forward with hope and
happiness to your safe return, your wife benefitted
in health and you and all else beside which makes
life happy. But an epistle of news & facts I am
satisfied will be more agreeable to you there writing
in the [ ? ] I remained in Albany untill the Oct.
after your departure, when I visited home, while there
I spent a day and night at your fathers with mothers
your folks were all well – a fine time I had of it –
looking over some of your early attempts trying

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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.

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