There is a painter in Henry James's Roderick Hudson called Sam Singleton: 'He painted small landscapes, mainly in watercolours . . . improvement had come hand in hand with patient industry.' His appearance (he is a small plain man), his regular working hours and his modest equanimity (he has a tendency to blush) are a foil to Roderick's good looks and labile temperament. Sam's little pictures of Rome and Switzerland are not a match in size or effect for Roderick's marble Adam and Eve, yet, on the verge of a forced return to America, Singleton reckons to 'have laid up treasure which in Buffalo would seem infinite'. There, he says, he will 'live in my portfolio': find the meaning of his life, that is to say, and maybe something from which a national school will grow, in his transcriptions of Old World scenery.

LRB 1 September 2005 | PDF Download