"With respect to returning home, I shall make my arrangements to be with you (should my life be spared) by the end of September next, or the beginning of October; but it will be necessary that I should be in England again (provided always Providence permits) by September following, as arrangements which I have made will require my presence. This I will fully explain when I meet you.
"The moment I get home I wish to begin work, so that I should like to have some portraits bespoken in season. I shall charge forty dollars less than Stuart for my portraits, so that, if any of my good friends are ready, I will begin the moment I have said 'how do ye do' to them.
"I wish to do as much as possible in the year I am with you. If I could get a commission or two for some large pictures for a church or public hall, to the amount of two or three thousand dollars, I should feel much gratified. I do not despair of such an event, for, through your influence with the clergy and their influence with their people, I think some commission for a scripture subject for a church might be obtained; a crucifixion, for instance.
"It may, perhaps, be said that the country is not rich enough to purchase large pictures; yes, but two or three thousand dollars can be paid for an entertainment which is gone in a day, and whose effects are to demoralize and debilitate, whilst the same sum expended on a fine picture would be adding an ornament to the country which would be lasting. It would tend to elevate and refine the public feeling by turning their thoughts from sensuality and luxury to intellectual pleasures, and it would encourage and support a class of citizens who have always been reckoned among the brightest stars in the constellation of American worthies, and who are, to this day, compelled to exile themselves from their country and all that is dear to them, in order to obtain a bare subsistence.
"I do not speak of portrait-painters; had I no higher thoughts than being a first-rate portrait-painter, I would have chosen a far different profession. My ambition is to be among those who shall revive the splendor of the fifteenth century; to rival the genius of a Raphael, a Michael Angelo, or a Titian; my ambition is to be enlisted in the constellation of genius now rising in this country; I wish to shine, not by a light borrowed from them, but to strive to shine the brightest.
"If I could return home and stay a year visiting my friends in various parts of the Union, and, by painting portraits, make sufficient to bring me to England again at the end of the year, whilst I obtained commissions enough to employ me and support me while in England, I think, in the course of a year or two, I shall have obtained sufficient credit to enable me to return home, if not for the remainder of my life, at least to pay a good long visit.
"In all these plans I wish you to understand me as always taking into consideration the will of Providence; and, in every plan for future operation, I hope I am not forgetful of the uncertainty of human life, and I wish always to say should I live I will do this or that….
"I perceive by your late letters that you suppose I am painting a large picture. I did think of it some time ago and was only deterred on account of the expenses attending it. All this I will explain to your entire satisfaction when I see you, and why I do not think it expedient to make an exhibition when I return.
"I perceive also that you are a little too sanguine with respect to me and expect a little too much from me. You must recollect I am yet but a student and that a picture of any merit is not painted in a day. Experienced as Mr. West is (and he also paints quicker than any other artist), his last large picture cost him between three and four years' constant attention. Mr. Allston was nearly two years in painting his large picture. Young Haydon was three years painting his large picture, is now painting another on which he has been at work one year and expects to be two years more on it. Leslie was ten months painting his picture, and my 'Hercules' cost me nearly a year's study. So you see that large pictures are not the work of a moment.
"All these matters we will talk over one of these days, and all will be set right. I had better paint Miss Russell's, Aunt Salisbury's, and Dr. Bartlett's pictures at home for a very good reason I will give you."