Isherwood

years afterwards was elected a full academician,
on the occasion of the fusion of the Academy and
the Society. He joined the New York Water
Color Club and the Architectural League. He
belonged to the National Institute of Arts and
Letters, the Century Association, the Salmagundi
Club. He exhibited all over the country, served
on juries, won medals, and saw paintings of his
enter public museums. He was part and parcel
of the art life of the United States for years,
down to the day of his death at Easthampton, L.
I., in 1914.

Isham's diversified activity has a dual signifi-
cance. It points in the first place to his living,
efficient qualities as an artist, to the respect in-
spired by his craftsmanship and his personality,
and further it testifies to the rich experience
which qualified him to write a memorable book,
The History of American Painting, first pub-
lished in 1905 and reissued with supplemental
chapters by another hand in 1927. This book was
produced as part of a series planned by Prof,
John C. Van Dyke with the intention of having
every contribution to it written by a practitioner
of the art surveyed. Isham, as the editor of the
series has said, had to be "bullied and badgered"
into the composition of his volume, but when
once he had undertaken it — doing most of the
work in solitude in Paris — he made it the author-
itative compendium in its field. Based on ex-
haustive research, it is informed by the sensitive
spirit of a painter, one who had a special insight
into his subject, and, above all, it discloses the
operation of an alert faculty of discrimination.
It is sympathetic, critical, agreeable in style, a
vital addition to the literature of art in the
United States.

[Satnttel Bttrhans, Burhans Geneal. (1894); Who's
Who in America, 1914-15; Obit. Record Grads. Yale
Univ., rp 10-15 (1915) ; Am. Art News, July 18, 1914;
Am. Art Annual, vol. XI (1914) ; AT. Y. Times, June
13, 1914; biographical sketch in the 1927 edition of The
tory of American Painting.]

ISHERWOOD, BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

(Oct. 6, i822-June 19, 1915), mechanical engi-
neer and naval architect, was born in New York
City, the son of Benjamin and Eliza (Hicks)
Isherwood, and a descendant of Benjamin Isher-
wood of Cheshire, England, who came to the
United States shortly after the Revolution and
of Robert Hicks who came to New England in
the Fortune in 1652. His father was a physician*
The boy was sent to the Albany ( N. Y . ) Academy
when he was nine, but after five years there he
was returned to his home (1836) because of
"serious misconduct." He was then placed in the
mechanical department of the Utica & Schenec-
tady Railroad under the instruction of David

Isherwood

Matthews, master mechanic. Upon the comple-
tion of the road, he worked for a time in the of-
fice of his stepfather, John Green, a civil engi-
neer on the construction of the Croton Aqueduct,
and then entered the employ of the Erie Rail-
road, under Charles B. Stuart [g.vj, later engi-
neer-in-chief of the navy, who was at that time
division engineer at Susquehanna. Following this
engagement, he served as engineer on the con-
struction of lighthouses for the United States
Treasury Department, in which connection he
designed a new and efficient type of lighthouse
lens and was sent to France by the department to
supervise the manufacture of an order of the
lenses.

After a short time spent in the Novelty Iron
Works, New York, acquiring the experience re-
quired for admission to the newly established
Engineer Corps of the United States Navy, he
became in 1844 a first assistant engineer, in the
original group of appointees. During the war
with Mexico, he served aboard the Princeton, the
first screw-propeller boat of the navy, and then
aboard the Spitfire, which took part in every
naval action of the war. He served at the Pensa-
cola Navy Yard in 1844-45 and on board the
General Taylor in 1846-47. He was promoted to
the rank of chief engineer in 1848. In 1852-53 he
was stationed at the Navy Department in Wash-
ington, and there designed the paddle-wheels for
the Water Witch, the first feathering paddle-
wheels used in the United States Navy. He then
served four years, 1854-58, as chief engineer on
the San Jacinto, off the coast of Africa and in
the East Indies. In 1859 he returned to Wash-
ington, where he directed the design of a class
of gunboats for the Russian government.

In this year (1859) he published Engineering
Precedents, in two volumes, which set forth the
results of his investigations of the distribution
of energy and work throughout the motive-power
system of a steam vessel. These investigations,
carried on in the twelve years of his active serv-
ice, were the first systematic and sustained at-
tempts to ascertain the distribution of energy and
losses in engines and boilers, by actual measure-
ments under practical, operating conditions. In
1863 and 1865 he published the first and second
volumes of Experimental Researches in Steam
Engineering, upon which most of his fame as an
investigator and student is founded. Experimen-
tal Researches consists of reports and discussions
of experiments carried out aboard many ships
of the navy by commissions of which Isherwood
was a member and often ranking member. It in-
cludes the findings of the investigation carried
on aboard the U. S. S. Michigan, the results of

515