WOMAN IN ART
"Hagar and Ishmael" are seen after many days of travel over the hot sands of the desert of Paran. The lad is near perishing for water. After praying and seeking for water she has found it, and the boy will live. In the picture he is limp from exhaustion and heat,—the hands express it; the mother holds his head to the lip of the water-bottle. It was the period of tribesmen in the land of Canaan, and Hagar, the bond-servant of a potentate, rich in camels, sheep, and oxen, wears the sign of her bondage in the large earrings and ringpins that fasten her garment over the shoulders. Nothing in her picture seems opposed to the time or place; it is in harmony with the Scripture story.
The law of opposites holds in art as well as in nature. Mme. Breton gives us a present-day subject, "A Dip In the Sea." A strong robust mother she is, herself fearless of the in-rolling surf as she holds her tiny boy while it breaks its green into white spray over his little body. She is teaching him to love water, and within her muscular arm he feels safe to enjoy it.
This picture was a bright, fresh motif in the French Salon and afterward made a brilliant showing at the Columbian World's Fair, in 1893.
Mme. Breton has received many honorable mentions, and medals in her own France and from other nations. One at least homes in the United States, that all lovers of children should see:
A tired, barefoot mother sits on the sand-girt sea shore. Four happy children have been playing in the water and are playing on the sand. The baby is asleep over the mother's shoulder, and she looks sideways to make sure he is asleep. At her knee stands a dear little two-year-old girl, with arms folded across her forehead shading her eyes that look askance at the baby in mother's arms, and thinks the baby is in her place, for she too is sleepy.
You say Mme. Breton has portrayed these charming phases of child-life in too realistic a manner? Could the art of a modernist, an impressionist, a cubist, tug at your heart-strings as do the pliable, velvety, dimpled bodies, with sparkling eyes and a laughter you can almost hear?
Another French artist is the daughter of a painter, following more closely in the steps of her father in choice of subject and technique,—Marie van Marcke, born in 1856 at Sevres, France. Her father, Emile van Marcke, was a painter of cattle, and his twin business was raising of fine stock. The mother of Marie was the only daughter of Constant Tryon, so Marie came rightly by her artistic gift. Again we consider an artist who from earliest
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