WOMAN IN ART
a race with Time, were it not for the cloud-formed temple of Fame receiving almost to the point of vanishing.
Miss Cassatt has the gift of making a simple or every-day subject picturesque and attractive in her easel pictures, and no less did she command it in her fresco work. Beneath her mural was the honorary inscription: "Sophia G. Hayden, Architect of the Building."
Aside from the tympanums just described, four artists were happy in their choice of subjects for the large panels in the same hall.
Mrs. Amanda Brewster Sewell pictured "The Women of Acadia" in a manner that seemed an echo of Longfellow's word picture:
"When brightly the sunset lighted the village streets, and gilded the vanes on the chimneys,
Matrons and maidens sat in snow white caps and in kirtles
Scarlet and blue and green, with distaffs spinning the golden
Flax for the gossiping looms, whose noisy shuttles within doors,
Mingled their sound with whir of the wheels and the songs of the maidens."
Mrs Sewell was born in a beautiful part of the world, the heart of the Adirondacks, in 1860. The writer believes strongly in the influence of environment on the eager mind of a child. Amanda Brewster, child and woman, loved the woods, and her work in mature years has proved that the experience and knowledge gained in childhood have been a valuable asset in her art.
When she was twenty, assisted by Mrs. Candace Wheeler she was able to study in Paris in the Julian atelier, also with Fleury and Bouguereau. Her work in the Paris Salon gave her honorable mention, and from the Academy of Design in New York more than one substantial prize was the result of meritorious and attractive painting.
At the Fair Mrs. Sewell was a medal winner for her work in the Fine Arts Building. Among those representing her were "Pleasures of the Past," and "A Sylvan Festival," similar in treatment, representing the revelers seemingly in spirit dancing over the grassy field bordering the woods. Both are dainty in coloring and handling. "By the River" two small boys sat with overhanging rods, anxiously feeling for a bite,—a bit of real nature.
Miss Brewster became the wife of the painter, Robert V. V. Sewell, and together they made their home near Tangiers, Morocco, from whence many of their paintings have found their way to the French Salon and to numerous exhibitions in the United States.
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