WOMAN IN ART
appearance and manner." They cannot reconcile, what she seems, and is physically, with the vital force of her drawing and brush work. "No painting leaves her studio that does not bear the impress of deep thought." Not all her works present interior scenes. "Sur La Digue" ("On the Shore") is a strong effect in drawing and color. Three women on the wave-washed dune are looking over the foam-crested sea where gulls are sporting. One holds a well-wrapped baby in her arm and leads the little four-year-old maid by the hand, who hides the other under her apron. The child's piquant face is turned from the wind, giving you a suppressed smile. The wind makes statuesque their thick gowns, but the picturesque Breton caps are made secure against that strong sea breeze, and the sabots seem to anchor the women to the sand; the scene says frankly that they are vigorous, wholesome people, delighting in the beauty and freshness of wind, of sky, and sea; they are out for pleasure of it, they are not Kingsley's fishermen's wives, heavy of heart and sad.
"La Grand Mere," another pleasing picture, shows the mother and two little ones on the far side of the table, lighted by the evening lamp. La grandmere by the near side has been knitting, but her head is drooping over the hands that still hold the knitting. Sleep is giving her rest.
No one knows how many times a day a mother administers consolation to a little broken heart, or it may be only a bruised toe. Miss Nourse has pictured that ministry feelingly in "Consolation," as the mother presses the sobbing wee one to her breast, and kisses the disheveled brow.
The art of Elizabeth Nourse has not been influenced by any other painter; she paints what she sees with the spirit she feels, and the heart sympathy that goes out to the peasants she loves goes through the uplifted arm to the representative canvas, which proves her a great artist.
Sarah Ball Dodson was one of the nineteenth century painters who accomplished remarkable and noteworthy work before the twentieth century made its entrance. But circumstances and adverse opinions of the critics (and the critics were men unacquainted with the art endowment of women) hindered the publicity that a really good painting should have. In the seventies and eighties there were numbers of earnest painters quietly working to express their best.
It is a noticeable fact that, since women entered the field of palette and brush, a large per cent have been natives of Pennsylvania, or have been attracted to its school of Fine Arts for instruction in painting, while those whose natural ability decided for the plastic medium of clay, mallet, and chisel, seem to have found needed help in the schools or studios of New York.
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