WOMAN IN ART
artists; that they have not sufficiently the creative faculty necessary to produce original work. The delightful 'Love Locked Out' by Anna Lea Merritt proves at least one instance to controvert the assertion. This picture was hung in the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1890 and was purchased by the Chantry Trustees in the same year for the sum of two hundred and fifty pounds, the first work by a woman to be acquired for the collection. Although an American by birth, Mrs. Merritt has lived and worked so long in England that she is accounted among English artists."
Mrs. Merritt studied with Heinrich Hoffman in Dresden, and with Mr. Henry Merritt in London. Another case of wedded artists. Her work has represented her at all the World Fairs held in America, and honors came to her at the first, the Centennial of 1876. She was born in Philadelphia in 1844.
We have briefly considered the incentive and stimulus for woman's development in art, and realize that the Columbian Fair of 1893 proved the open door for her advancement, and the brief retrospect over thirty-five years may well serve as a prophecy of encouragement for coming decades.
An English writer during the first decade of this century gives a paragraph that tempts our quotation:
"In spite of isolated women artists in the past, it is not too much to say that this generation is the first to develop the fine arts in women. The result is a flood of feminine art, most of which has very little true art in it; it is not often worse than that of the opposite sex, but so far it has not reached the great heights attained by the masters (unless you except Rosa Bonheur). Nevertheless in every country women's work is infinitely finer and more creative than that of all the chiefs among the men."
Further the writer quotes a significant statement from an English woman, Mrs. Sargent Florence, possibly the first woman mural-decorator, who in 1891 was awarded the Dodge prize at the New York Academy of Design. She said:
"The women of my generation are the pioneers of woman's art. We are the ones who are clearing the way for generations to come. No one knows better than I the limitations of my own work ...... but it is because the energy, time, imagination and physical strength that men use freely for their art has, in my case, had to go in ceaseless struggling, not for money only, but for the 'right to work'."
In all departments of woman's enterprise this has been true. But thanks be! equality in action is now on the basis of equality in education and equipment.
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