WOMAN IN ART
dition of the English portraitists, perhaps, finds not even in its own country followers as nimble and as refreshing as Cecilia Beaux, in this picture of a lady 'On the Terrace.' Worthy of remembrance, among other English-style painters"—naming women only—"are Jean McLane and Lydia Emmet."
One of Miss Beaux's most vigorous portraits is that of the president of the American Federation of Arts, Mr. Robert W. de Forest, at one time president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
A more recent portrait is that of Mrs. Russell Sage for the Sage Foundation, an extremely dignified and attractive work, to serve on the walls of Sage College as a reminder that the present is daughter of the past—the attractive modern buildings of today having supplanted the walls of the Seminary founded by Mrs. Emma Willard in 1821. The portrait of that first American educator of women will long be cherished in the halls that bear the name of the woman who took up the work when she laid it down. Art gives us the character and marks the epoch of both.[1]
"Miss Beaux's work is neither impressionism nor photography," as Dr. Talcott Williams expressed it; "Rather it is a compound of sincerity, of intelligence, and absolute freshness of feeling. Her portraits are honest. They savor of no tricks. The simplicity of her girlhood spirit is hers today, more largely diffused in proportion to her understanding of the psychic and mental attitude of her sitters."
Miss Beaux acquired knowledge of fundamentals, line, form, and color, in the days of her youth, and there has been no demarcation in her case between youth and the next stage, for she has taken the freshness and vigor of youth right along with her—mingled with and broadened by her intellectual vision and grasp.
All this Cecilia Beaux has to a remarkable degree, or she would never have been chosen by the National Committee for the high honor of painting her quota of the "War Portraits."
The year 1926 was a red letter year for Miss Beaux. First there came to her from the Italian Government, through the Minester delle Instruzione Pubblica, at Rome, a request for a self-portrait to be hung in the Uffizi Gallery at Florence. The accompanying reproduction of that portrait represents her reply to the significant honor and respect.
- ↑ Vocational and technical schools are steps in the uplift and broadening of civilization. It is like teaching a child in his high chair to hold his spoon, his knife and fork; a boy to use hammer and nails; a lad to set type and bind a book; or to use engraver's tools, and on and up, in the use of things. It is specific education. So in art. Some youths have become artists by copying masterpieces or even one painting more than once, until acquiring the "knack of the thing." When it comes to the development beyond the technical, artists in the United States can be taught observation; how to subtract the ideal from the real; how to draw on their imagination by help of their knowledge of drawing; and how to harmonize a color scheme; and, most important of all, to know how to express the psychic self—spirit—on canvas, they must first cultivate the spirit within themselves. It is America's teaching.
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