WOMAN IN ART
in 1911; a silver medal at the Panama Exhibition in San Francisco in 1915; in Chicago the Field and Butler prizes fell to her lot in 1918, also the Peterson prize given at the Art Institute in 1922. Among Miss Ravlin's canvases attracting marked attention are the "Procession of the Redentore, Venice," and "Arab Women in Cemetery at Tangiers" (in the Luxembourg, Paris). Four of her paintings are owned by the French government and two are in Chicago. "The Plaza" is in the Newark Museum, and "Market Day, Grand Socco" in the Los Angeles Museum.
Miss Ravlin impresses one as being a young woman with a well-defined vision through which she sees her future. As there are no more continents to discover she has focused her vision on races and lands of the past, bringing them to life, as it were, by her own absorbing interest and indefatigable energy. The origin of races in various countries and certain similarities of modes of life among such peoples seem to be a passion with her that leads on to her chosen subjects. The picturesqueness of oriental lands, peoples, costumes, and colors is the charm of her canvases.
To her the Indian of Taos has an attraction not unlike that exerted by the Arab on his sand-swept fatherland. They seem to have inhabited their respective corners of the earth at the same early period. Hers seems a call from the orient, from the desert coast of Africa, Tunis, Algeria, and Morocco, not too far from her chosen Paris, yet one feels that the call may come yet stronger from historic, arid Persia or the sparsely peopled ruins of Asia Minor where lies buried the one-time civilization of Croesus, for beauty abides even after civilization has yielded her best back to nature and the wandering nomad.
The French Orientalist, Gerome, had somewhat to do with the founding of the society of Les Peintres Orientales Francais, of which Jean Benjamin Constant was its most brilliant light, and it was a signal acknowledgment of the ability of Grace Ravlin that she was elected to its membership; and with that body of artists she has exhibited much of her work done in Tangiers. "In the Navajo Country" Miss Ravlin tells of her interest in America's first settlers. She is an earnest thinker and worker, and realizing that the Indian is being educated out of his customs and costumes, out of his native haunts—out of everything except history and a few well-written descriptions of his life and character and the poetry of his nature—she has joined the rank of painters who are preserving some of the picturesque aspects of Indian life on the plains.
Her paintings partake of the full light in which they are painted; in turn,
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