WOMAN IN ART
human heart, with more or less of vigor according to its expression or presentation.
The art of a nation marks its growth; we realize this when we note that individuals, groups, art leagues, schools, and museums of art, with great rapidity and vigor, are springing up in all sections of the country—those in the south and west of prime interest because they are younger, fresh and strong with enthusiasm, new ideas, and the freshness of spirit with which they appreciate and appropriate what their section of country offers.
There is a special pleasure in speaking of Miss Alice R. Huger Smith. First, because she is a southern product and is devoted to the south and its beauty, and because one of her highest aims is for the development of her chosen art in her native state. Alice Smith loves art for art's sake, but more for the sake of its influence in historic Charleston. She is first of all a landscape painter in the zenith of her power; but some years before, she was just a normal girl, so in love with nature that she would go rowing or fishing at sunrise or before, or into the cypress swamps to study "the herons at home," or amid the magnolia trees glorious at sunrise opening their white cups of fragrance, where cardinals and orioles, unaffrighted, gave her studies in color and pose.
Her work is emphatically characteristic, be it a broad landscape or a cardinal tilting on a red cedar branch, or a tanager preening his scarlet coat amid the flowers of the cotton plant—all have posed for the petite artist in nature's own studio, and be it a sketch, a block print, or a broad sweep of water color, all show a resemblance to some of the most attractive Japanese art. Alice Smith may be called a natural artist, her art being of no school or master. At first, having made up her mind to an art career, she took a room and worked prodigiously at little things and large that were to meet the rent. "She even confessed to having made in those days eight hundred negro sketches at a dollar apiece—seven on Monday, six on Tuesday, five on Wednesday. By Saturday she was never equal to more than one. In the end, of course, fatigue triumphed." When a visitor from the north lifted eyebrows at her little japanned box, she went forthwith to King Street and bought a meat platter and tubes of paint, and then large brushes. Then it was she heard the unfamiliar word "design," and began to study her own work critically.
Having heard of Mr. Burge Harrison's arrival from Woodstock, New York, she betook herself to "The Villa" and asked if he would give her lessons. No, for he had run away for a rest, but he was willing enough to talk with her now and then about what she was trying to do, and even to quarrel a bit. "Moss is
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