WOMAN IN ART
accomplished fine effects, proving her a genius in composition and tonal relations. At the Arts Club, Chicago, she has shown a large gathering of thistles and larkspur, or "Blue Lace," and a most unusual arrangement of still life that is very beautiful. A courtyard scene in the old country is interesting in composition and charming in color. The door of the cream-colored house opens on the level with the stone paved court-yard; a flowering vine graces itself over door and window. Three women are gossiping at the corner, their dark gowns accenting the darkest shades on the canvas, the high light being the sunlight on the house. A good composition and not "patchy" in the handling; before the war she called it "In Days of Peace."
Concerning Painters of Flowers
Numberless women have painted flowers with more or less skill in color and grouping, and with more or less individuality in the technique of the artist and in knowledge of the flowers.
Whoever has observed the numerous flower pieces in the various art galleries of Europe must have been impressed with the exquisite daintiness of petal, stamen, the corolla with its drop of honey, the leaves jeweled with dew-drop or lady-bug, the prickly stems, the ribs and velvet on the underside of the leaves, and their varying shades of green. The detail is intricate in nature and wonderful as a work of art.
The Hollanders are garden-making, flower-loving people, so it is not surprising that they were the first and most conscientious people to portray the flower creation in art.
Margareta Haverman (1720-1795) was well known as a flower painter in her day. We have already referred to Rachel Ruysch of Amsterdam, and her remarkable painting of flowers. In the eighteenth century, Sirani of Italy had a second daughter who was considered wonderful in this branch of art. Doubtless there were others whose names were not recorded, but in Poligny, France, we find Eléonore Escallier in the nineteenth century did very beautiful flower painting. England, past and present, considered flower painting woman's pastime rather than a branch of art with a large A. Hence that country has furnished a number of good artists for that subject, more especially in water-colors, but the surprising fact is that in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the men of England have chosen floral subjects leaving women in the minority, if one may judge from exhibitions. Katherine Cam-
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