WOMAN IN ART
at home amid the lilies by the Arno and made the fifteenth century radiant for ages to come.
It is true that the twentieth century stands upon the foundation of the first, and is appropriating, assimilating, discarding and sometimes improving; but sequence is a law of the universe.
The painted walls of Pompeiian homes, brilliant in color even now after lying under ashes and lava for nearly two millenniums, tell much of the glory of Imperial Rome, and also, on the ruined walls of the Palace of the Cæsars, they tell also of Roman use of Greek ideas and forms in the dancing maids, still maintaining their grace and beauty amid the ruins.
Beauty and art overflowed Pisa and Florence, even as light overcomes darkness, and the dawning we will ever call the Renaissance.
Five hundred years have whirled over this old world since then, and in a new world, undreamed of then, humans of this Twentieth Century, A. D., are beginning to record the progress and ideals of this wonderful epoch of development on walls of public buildings and in palatial homes. But will they be permitted to last even one century?
Mural painting is wedded to architecture, hence they are interdependent; each must be appropriate to the other. In subject and style they must harmonize. No painter should put brush to wall until he knows the wall.
In this bird's eye view down the centuries, we see more and more of proportion, harmony, color and form in the arts and architecture, in the crafts and cunning of man's handiwork. With the commercial, intellectual and religious development of a nation, the arts become more expressive of conditions, achievements and ideals.
Mural work demands a high and strong mentality in man or woman, and a rugged physique, for it entails hard work for body and brain. The advent of the Woman's Building (at the Columbian World Fair at Chicago in 1893), as the acknowledged beginning of woman's work in the field of art, should be held in high esteem because of those courageous painters in their willingness and daring to establish a precedent for other women of talent. No one woman, no ten women will ever possess all the qualifications for a perfect artist, because there is no established criterion for perfection in art, fortunately, but the many who strive for the high ideal give the variety that pleases the varying tastes of this world of humans.
Honest appreciation is as valuable as just criticism, and beginnings as important as the ultimate.
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