WOMAN IN ART
Bastien Lepage depicts a pitiful condition of woman in civilized France. Something more than the weary spirit and body is on the canvas titled "Rest." A pitiful vacancy is in the stolid face of the woman who looks into space or at nothing. Her mind is limited to her little spot of life. Her man lies asleep on the grain he has cut. They have their dejeuner near the hedgerow. He takes his rest. The woman seems to have a problem to solve, but one feels that thought is not in her undeveloped mind, the poor woman does not know how to think; but these are they that have lacked opportunity. The element of progress is theirs. So is life in the rose bushes under the gardener's bench of sand; cold air and darkness prevent them for a time, but the impetus of light, warmth and water—elements congenial to their nature—produces rapid blooming. We see this, and are surprised at the rapid strides made by our foreign-born Americans. The mind awakens and is alert in the air of freedom and opportunity—but not in all.
Jules Breton has given an impetus of uplift in "The Song of the Lark," another world picture. A young girl fresh from sleep has paused on her way to work in the early morning and is listening to the cascade of mellow music from the upper air. She watches and listens as he sings and soars. The picture is of life. Her lips are parted as if responding with earth's alto to the heavenly notes of joy. The girl is uplifted by the beauty of the dawn, of the song and the pulsing air, nor is conscious that they play upon her soul. Thus we see that happiness must enter into the process of development no less than longing.
When happiness and labor go hand in hand the sunshine of life is brightest, the world is wider, and it is ours.
But sunshine and shade commingle. "In the Flax Barn," we see that commingling; beneath the sky that truth holds. There is merriment in some faces, sadness in others at their long task back and forth, back and forth, yet the trend of industry is happiness—if love lightens labor.
Frantz Liebermann's painting helps us to realize the fact. Volkenburg's study of women led him back in time, yet his pictures prove to us, especially in the "Gossips," that busy hands and tongues keep time in all lands and in all ages.
The house furnishings may seem modern in some respects, but are preserved from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The massive locker, in-a-door bed, carved chairs, plate rails, seem not remote from today. But we are copyists. The land is Holland. Volkenburg sketched true to life in Dordrecht today, so slowly does the wheel of change turn in that northern Venice.
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