WOMAN IN ART
Antwerp by the sea, he lavished his assimilated impressions and color equipment on many worthy canvases; but fame and gold lured him to the French court, and the canvases referred to resulted.
In the same style of drawing and beauty of color, Rubens painted "The Judgment of Paris," in which three over-fed females in a state of nudity have no excuse for being save a tale of mythology and the artist's desire to paint the nude. There is no modesty, no purity of spirit, and the beauty is solely in the color. Mercury, scepter in hand, seems best man to Paris, who is too bewildered to make his choice, while his winged feet suggest the fleetness of the vision, and as in a previous chapter where Cleopatra reveals her beauty to Cæsar, we are reminded of the "thievish glance." Exquisite in color, it seems to lack in grace and form; innocence, however, is indicated by the browsing sheep nearby.
It is one of those mythical stories that lose out when put upon canvas even by a master hand. We place it on the page of profane art. The pure ethereal element of allegory is lacking. One wishes his subject might not have profaned his art.
An eighteenth century painting by David represents Paris under different circumstances. The figures are worked out as if chiseled from Pentelic marble in days of Greek sculpture rather than in terms of brush and paint in eighteenth century France. The picture is more like a frozen subject, hard and cold. It radiates no warmth. Further on we will refer to it for comparison.
One of our present-day Americans has gone back to classic Greece and found a delicate subject for the nude, and treated it with real delicacy. J. H. Fry has brought to the light of our day, "The Silver-footed Thetis, Daughter of the Ancient Deep," who unwittingly plagued the faith of Jupiter and Juno. Against the exquisite blue-greens of the Meditenanean Sea and the red-brown of the rocks that forbid, yet guard the waters, Thetis is seated with naiad-like grace gazing into the clear depths from which she was born. There is a naturalness, hence a charm, in the transparent water; the flesh tint and texture seem to radiate life, and as one has said, "nakedness is idealized out of it." It represents a water spirit.
Another exquisite nude is from the easel of Sir Frederick Leighton, England's most poetic painter of the nineteenth century. A tall figure of exceeding grace and beauty stands between the marble columns of a Greek bath; a bit of drapery from an uplifted arm falls behind her, the other rests lightly against a column as she steps into the water. "The Bath" gives a reason for the pose, and the setting is dignified and appropriate. One may study the proportions
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