PART III
Woman as Artist
We cite the painters and sculptors in this division of Woman As Artist, not merely for numbers, for there are many hundreds of women of the brush and spatula who have worked, or are working, toward the advancement of art in America and elsewhere.
Our purpose is to set forth the names and work of a few artists who have already helped in the advancement of art as we know it today; and of a few younger workers who, with purpose and training, are striving toward a fuller appreciation of the soul and method of art expression, which is their own appreciation of nature and humanity.
Nor is it an adequate representation of the artists cited; that would be impossible in a work of limitations. But the hope is that it may be helpful to an understanding of the art development of woman, from her first appearance in connection with art up through this first quarter of the Twentieth Century.
CHAPTER XI
Four Functions In Art. Women Painters In Europe from Margaret van Eyck to Rosa Bonheur.
"All nature is but art unknown to thee,
All chance, direction, which thou canst not see;
All discord, harmony not understood."
Alexander Pope. (1688-1744)
Those lines penned more than two hundred years ago by the old English poet furnish food for thought.
We know that art is the most beautiful way of expressing things; also we know that art is the output of man's best. But we need to remember that man is ever greater than his best; that nature is the output of the Creator who has thus intimated His Spirit and Power, nor exhausted Himself in producing the unthinkable wonder and harmony of cosmos.
The writer was once asked to bring some phase of art to a literary club, immediately came the thought—take art out of literature and what would become of Ruskin, Rosseti, Taine, Browning, the Odyssey and Illiad, of ancient history, sacred and profane? What would become of the classics, of drama, architecture, and the poets of nature and human life? No: Literature
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