WOMAN IN ART
visit—a very touching one. Miss Florence Nightingale, confined to her room by chronic suffering, wrote to the artist to ask that the representation of her dear old friends, the soldiers of the Crimea, might be taken to her bedside; and so it was.
"Moreover, separate from the soldier interest (which was very deep in the English heart at that time), or that of the association of the soldier and the woman, was the interest that was strictly feminine. In the triumph of one woman, the generous one dared to see a new opening for all women in the world of art."
The "Roll Call" and "Rork's Drift" were purchased by Queen Victoria, one for Windsor Castle, the other for her favorite home at Osborne.
Lady Butler's husband, an Army officer in active service at the time the artist was doing some of her strongest work, gave her unusual opportunity for studying her chosen subject in any and all phases.
"The next year's success from the brush of Lady Butler (1875) was "Quatre Bras," and the public was as enthusiastic as it had been over the "Roll Call!" Newspapers, critics, nobility were sweeping in their approval and admiration; but one man whom all England listened for was silent. Here again a quotation:
"Mr. Ruskin had not written for fifteen years till that year, which produced his 'Notes on the Royal Academy.' Frank as ever, he confessed: 'I never approached a picture with more iniquitous prejudice against it than I did Miss Thompson's; partly because I have always said that no woman could paint; and secondly, because I thought what the public made such a fuss about must be good for nothing." Then he adds in generous amends: "But it is Amazon's work, this, no doubt of it; and the first fine pre-Raphaelite picture of battle we have had—profoundly interesting, and showing all manner of illustrative and realistic faculty .... I had not in the least expected the quality of refinement, for the cleverest women always show their weakness in endeavors to be dashing. But actually, here, what I suppose few people would think of looking at—the sky is most tenderly painted, and with the truest outline of cloud, of all in the exhibition; and the terrific piece of gallant wrath and ruin on the extreme right, where the cuirassier is catching round the neck of his horse as he falls, and the convulsed fallen horse just seen through the smoke below is wrought through all the truth of its frantic passion, and with gradations of color and shade of which I have not seen the like since the death of Turner."
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