Page:Woman in Art.djvu/136

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WOMAN IN ART

Some critics pronounce her an impressionist; then it remains for others to consider her work normal, for all painting is an impression of some phase of nature, applied to the canvas according to the whim of the painter, or to defective eyesight.

In 1922 Mrs. Knight's ability as an artist was acknowledged by her appointment as a juror on the International Art Exhibition at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

She is a born artist, her love of life and most phases of life give an exuberance of spirit that flows from her mind to hand, and even to the tip of her brush in colors that seem to write "joy and gladness." And after seeing Sorolla's well-peopled canvases in the Hispanic Museum in New York, one feels that while he has been capturing brilliant sunlight in Spain, Mrs. Knight has been doing much the same thing for England (where it is much more needed), and both artists depict with quick characteristic brush the universal happiness of children in its glow and warmth. Her love of color also reminds one of the wonderful Spanish painter.

Mrs. Knight's work is represented in most public galleries in England; Manchester, Oldham, Leeds, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Brighton Fine Arts Gallery, in Ottawa, Canada, Melbourne, New Zealand, Cape Town, and in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

One of her recent canvases, "By the Sea," is a charming rendering of three children on a cliff by the rippling sea. The water is a most adroit painting of the soft summer ripples of the blue-green and gray, the sunlight centers on the little ones, most natural in their play.


First there was Lawrence Alma-Tadema, born in Holland, educated in Belgium, married a French lady who died in 1869, leaving the artist with two little daughters. Then with his children he went to England and in time became a British subject and Sir Lawrence. In 1871 he married Miss Laura Theresa Epps, whose striking features and wonderful red-gold hair have been the glory of many paintings from the easel of Alma-Tadema.

Laura Theresa Epps had been a pupil with Alma-Tadema two or three years before her marriage to him, her artistic gifts being such that in the opinion of the English critics she would have made the name Tadema well known in art, even had it not been illumined by the genius of her distinguished husband.

For twenty years Laura Alma-Tadema was a regular exhibitor at the Royal Adademy. The best known of her paintings are perhaps "Carol," "Per-

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