Page:Woman in Art.djvu/177

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WOMAN IN ART

art world has a lasting interpretation of a charactered man or woman, who, before, may have been known only by name.

The portrait of Dr. William H. Howell, dean of the Johns Hopkins Hospital, is of three quarters length, and represents the eminent physician in classic gown, standing, apparently having just removed his glasses to give due attention to the speaker. The spirit of the scholar as well as the physician radiates from the canvas.

The late "J. Dickinson Sargent, Esq.," a portrait painted some time ago, is one of the strongest of Miss Beaux's works, and lends the dignity of the man to the reception room of the Mutual Assurance Company of New York.

In 1911 the Carnegie Institute at Pittsburgh hung an extremely vital representation of "A Boy and a Girl In Riding Clothes," "A Girl With a Cat" on her shoulder is evidently a double portrait; the cat is as admirably painted as the girl, and one knows at sight that the two are chums. The canvas was bought for the Corcoran Gallery, where it hangs.

A portrait of Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt and her daughter shows the happy mother when she was mistress of the White House.

"The Banner Bearer" represents a very earnest young woman whose attention and muscle are concerned with the subject in hand.

Miss Beaux indulges in the decorative at times, perhaps to gratify her love of color more than portraiture calls for; one judges that, from the strong pigment seen on a panel of a woman seated, yet bowed in deep thought amid brilliant but absolutely harmonious colors.

At the International Exposition held in Venice in 1924 seventy-five paintings were selected by a special committee and sent overseas to represent American painters and their work. The movement was under direction of the American Federation of Arts invited by the president of the Exposition, Mr. Giovanni Bordiga. In an open letter of appreciation to the president of the American Federation of Arts, Mr. Robert W. de Forest, Mr. Bordiga said: "The United States Exhibit is one of the greatest and most interesting features of the present Exposition, and we address grateful thanks to those who, with intelligence and love, directed and took care of the arrangement." Quoting from the leading art critic in the Corrier della Sera, we find: "American painters often express themselves, as is known, in French, especially in open air scenes and in scenes of great light. But it is enough"—naming a few—"to understand that, having reached a complete mastery of this foreign technique, American painters by now know how to reveal freely their souls by it. As is natural, that fervid and overpowering civilization holds the human figure and the portrait in high honor. And the tra-

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