Page:Woman in Art.djvu/195

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WOMAN IN ART

alluring. Looking at the drawing of Hamlet and his mother in secret converse, the eye follows theirs toward the concealing curtain, on the outcry of a voice for "Help! Help!" The colors in this illustration are rich, and warmer than the floor and walls of stone would be under mere candle-light, but perfect as representing the stage setting and light.

Mrs. Elliott had a group of illustrations at the Panama-Pacific Exposition in 1915; "Queen Cophetua," "The Moon World," "The Little Wooden Soldier," "Elizabeth," and "Inspector Joly" were some of them, interesting alike to old and young, and all with the real artistic thought and touch that mark her work. That group at San Francisco won for the artist the silver medal.

A digression: Just here the writer was about to pen the words, "Sweet and Low," that much-loved lullaby so harmoniously set to slumberous music, when the thought came that it was a man of big, philosophic, broad mind who wrote those tender lines, one whom Queen Victoria and the world delighted to honor, Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Something diverted the eye on that instant to the window as a laboring man in his work clothes was slowly passing, a young babe over his shoulder nearly asleep. The man was conversing with another gentleman quietly but earnestly, and the two were followed by another scrap of humanity not more than two years old. That father is living a lullaby.

Mrs. Elliott has expressed that same lullaby in her medium of art, in an exquisite picture of baby on mother's lap. She has just taken him from the bath at her feet. Shelves of kitchen pots and jars form the background. The position of the dimpled babe within mother's arms shows that the sand man has been around, but the blue eyes are looking at you from the picture. In another instant he will be in dreamland. It is one of the most sweet and real pictures of a babe to be found.

Mrs. Elliott is a member of the Woman's City Clubs of New York and Philadelphia; of the Association of Illustrators, 1903; of the International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Engravers, and others.

She was awarded Second Corcoran prize, Washington, 1904; the Mary Smith prize in 1905; the Beck prize in 1907; and other medals and prizes have attested the art value of her work, in the World Fairs as well as in her published art.

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