WOMAN IN ART
"The North Wind" is eloquent of the power unseen, save in its actions; and verdure, from grass to trees, makes obeisance to that power.
Miss Butler has the wanderlust to an extent that will broaden and enrich her art. In the Renaissance period nature was lavish of her gifts, granting to some a plurality of talents, and the generous Dame still keeps up the good work among twentieth century artists, of whom Mary Butler is one. One of her extra gifts is that of organizer. "She has been an inspiration, organizer, and one of the upholders of the Fellowship Society of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, till it found its feet and kept them after a trying period of dissolution.
"'Why should we always feed those who have plenty,' argues Mary Butler. 'Why should we not carry our bread to those who are really hungering for it?'" She realizes "that true art appreciation cannot dawn in America until within the children of the country there stirs a desire for the beautiful. And with this thought in mind, she initiated an art service to public schools, working always through the Fellowship."
Mary Butler is thus working in one of the most powerful ways in the building up of a national art, a work that seems emphatically Woman's work in art. Being one of the enthusiastic, vital persons, she is making a practical application of art to life.
Lillian Westcott Hale is one of those artistic spirits whose mentality, in some degree an inheritance, plus the will power and perseverance of her own, has made her life and art what they are. Meeting her on life's pathway, one would be inspired by the face that somehow gives out the message of a bright May morning, pouring its influence over the strong hills of her native New England.
Her work expresses appreciation of the every-day-ness of things at hand; of climatic conditions without and spiritual conditions within. Not one in thousands would think of taking a charcoal to depict the spotless snow that
"Had begun in the gloaming,
And busily all the night,
Was heaping field and highway
With a silence, deep and white."
But that is what Lillian Westcott did with consummate skill. In fact, it seems to be snowing yet, partially veiling the "Old Dedham House," and giving exquisite values to the intervening trees. This effect is produced by her individual method of working, a sort of line engraving giving a dry point appearance. While her
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