Clara Erskine Clement Waters

“ The eye of the spectator is struck with the rich mass of foliage, passing from the light green of the birches in the foreground, where the light breaks through, to the dark green of the dense forest, shading into the brownish tints of the early September-tinged leaves. Farther on, the eye is carried back through a beautiful vista formed by the road leading through the centre of the picture, giving a fine perspective and distance through a leafy archway of elms and other forest trees that gracefully mingle their branches overhead, through which one catches a glimpse of deep blue sky. ”

“ Of a triptych, called the "Life of Roses," exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Français, 1903, Jules de Saint Hilaire writes: "Mme. Faux-Froidure was inspired when she painted her charming triptych of 'Rose Life.' In the compartment on the left the roses are twined in a crown resembling those worn in processions; in the centre, in all its dazzling beauty, the red rose, the rose of love, is enthroned; while the panel on the right is consecrated to the faded rose—the souvenir rose, shrivelled, and lying beside the little casket which it still perfumes with its old-time sweetness." ”

“ Sebastian was as beautiful as Apollo, and the imagination and senses were moved alike by pictures of Danae and the Magdalene—the two subjects being often the work of the same artist.
The human form was now esteemed as something more than the mere habitation of a soul; it was beautiful in itself and capable of awakening unnumbered emotions in the human heart. Nature, too, presented herself in a new aspect and inspired the artist with an ardor in her representation such as few of the older painters had experienced in their devotion to religious subjects. ”

“ Few artists have the fresh touch which the child needs and the firm and rapid execution which allows the painter to catch the fleeting expression and the half-forms which make child portraits at once the longing and the despair of portrait painters. Miss Beaux's technique is altogether French, sometimes reminding me a little of Carolus Duran and of Sargent; but her individuality has triumphed over all suggestions of her foreign masters, and the combination of refinement and strength is altogether her own. ”

“ The woman who has signed such a portrait is a great artist." It is well known that the famous sculptor is a remarkable portraitist.
In a review of the Salon at Nice we read: "A portrait by Mme. Massip is a magnificent canvas, without a single stroke of the charlatan. The pose is simple and dignified; there is the serenity and repose of a woman no longer young, who makes no pretension to preserve her vanishing beauty; the costume, in black, is so managed that it would not appear superannuated nor ridiculous at any period. The execution is that of a great talent and an artistic conscience. ”

“ In one hour I saw there twenty canvases commenced; a hundred designs—drawings, painted studies, the cast of a statue, portraits which suggested to me the name of Frans Hals, scenes made from life in the open streets; notably one large sketch of a landscape—the October mist on the shore, the trees half stripped, big yellow leaves strewing the ground. In a word, works in which is incessantly sought, or more often asserts itself, the sentiment of the sincerest and most original art, and of the most personal talent. ”

“ Of the colony of American artists, who for a decade or two past have made Paris their home, few have been more interesting and none more serious than Miss Cassatt.... Miss Cassatt has found her true bent in her recent pictures of children and in the delineation of happy maternity. These she has portrayed with delicacy, refinement, and sentiment. Her technique appeals equally to the layman and the artist, and her color has all the tenderness and charm that accompanies so engaging a motif. ”

“ The art of the Renaissance reached its greatest excellence during the last three decades of the fifteenth and the first half of the sixteenth century. This was a glorious period in the History of Art. The barbarism of the Middle Ages was essentially a thing of the past, but much barbaric splendor in the celebration of ceremonies and festivals still remained to satisfy the artistic sense, while every-day costumes and customs lent a picturesqueness to ordinary life. So much of the pagan spirit as endured was modified by the spirit of the Renaissance. ”

“ This pessimistic view of the world is illustrated by the figure of a king, who, in the midst of ruins, places his foot upon the prostrate form of a chained victim; Happiness, with bandaged eyes, scatters treasures into the bottomless pit, a desperate youth being about to plunge into its depths; a kneeling woman, praying for light, sees brilliant figures soaring upward, their beauty charming roses from the thorn bushes.
Other pictures by this artist remind one of the works of Botticelli. ”

“ If she paints the branch of a rose-tree, it seems to spring from the ground with its flowers in all their luxurious wantonness, and one can almost imagine one's self inhaling their delightful perfume. This talented artist knows so well how to depict with her brush the transparency and softness of the tender, ethereal rose, that one may seek in vain among a crowd of artists for her equal.... ”

“ 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 left, when the cuirassier is catching round the neck of his horse as he falls, and the convulsed fallen horse, seen through the smoke below, is wrought through all the truth of its frantic passion with gradations of color and shade which I have not seen the like of since Turner's death. ”

“ It is remarkable that an artist who paints male heads with such a vigorous character should also give to flowers softness, transparency, and grace. Nothing can be more lovely than Miss Boott's flower studies. She has some delicious poppies among wheat, lilies, thistles. She gets a transparency into these works that is not facile in oil. A bunch of roses in a vase was as tender and round and soft-colored as in nature. Among all the many studios of Rome I do not know a more attractive one than Miss Boott's. ”

“ The light and pleasing in form and color, in design and execution, distinguish the numerous works of our artist. No living painter excels her in dignity or in the delicate taste with which she handles the pencil. ”

“ In Berlin and Dresden the interest in art was much greater in the eighteenth than in previous centuries, and with this new impulse many women devoted themselves to various specialties in art. Miniature and enamel painting were much in vogue, and collections of these works, now seen in museums and private galleries, are exquisitely beautiful and challenge our admiration, not only for their beauty, but for the delicacy of their handling and the infinite patience demanded for their execution. ”

“ Later, in historical and decorative painting, it served the State, and at length, in portrait and landscape painting, in pictures of genre subjects and still-life, abundant opportunity was afforded for all orders of talent, and the generous patronage of art by church, state, and men of rank and wealth, made Italy a veritable paradise for artists.
Gradually, with the revival of learning, artists were free to give greater importance to secular subjects, and an element of worldliness, and even of immorality, invaded the realm of art as it invaded the realms of life and literature. ”

“ This color surrounded the artists of that sumptuous city of luxurious life and wondrous pageants, and was so emphasized by the marvellous mingling of the semi-mist and the brilliancy of its atmosphere that no man who merited the name of artist could be insensible to its inspiration. ”

“ Nothing that makes a part in human experience is now too commonplace or too unusual and mysterious to afford inspiration to painter and sculptor; while the normal characteristics of human beings and the circumstances common to their lives are not omitted, the artist frequently endeavors to express in his work the most subtle experiences of the heart and soul, and to embody in his picture or statue an absolutely psychologic phenomenon. ”

“ In the Studio, March, 1901, in writing of the exhibition of the American Water-Color Society, the critic says: "In her two works, 'Cherries' and 'A Rose,' Mrs. Rhoda Holmes Nicholls shows us a true water-color executed by a master hand. The subject of each is slight; each stroke of her brush is made once and for all, with a precision and dash that are inspiriting; and you have in each painting the sparkle, the deft lightness of touch, the instantaneous impression of form and coloring that a water-color should have." ”

“ She not only infuses a wonderful degree of life into her little figures, but reproduces the shades of expression, shifting and variable as the sands of the sea, as no other artist of the brush has done. Asleep or awake, her cats look to the" felinarian "like cats with whom he or she is familiar. Curiosity, drowsiness, indifference, alertness, love, hate, anxiety, temper, innocence, cunning, fear, confidence, mischief, earnestness, dignity, helplessness—they are all in Mme. Ronner's cats' faces, just as we see them in our own cats." ”

“ A critic in the Paris World writes of this artist: "She has exquisite color sense and delights in presenting that exaltation de la vie, that love, radiance, and joy of life, which are at once the secret of the success and the keynote of the masterful canvases of Roll, in whose studio were first developed Claude Marlef's delicate qualities of truthful perception in the portraiture of woman.... Her perceptions being rapid, she has a remarkable instantaneous insight, enabling her to fix the dominant feature and soul of expression in each of the various types among her numerous sitters." ”

“ Miss Spartali has a fine power of fusing the emotion of her subject into its color and of giving aspiration to both; beyond what is actually achieved one sees a reaching toward something ulterior. As one pauses before her work, a film in that or in the mind lifts or seems meant to lift, and a subtler essence from within the picture quickens the sense. ”

“ The words of Burne Jones, in which he gave his own ideal, appeal to many artists and lovers of art: "I mean by a picture a beautiful, romantic dream of something that never was, never will be—in a light better than any light that ever shone—in a land no one can define or remember, only desire—and the forms divinely beautiful." ”

“ As you face the picture the portraits of two hundred and fifty-eight men and women, who, twenty-six years ago, were part and parcel of the legislative, executive, judicial, social, and journalistic life of Washington, look straight at you as if they were still living and breathing things, as, indeed, many of them are. ”

“ One year later, at the Vienna Spring Exhibition, she exhibited her 'Die Hexe.' Here is no traditional witch, though the broomstick on which she will ride through the air is en evidence. She is a demoniac being, knowing her own power, and full of devilish instinct. The marble is full of life, and one seems to feel the warmth of her delicate, powerfully chiselled, though soft and pliable limbs. ”