E. F. Ellet

“ The profession of the painter would seem, in many respects, peculiarly fitted for woman. It demands no sacrifice of maiden modesty nor of matronly reserve; it leads her into no scenes of noisy revelry or unseemly license; it does not force her to stand up to be stared at, commented on, clapped or hissed by a crowded and often unmannered audience, who forget the woman in the artist. It leaves her, during a great portion of her time at least, beneath the protecting shelter of her home, beside her own quiet fireside, in the midst of those who love her and whom she loves. ”

“ Miss Legaré here realized, for the first time, what few out of Italy can realize, the naturalness of Claude’s landscapes; the exquisite art of his unequaled coloring, which gives to his delineations of Alpine scenery so wonderful an effect.
Miss Legaré’s intense enjoyment of the beauties of nature in this favored region during a three months’ residence gave her an invincible repugnance to the work of copying the productions of any human artist. She always painted in oil; and, having brought no materials with her, could not transfer to her sketches the colors she so admired while on the spot. ”

“ Raphael Mengs pronounced upon her a flattering eulogium. “As an artist,” he says, “she is the pride of the female sex in all times and all nations. Nothing is wanting; composition, coloring, fancy, all are here.” But he was her friend, and wrote thus while the recollection of her charms and virtues were fresh in his memory.
Fuseli, who was honored by her friendship, was a more severe judge. He says, he “has no wish to contradict those who make success the standard of genius, and, as their heroine equals the greatest names in the first, suppose her on a level with them in power. ”

“ The piquant, handsome face, with its lively expression, its parted lips disclosing a row of pearly teeth, presents itself to the beholder’s gaze as if coquettishly challenging his admiration, while the hand holds the pencil as in the act of drawing. The picture of Angelica, with the head gently inclined, and the soft, intellectual melancholy of the countenance, evinces higher genius, even if, in point of artistic skill, the preference would be given to the other. ”

“ The time is now ripe for their emulation of their most eminent rivals of the other sex, not by laying aside womanly delicacy, but by labors entirely consistent with that true modesty which will ever be the most attractive ornament of the sex. History is the great teacher of the present; and what we have seen of the achievements of by-gone ages is so full of encouragement, that it is but reasonable to look for still greater triumphs in the wider arena now opened, than have yet crowned the genius or the persevering industry of woman. ”

“ The engraving from a portrait of Maria Cosway represents her in the bloom of youth, with a profusion of light hair dressed after the then prevailing mode. The fresh and delicate loveliness of the face is most attractive, and there is a wonderful beauty in the large, soft eyes, and the artless innocence that beams in their expression. The celebrated Mrs. Cowley, in a letter to her, thus speaks of her portrait: “If you can draw every body as justly as the fair Maria Cosway, you will be the first portrait-painter in the kingdom.” ”

“ She never took a lesson of any other teacher than her father and nature.
Bonheur, with his family, now occupied small six-story rooms in the Rue Rumfort. His two sons had also devoted themselves to art under his auspices, Auguste being a painter, and Isidore a sculptor. The loving family, merry and hopeful in spite of poverty, labored diligently together in the same little studio. From daylight till dusk Rosa was always at her easel, singing like a linnet, the busiest and merriest of them all. ”

“ No sooner had Harriet Hosmer reached home than she set to work to model an ideal bust of Hesper, continuing her anatomical studies with her cousin, and employing her intervals of leisure and rest in reading, riding, and boating. Now followed a period of earnest work, cheered and inspired by those visions of success, of purpose fulfilled, of high aims realized, which haunt the young and enthusiastic aspirant, and throw a halo round the youthful days of genius, lending a color to the whole career. ”

“ She has paid two visits to Rome: one when the Duc de Bordeaux was there. He paid her much attention, as did the two great princes of art, Cornelius and Tenerani, at that time in Rome. Thus situated, beloved by many, admired and appreciated by all, this clever artist and noble woman leads an honored life, which seems a realized dream of work, progress, and success.
From every point of view, a life so spent is a curious and interesting study. There is the independence belonging to an existence devoted to art, with almost cloistral simplicity and formality. ”

“ Her dislike to being written about will prevent many interesting particulars in regard to her from becoming known; but, if they ever come to light, they will show her life replete with noble teachings, and that the great painter whose fame will go down to coming ages was as admirable a woman as she was gifted as an artist; that her moral worth was no less transcendent than her genius. ”

“ Germaine, with all the habits, associations, and prejudices which belong to her order; on the other, the artist, earning her daily bread, and obliged to face in their reality the sternest necessities and most imperative obligations; the single woman treading victoriously the narrow and thorny path which all women tread who seek to achieve independence by their own exertions; and the genius which, to attain breadth and vigor, must freely sweep out of its path limitations and obstacles. ”

“ But splendor, fashionable position, success as an artist, and the friendship of princes and nobles could not make Richard Cosway happy. He saw the sneers lurking beneath the smiles of his aristocratic guests, and he heard the rumor that he was accused by other artists of using his talents to flatter the great, whose fleeting favor could not, after all, confer upon him lasting reputation. Maria’s health, too, began to fail; and, as the London climate was no longer endurable for her, her husband took her to travel on the Continent. They went to Paris and Flanders. ”

“ So alive are sculptors to the fact of the injury done to their works by being seen in plaster casts, that they bestow great pains in working them over by hand to restore something of the fineness and sharpness which the process of modeling has destroyed. So impressed with this is Powers, the American sculptor, that, with the ingenuity and inventive skill of his country, he has succeeded in making a plaster hard almost as marble, and which bears with equal impunity the file, chisel, and polisher. ”

“ The young girl was therefore obliged to practice unaided the art she began to love with increased enthusiasm, and her progress was still more retarded by the want of models or scenes in nature that might take her fancy. The low country of South Carolina—affording the only landscapes she had ever seen—abounds in flat and swampy districts. There is much beauty for an unaccustomed eye in the bleached wilderness of pine-land, with its stately, solemn groves, through which the wind surges with ocean-like murmur; but it is not of the kind available for the artist. ”

“ But it is due, in some degree, to the increased freedom of woman—to her liberation from the thraldom of old-fashioned prejudices and unworthy restraints which, in former times, fettered her energies, rendered her acquisition of scientific and artistic knowledge extremely difficult, and threw obstacles in the way of her devotion to study and the exercise of her talents. We have seen that, the more enlarged is the sphere of her activity among any people, the greater is the number of female artists who have done and are doing well, by their sustained and productive cultivation of art. ”

“ But none of the women artists of this time can be compared in point of genius or celebrity to the one of whom we are now to speak—one of the loveliest, most gifted, and most estimable of all the women who have secured immortal fame by the labors of the pencil. ”

“ To know how upright and how truthful she is, how single-minded in her devotion to her art, how simple and unassuming, fully conscious of the dignity of her artistic power, but respecting it rather as a talent committed to her keeping than as a quality personal to herself, you must have been admitted to something more than the ordinary courtesy of a reception-day. ”

“ Her statue of the Maid of Orleans is of the size of life, and is placed at Versailles; it is full of animation and spirit. But her last work, an angel in white marble, seems to be the result of inspiration. It is in the chapel of Sablonville, on the sarcophagus of her brother. It may be deeply lamented that the Princess Marie did not live to give additional proofs of the capability of her sex for works of sculpture. Her early death frustrated the efforts of a genius which bade fair to compete with the graceful forms of Canova or Flaxman. ”

“ In a large barn-like shed, with a floor of earth, on pedestals of various materials, shapes, and sizes, stand the beautiful Cupid and Butterfly, the wounded Amazon, Paris and Proserpine gathering flowers, the charming groups of Psyche borne by the Zephyrs, of Hylas and the Water Nymphs, and the noble basso-relievo of Phaeton and the Hours leading forth the horses of the Sun, with, perhaps, a bust or figure in progress by the workman whose duty it is to keep the studio and attend to the numerous visitors. ”

“ There was wanting, also, such a central point as was afforded in France and Spain by the courts of Versailles and Madrid. All things revolved in a narrow and sordid sphere of individual interest. That Germany, in spite of this disastrous and gloomy condition, should have produced artists, and that even women, with self-sacrificing zeal should have manifested their predilection for the calling, is a proof of the deep love for art implanted in the heart of the nation, showing itself in brilliant flashes during the sixteenth century, and in the midst of troubles not entirely extinguished. ”

“ A fine specimen of her skill in painting is a picture of “Judith,” in the Palazzo Pitti, which shows, in its ground-work, the principles of the school of Bologna; while its finish, on the other hand, exhibits the startling effects of the Neapolitan school. Lanzi says, “It is a picture of strong coloring, of a tone and intensity that inspires awe.” Mrs. Jameson remarks, “This dreadful picture is a proof of her genius, and, let me add, of its atrocious misdirection.” But the artist should not be censured for her treatment of a subject which may not have been her own choice. ”

“ The brilliancy and glow of Titian and Paul Veronese, the deep poetic feeling of Giorgione, the purity and tenderness of Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci, the rugged grandeur of Michael Angelo, the soft, transparent loveliness of Correggio, the bright beauty of Guido and Albano, and the power and passion of the Caravaggio school, disputed the consideration of amateurs with the light and lively style, the graceful mannerism of a Watteau and a Bouché, and something of the reflective character of the German Raphael Mengs, or that of Carstens and of Dietrich. ”

“ Felicie was born in Tuscany, but was taken, when an infant, to Paris, where her education commenced. Her parents were persons of much intelligence and culture. Her mother had great taste for music and painting, and it was from her that her daughter’s talents received their first direction and encouragement. The family favored the aristocrats and Legitimists, and endured much in the cause of the Bourbons. Madame de Fauveau’s eyes had opened on the terrors of the guillotine, and she was as proud of those memories of exile, proscription, and the scaffold as most persons are of honor and titles. ”

“ She drew and modeled from morning till night with enthusiastic ardor; and her father, amazed at her progress, and perceiving at last the real bent of her nature, devoted himself seriously to her instruction, superintending her efforts with the greatest interest and care. He took her through a serious course of preparatory study, and then sent her to the Louvre to copy the works of the old masters, as a discipline for her eye, her hand, and her judgment. ”

“ In Florence—the ancient home of Italian painting—artists of distinction exercised their skill; and the superior cultivation and taste diffused under the auspices of distinguished Tuscan ladies, contributed, in no small measure, to the encouragement of female enterprise. While Maria Borghini—elevated, by the judgment of her contemporaries, to a seat beside Victoria Colonna, and Mary dei Medici, who not only patronized art, but gave it her own personal efforts—won the meed of admiration, others were not backward in the race for the golden apple of renown. ”

“ The decorative was of rapid growth and early bloom in Prussia; Berlin, hardly mentioned heretofore, became suddenly alive with energetic talent superior to that which displayed itself in any other German city. Art sprang into luxuriance, too, at the Electoral court, and Dresden claimed no insignificant rank in the scale. France meanwhile sustained her old renown; while Nuremberg and Munich should not be slighted. But the Austrian and Rhine countries had less reason to boast; and many cities of northern Germany were in like poverty of women artists. ”

“ In Miss Legaré’s landscapes she gives to her coloring and combinations as much idealizing as truth to nature will admit. An artist, who was delighted both with her music and her painting, observed of the latter to her brother Hugh, “It is natural, but more beautiful than nature; it is poetical.” Another, when Hugh remarked that she must go to Italy, replied, “No, your sister studies our own wild nature—rich, romantic, glowing under a tropical sun, luxuriant when touched with frost; if she go to Italy, or study the old landscape-painters, she may give a finer finish, but it will be artificial.” ”