She is best known for her excellent copies of old pictures, and especially by her copy of the Sistine Madonna, from which Müller's engraving was made.
Shaw, Annie C. The first woman elected Academician in the Academy of Design, Chicago, 1876. Born at Troy, New York. Pupil of H. C. Ford. Landscape painter. Among her works are "On the Calumet," "Willow Island," "Keene Valley, New York," "Returning from the Fair," 1878, which was exhibited in Chicago, New York, and Boston. To the Centennial, Philadelphia, 1876, she sent her "Illinois Prairie."
"Returning from the Fair" shows a group of Alderney cattle in a road curving through a forest. At the time of its exhibition an art critic wrote: "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. As the eye follows this roadway to its distant part the sun lights up the sky, tingeing with a mellow light the group of small trees and willows, contrasting beautifully with the almost sombre tones of the dense forest in the middle distance."
Shrimpton, Ada M. Has exhibited at the Royal Academy, Royal Institute of Water-Colors, British Artists, and principal provincial galleries in England and in Australia; also at the Paris Salon. Member of Society of Women Artists, London. Born in Old Alresford, Hampshire. Pupil of John Sparkes at South Kensington, and of Jean Paul Laurens and Benjamin Constant in Paris.
This artist has painted principally figure subjects, among which are "Cedric's Daughter," "Thoughts of Youth are Long Thoughts," "Dream of the Past," "Pippa Passes," "Dorothy's Bridesmaid's Dress," etc., etc. Recently she has devoted herself to portraits of ladies and children, in both oil and water-colors.
Sirani, Elisabetta. Has been praised as a woman and as an artist by Lanzi, Malvasia, Picinardi, and other writers until one must believe that in spite of the exaggeration of her personal qualities and her artistic genius, she was a singularly admirable woman and a gifted artist.
She was born in Bologna about 1640, and, like Artemisia Gentileschi, was the daughter of a painter of the school of Guido Reni, whose follower Elisabetta also became. From the study of her master she seems to have acquired the power to perceive and reproduce the greatest possible beauty with which her subjects could be invested.
She worked with such rapidity that she was accused of profiting by her father's assistance, and in order to refute this accusation it was arranged that the Duchess of Brunswick, the Duchess of Mirandola, Duke Cosimo, and others should meet in her studio, on which occasion Elisabetta charmed and astonished her guests by the ease and perfection with which she sketched in and shaded drawings of the subjects which one person after another suggested to her.
Her large picture of the "Baptism of Christ" was completed when the artist was but twenty years old. Malvasia gives a list of one hundred and twenty pictures executed by Elisabetta, and yet she was but twenty-five when her mysterious death occurred.
In the Pinacoteca of Bologna is the "St. Anthony Adoring the Virgin and Infant Jesus," by the Sirani, which is much admired; several other works of hers are in her native city. "The Death of Abel" is in the Gallery of Turin; the "Charity," in the Sciarra Palace in Rome; "Cupids" and a picture of "Martha and Mary," in the Vienna Gallery; an "Infant Jesus" and a picture called "A Subject after Guido" are in the Hermitage at Petersburg.