DURING the 19th century, in the United States of America, there came slowly into existence a new school of painting—new often in temper rather than in manner, for its followers usually came to Europe for their methods. Race, climate, religion, commerce, social life, influence art, and the painters of the United States reveal in their work all the characteristics for which their country has long been famous: vivacity, invention, constant enterprise, a democratic enthusiasm, a love of truth (truth often united with romance or else with sensationalism), and last, but not least, a rare felicity in transforming borrowed knowledge into something quite original. It is not often that a civilisation embodies itself in the genius of one man, giving an epitome of all its dominant qualities; but in Mr. John S. Sargent, R.A., we recognise a painter of tremendous gifts who does for the United States what the manly, swaggering Rubens did for Flanders, symbolising a people and a civilisation.
One sign of the democratic spirit in the progress of American Art is to be noticed in the fact that women have participated largely in the honours gained by the pioneers. It is noteworthy, for instance, that the first book on Women Painters should have been written by an American lady, Mrs Ellet, as far back as 1859. Mrs. Ellet showed great industry, but following a custom rashly encouraged by writers on art, she believed that she could teach painting and sculpture by the use of words alone, in recording biographical facts, and in offering criticisms on work that her readers could not see in illustrations. Written history is the phonograph of all past centuries, but the understanding of art owes little to its words.
Still, the enthusiasm that fired Mrs. Ellet was shared by many of her countrywomen, and to it we owe some truly clever artists, like the four sculptors, Harriet Hosmer, Florence Freeman, Edmonia Lewis and Emma Stebbins, or like the following painters: Emily Sartain (portraits and genre), Sara M. Peale (portraits), Mrs. J. W. Dewing (portraits, subject pictures, flowers and still-life), Annie C. Shaw (cattle and landscapes), Mrs. Adèle Fassett (portraits) Mrs. Elisa Greatorex (landscapes), Mrs. Henry A. Loop (portraits), Ella A. Moss (portraits), Jennie Brownscombe (subject pictures), May Alcott (copies after J. M. W. Turner and still-life), Elizabeth Boott (figure subjects), Charlotte B. Coman (landscapes in the manner of Corot), and that delicate recorder of pleasant secrets learnt from nature in the fields, Fidelia Bridges. The very titles of this lady's pictures have the fragrance of field flowers or else they glow with the plumage of birds. It has been said of Fidelia Bridges that her art sings little pastoral lyrics, and her art is certainly very fresh and sweet, charmed with much sympathetic appreciation of nature in some of her unnumbered smiling moods. For Fidelia Bridges, like Birket Foster, paints as though the year were all springtime, a series of twelve May months, all full of gaiety and bounty. She seldom takes heed of that eternal warfare which accompanies Nature's bountifulness, filling the seed-carrying winds with the presence of death, and setting every living thing to prey upon another. To this part of Nature's life Fidelia Bridges usually shuts her eyes, unlike Miss E. M. Carpenter, whose landscape art reveals at times the menacing suggestion of great rivers and of high solitary mountains.
It would serve no useful purpose to enumerate all the earlier women painters of the United States. They worked bravely and well, and if their doings are now forgotten or undervalued, it is only because the harvest sowed by them is being reaped by the present generation. To-day the names of at least two American women painters, Mary Cassatt and Cecilia Beaux, are known in every country where good art is studied. Mary Cassatt, the only pupil of Degas, is bracketed always with Berthe Morisot, for both ladies became Impressionists at about the same time, adding the charm of their personalities to a rugged revolt in art. The work of each has great interest, but that of Mary Cassatt is the more attractive and the more enduring. It is not overburdened with a heavy adherence to methods originated by men; and it is richer with the emotions of the painter's own heart. To Mary Cassatt, Impressionism is a chosen dialect, a means by which she can express herself in colour and form; to Berthe Morisot, on the other hand, it was in itself the final word in painting. So, mistaking the clay of art for the finished statue, she obeyed the methods of a school with so much zeal and so much self-sacrifice that her own nature became enslaved to the difficulties of technique. Compare Berthe Morisot's able study (page [211]) with the charming homeliness of Mary Cassatt's picture (page [157]), and you will see at a glance how wide is the difference between the emotional and æsthetic value of the subjects represented. Berthe Morisot remains a student, while Mary Cassatt passes beyond technique to a universal delight in childhood. She feels both the pathos and the humour of the beginnings of our life, and she makes infancy welcome in art because she understands it and shows no maudlin sentiment.
Something of the same kind is done by Miss Cornelia Conant, in her domestic picture called "The End of the Story" (page [151]); and another view of child-life, delightfully rendered by Helen Hyde, may be seen in colour on page [145].
The pictures by which Miss Cecilia Beaux is represented in this book show very clearly that her genius has dramatic strength, sustention, and flexibility. The portrait on page [162] is handled with a sculptural vigour that responds admirably to the character of the sitter, while the "Mother and Child" (page [121]) has a quietness of tone, a reserved simplicity of style, a permeating suggestion of pathos, having much in common with Whistler's portrait of his mother. Miss Cecilia Beaux is a dramatist in her studies of character, and her art is probably more subtle and more various than that of any woman painter who has devoted her life to portraiture. The reader will do well to contrast her style with that of Mrs. Anna Lea Merritt, the first woman painter whose work was purchased by the Chantrey Fund, London (page [139]).
It is fitting now that a list should be given of other leading artists of the United States, though their work is not represented here, owing to the adventures in delays that attend a despatch of letters from London to America.
1. Sarah C. Sears (Mrs. J. Montgomery Sears), pupil of Turner, Brush and Tarbell; prizes at New York, 1893, Chicago, 1893, Paris, 1900, Buffalo, 1901, Charleston, 1902.
2. Miss Mary L. Macomber, pupil of Boston Museum; prizes at Boston, 1895, Atlanta, 1895, National Academy of Design, 1897, Pittsburgh, 1901.
3. Miss Katherine Abbot, bronze medal at Paris, 1900.
4. Miss Elizabeth F. Bonsall, pupil of Howard Pyle, prize winner at Philadelphia, 1885, 1888, 1897.
5. Miss Matilda Browne, pupil of Dewey and Bisbing, medals at Chicago, 1890, National Academy of Design, 1899 and 1901.
6. Miss Maria Brooks, pupil of the Royal Academy Schools, London.
7. Mrs. Brewster Sewell, pupil of Duran in Paris, of Chase in New York; winner of several prizes, as at Charleston in 1902.
8. Rosina Emmet Sherwood, pupil of Chase and of Julian's School, Paris; prizes in Paris, 1889, Chicago, 1893, Buffalo, 1901.
9. Mrs. Emily M. Scott, prizes at Buffalo, 1901, New York, 1902.
10. Miss Rhoda H. Nicolls, born in England and studied in England; a frequent prize-winner.
11. Edith M. Prellwitz, a frequent prize-winner and a pupil of Brush, in New York, of Julian, in Paris.
12. Lydia Field Emmet, pupil of Bouguereau, in Paris, of Chase, in New York; prizes at Chicago, 1893, Atlanta, 1895, Buffalo, 1901.
13. Mrs. Kenyon Cox, pupil of the National Academy of Design; prize-winner at Paris, 1900, at Buffalo, 1901.
14. Emma L. Cooper, Medals at Chicago, 1893, Atlanta, 1895.
15. Mrs. Charlotte B. Comans, Medal at San Francisco, 1894.
16. Miss Clara S. MacChesney;
and last, but not least, Miss Mary F. MacMonnies.
W. S. S.