Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 72).djvu/182

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ARTICULAR interest attaches to the accompanying lively little sketches of Mlle. Suzanne Lenglen and Mlle. Diddie Vlasto, the first two women tennis players of France. For they are the work of Miss Helen Wills, the young American girl champion.

The surprising fact that Miss Wills is an artist with the pencil as well as with the racket requires no emphasis. The sketches tell their own story. Yet it is interesting to study them, not only because they are the work of a promising young art student—one of whose objects in visiting Europe this season was to continue her art training—but also because they are first-hand impressions of famous tennis players in action, produced by the pencil of their most brilliant opponent.

Although it may perhaps be said that Miss Wills has not advanced so far in the world of art as she has in the world of tennis, the degree of success which she has attained in these particularly difficult figure subjects reveals that she is by no means a novice. Progress is probably only a matter of time and practice.

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Apparently the drawings themselves are imbued with something of the personality of the artist-tennis-champion, for when they were recently shown to Miss Norah Schlegel, the well-known British woman illustrator—the signature of Miss Wills having been carefully covered up—Miss Schlegel made the following comments:—

"They are very bright and very vigorous little sketches—so vigorous, in fact, that I should imagine them to be the work either of a man or of a modern young woman with