Page:Woman Triumphant.djvu/241

 attraction of the Paris Salon in 1853, and later on became the property of the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. Of all animal paintings ever executed, this one is perhaps the most animated, and the best in composition as well as in color. Another canvass, "Horses Threshing Corn," shows the same merits. Containing ten horses in full life size, it is the largest animal picture ever produced.

Another painting, "The Monarch of the Glen," received much praise at the World's Columbian Exposition.

In just appreciation of her genius Rosa Bonheur was proposed in 1853 for the Cross of the Legion of Honor, but because of her sex the decoration was withheld until 1865.

One of the four daughters of an early German pioneer of California, who distinguished themselves in different lines of activity, Anne Elizabeth Klumpke followed in the footsteps of Rosa Bonheur, of whom she became a close friend, and who, in appreciation of her great talent, bequeathed to her her beautiful chateau as well as her entire fortune.

The second half of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th Century produced a surprising abundance of women artists, some of whom gained the most coveted prizes and medals offered by the great annual exhibitions in Paris, London, Berlin, Munich and other centers of art. Clara Erskine Clemens in her book "Women in the Fine Arts" has compiled notes about several hundred of them, without enumerating them all. To mention a few of the most excellent, we name of the German artists Louise Parmentier Begas, Tina Blau, Dora Hitz, Lucia von Gelder, Herminie von Janda, Countess Marie Kalckreuth, Minna Stock, Toni Stadler, Frieda Ritter, Margarethe von Schack, Vilma Parlaghy, and Margarethe Waldau.

Italy names among its best modern painters Alceste Campriani, Ada Negri, Juana Romani, Erminia de Sanctis, and Clelia Bompiani.

The French extol the genius of Louise Labé, Marceline Desbordes-Valmore and Louise Ackermann.

Belgium and Holland number among their women artists Therese Schwartze, Adele Kindt and Henriette Ronner; Spain points with pride to the works of Fernanda Frances y Arribas, Adele Gines and Antonia de Banuelos. Denmark's famous artist, Elizabet Jerichau Baumann, is remembered especially for her magnificent painting "Christian Martyrs in the Catacombs"; Switzerland has two portraitists of the first order, Louise Catherine Breslau and Aimée Rapin, while Russia produced in Marie Bashkirttseff an artist of rare ability.

Perhaps in no other country is the number of female artists so large as in England. We will name only a few of them. Laura Alma Tadema was the gifted daughter of the famous artist Laurenz Alma Tadema. Margaret Sarah