Page:Woman in Art.djvu/118

WOMAN IN ART During their prolonged tour of two years, the first of their two daughters, Elizabeth, was born at Lausanne, the charming heart of Switzerland. Her childhood was spent in the beautiful midlands of England, with frequent journeys to the hills and lakes of other lands. On those trips the child was aroused to the unusual people, costumes, and animals, and a pencil became her constant companion at three and four years of age.

With her as with Rosa Bonheur there came a timely correction in drawing from her parents, thus keeping the child from fundamental errors. "Animals were of prime interest to her, but not asleep or standing, they must be in action to suit the little maid. If a horse were still, he must have just stopped, with that alertness and tension of muscle that means the next step; that subtle poise of action in instant rest, to be followed by instant action." This has always been her strongest characteristic, in all brush and pencil productions; truthfulness to nature was the natural sequence. Study from the moving model was a necessity, to her a charm. Love was in her work. She thrilled with the life she loved to depict. She kept at work continually, sending canvas after canvas to the Academy, seemingly not discouraged because at the first they were not accepted. As a child she wanted to study from the life, for which she went to South Kensington School; but she was put in an elementary class with children of her age, because of which she left and took oil painting of a private teacher, and also sketched at home till, armed with work in oil painting and life drawings, she went back. The head teacher looked at her work and admitted her to the advanced life class.

Elizabeth Thompson was in her early teens when her first picture was accepted. It was a water-color, "Bavarian Artillery Going Into Action." The British Gallery rejected it, but it was accepted by the Dudley Gallery. Her love for animals was leading her on to such military situations on canvas as had never before or since been produced in England, if there had been on the Continent.

France her her "Hall of Battles" at Versailles, vistas of canvas that fairly reek with blood and carnage. Yet, France has had many battle painters through her history, but not one was a woman.

Elizabeth Thompson traversed the battlefields of Europe and of history, painting to the life dramatic incident and action, free from all precedent and conventionality, putting freshness and truth in their places; painting with knowledge gathered from camp and maneuvers and from some actual encounters, plus that innate vision that enabled her to resurrect the soldiers of the Crimea, of the 88