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 CHAPTER XIII

European Artists Continued from 1850 to the Present.

Again we find a genius in art born to Holland parents in Amsterdam, 1852. In her early working years Therese Schwartz was known as the daughter of her father, John George Schwartz, a good portrait painter. He was her teacher until his death in 1874; after that loss to her heart and her art she went to Munich and became the pupil of Gabriel Max, Piloty, and Lenbach. Sometimes the things we do not like to hear result to our best good, and so it was with this young artist. One day Piloty said to her, "If you were a man you would accomplish many things; your feminine want of self-confidence will always stand in your light unless you learn to throw off this timidity and become an independent being." That kindly suggestion carried truth to her need, and she gained her independence and has ever since worked out her own ideals in her own way. Joseph Israels was a tried and true friend of Therese's father and his wise hints and suggestions were valuable additions to her growing experience. Portrait painting was her chosen line of art, but some most successful figure-pictures have made their way from her easel to choice private collections and museums of art.

A typical Holland group is a mother and little daughter watching the father's return. "He Comes" is apparently the exclamation of both. The costumes of mother and child show emphatically that they are arrayed in their "Sunday best" in honor of his coming.

"The Orphan Girls of Amsterdam" in costumes of red and black give another feature of Holland, provocative of a soul-developing characteristic of Dutch folk from their entrance into history. The old and young, those entering the experiences of life and those worn out by what life had to teach them, have ever been cared for in Holland. The orphan girls in the painting are singing from the 146th Psalm:

"The Lord preserveth the stranger;

He relieveth the fatherless and widow."

The sweet expression on some of the faces as they sing carries the thought of a child's faith and simple trust; and to the mind comes also the precarious lives of the fishermen of the deep sea, the thought that doubtless animated the good mothers of hundreds of years ago, who considered the condition of the little children of the fishermen who never came back, and were the 95