Page:Woman in Art.djvu/134

WOMAN IN ART interest surely, as well as of art, and, like the other canvases, from the brush of this artist, a fascinating lure for the interior decorator.

When natives of a country tell you that you must meet the greatest woman painter of their land, you are bound to take their valuation of said artist, for they have known her and her work from her student days, have watched her progress and shared in her successes, and rejoiced in her honors.

Laura Knight of England is so honored. At the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, in 1922, she gave to American art lovers pictured children on the river wharf, the wharf that might border any city where the heat of Summer drives from stuffy housings to the feel of limpid cool water on the supple bodies. A small boat is made fast to the wharf, and from the gunwale small humans can trail legs, arms, chips, and boats on the lapping wavelets. From sun and stone their dog absorbs the heat into his slim outstretched body, where he seems to guard their finny "catch" that lies wilted in the sun. When weary with a short swim, human ducks cling to an anchored boat not far from shore. You feel the sunshine, you see happy children, and the glint of the water. The artist calls it "Summer." It is realism painted with consummate knowledge. It takes the beholder out among the children without the inconvenience of travel or the discomfort of sun or wind.

Pictures are often so full of the artist's spirit that they exert a contagion. Such an one is the "Laughing Lady" by Laura Knight. From the artist's choice of subjects we take her to be a woman of the world, in the sense that the human world has an art interest in most things. Her art sense was greatly enthused with the wonderful beauty and grace of Pavlowa, and since one cannot paint action, Mrs. Knight has caught the graciousness of the danseuse at the instant she acknowledges the "Curtain Call" sustained by Volinine. The rich colors of the curtain form a most impressive background, though seeing but two figures in the painting, such is the handling of the art expressed that one seems to be in the center of the parquet to obtain the scene.

Anna Pavlowa must have been the inspiration back of Mrs. Knight's pencil when she made the drawing of "La Mort du Cygne." When Pavlowa in filmy white impersonated La Cygne, she was more of an aerial illusion than human or bird; and so has the artist penciled her—delicately, as a violin, 102