Page:Woman in Art.djvu/181

WOMAN IN ART passion for literature and haunted libraries. She was versatile in her life and in her art. She was a decided and rapid worker; brain and hand were in unison. Her sketchbooks were encyclopedias dealing with trees, mountains, housetops, facts quickly caught, some carefully studied for future use.

Landscape painting in oil and water color was her principal interest, but whatever she saw had a message for her, and her expression of it on canvas made one feel the open, far-flung plain, or the height and scope of mountains, distant towns, boats, and people, for she painted what appealed to her. She did not abandon one branch of art for another—she simply carried on from one application of art to another. The various, and often the humblest, forms and color combinations in nature served first as her teacher, till the dominance of mind over matter made them her servants, which she utilized in her art and with which she greatly broadened her art knowledge.

Miss Conant seems to have been a living expression of the truth which Emerson put into these words: "The more you know of everything, the better you teach or do any one thing."

She absorbed suggestions from the most ancient forms of art that geology and archaeology give for this twentieth century consideration. Her artistic talent was so well balanced that it embraced many phases of expression, and not the least to claim her interest and arduous work was the color and costume for the harmonious production of art dramas of literature. For the forty-seven workshop productions at Harvard of "Eyvind of the Hills" and "The Flitch of Bacon," Miss Conant painted the scenery, designed costumes and properties. Her work in this line would make a long list, including eight plays for the Northampton players, for Dramatic Clubs, and Settlement Houses, but notable among them are the Pantomime "The Willow Wife," for the New England Conservatory of Music, and the Greek "Harvest Festival" pageant at Gloucester, for which she also wrote the scenario.

The Columbus Centenary pageant, produced by Livingston Platt, owed much of its beauty to her aid, and it was her direction that developed the glorious color sequence of the "Parthenaia" of 1920 at the University of California. That was her last work, for the spirit of the gifted woman, friend, and artist passed from earth in the last hours of the year 1920, in Boston at the home of her brother.

Lucy S. Conant was born in Brooklyn, Connecticut, 1867; studied in Boston and Paris; was a member of the Copley Society, 1892, of the Boston Water Color Club, the Water Color Club of Philadelphia, and others. In reference to her own work she had written, apropos of an essay, "Nevertheless I had to do it, so 141