Page:Woman in Art.djvu/322

WOMAN IN ART would not take her for an art motif, although William Starkweather, the artist, did. We have chosen her to prove that there is no caste in motherhood. Motherhood and love are universal; they are first aids to the Creator in the continuing and fulfilling of His eternal plan and purpose concerning the development of man.

Margaret Donegan was a studio scrub woman, at her work, but she was a mother and greatly impressed with a vision of her son that made her pause in the act of cleaning the floor. She seemed to see him dead, received into heaven by Christ and the Virgin. Dimly seen in the background is the artist working at his easel from a model. Both are oblivious to her pause from her work, her hands resting on the handle of her mop as she gazes straight ahead, her eyes wide to the vision her mind sees. The mental picture is seen above the clouds that screen the work-a-day world from the spirit or thought world. It is perfectly natural for a mother about her work to visualize her boy. Something may have happened.

The picture is old Spanish in style of painting—the clouds being the division between earth and heaven, as we find it in Raphael's "Transfiguration" and the "Ascension." In spite of her humble life, or perhaps because of it, she is a true type of mother.

Three of the world's great masterpieces we place in sequence: "The Immaculate Conception" by Murillo; "Holy Night" by Correggio, (also called "Nativity"); "Sistine Madonna" by Raphael. These perpetuate in art the message from heaven to earth, from God to man. The message of promise; the message of fulfillnentfulfillment [sic]; the message of love, of pity and forgiveness. To carry the sequence further, we may add "The Descent from the Cross" by Rubens, and "The Resurrection," also by Raphael (now in the Vatican), as perpetuating the message of sacrifice and the assurance of life after death.

The body must be sacrificed to gain spirit life, for it is given only for the uses of earth. After that there is a spiritual body for use in the spirit realm.

All art is so truly of the spirit that its expression in thought and material is manifold. There is no one definition, save that Art is the effort of man to express in some form the result of his thought and spirit through his creative instinct. From lowest to highest—according to the measure of a man—there comes, first, the longing for something better than he has known; second, the feeling after it; third, the vision of it; fourth, the thought of how to do it; fifth, the spirit to make it vivid; sixth, action; and the balance, to make the work of his hands measure up to his conception of its spirit value. When all 256