Page:Woman in Art.djvu/91

WOMAN IN ART to be perfect, their raiment of mysterious color and light, spun by centripetal force from off the ethereal fabric of the stars. Perpetual action is in the cloud-wreathed elements in which and of which the sisters are a part, while gravity stays their lightsome feet seemingly on the brink of abysmal space.

To descend to the earth of humans again, let us take a glimpse of the subjects and ideals of three or four modern painters of the nude. As in the brilliant fifteenth century we find a group of gifted artists born within a given decade, so we find in the second decade of the nineteenth a galaxy of art-endowed boys born to enrich the art of their native France with a far different yet beautiful art expression. It was a large group working out various ideas in the civilized world that helped to make the past century of marked interest and progress in the history of human development.

Our subject designates four as illustrative.

Alexander Cabanel (1823-1889) was thoroughly imbued with the instinct and perception of art, developed from an early age by a thorough knowledge of the theories and science of art. At the age of fourteen he was offered the professorship of drawing in the College of Pons; and six years later his native town gave the means for his art education in Paris. At twenty-two he won the Prix de Rome, and so on through his sixty-five years he had prizes and honors heaped upon him. But his highest awards are considered to be his pupils, many of whom form the next elevation in French art.

One of his most exquisite productions he called "The Birth of Venus." The goddess reclines on the crest of a pale green wave; one arm over her head gleams on the abundant hair that as wisp-like drapery floats about her beautiful limbs. The eyes are looking directly at you from under half-closed lids. Little loves hover about her, as do soft yellow butterflies over a pond lily opening to the sun. It is a masterpiece that adds to the Luxembourg and French art.

The Metropolitan Museum in New York has a superb portrait from Cabanel's easel, painted in Paris where Miss Catherine Lorillard Wolfe gave him sittings for her portrait about the time she presented her large and valuable gallery of paintings to that institution.

In that collection is another painting, oriental in type, from the hand of Cabanel. "The Shulamite" presents a queenly woman garbed in truly oriental colors and costume, her black waving hair wreathing her earnest, upturned face, strong in features and rich in color. A fine Hebrew type, poetic of her race and time. It was painted to order for Miss Wolfe from the Song of Solomon: "Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away." 67