Page:Woman in Art.djvu/99

WOMAN IN ART hearing our mothers or grandmothers tell of restrictions put upon woman's efforts toward broader activities than the family circle afforded; and we all know how persistently her embryo powers astonished the world now and again with her pen, for she had freedom of thought if not of action.

The world today realizes that by her promotions of mercy and benevolences, from the time of founding of orphanages and homes for the aged by the motherly dames of Holland, the love and tenderness in the heart of woman seems to have reached the ultimate of human endowment in the service of the Red Cross, Foreign Missions, the Salvation Army, etc.; but until our day the professions were barred to her.

It has been generally conceded that woman had but small part if any in the development of Renaissance art, that it issued from the masculine mind and hand, although models and ideals for the multitude of painters and workers in marble and bronze were largely women; and there must have been many of fine fiber spiritually developed, for that period of art was expressive of sainthood, the virtues, faith, chastity, and humility, that form character, and those subjects were largely represented by woman or they emanated from the refined or religious trend in the painter himself, derived, perhaps, from the influence of his mother.

This fact serves as a connecting link between our present subject, Woman As Artist, and our next in sequence, Motherhood In Art. In the annals of art we find three brothers and a sister working together as children in the quaint old city of Bruge. The parents were fond of the scant art of their time, and that fondness was renewed in each child. The second child, Margaret, is the first woman mentioned by name as using brush and pigment to express her religious enthusiasm and artistic zeal. She was associated with her illustrious brothers, Hubert and Jan van Eyck, in their studies and aims, their church painting and in their school.

It is said that her work on the same triptych with Hubert could not be distinguished from his, but the difference of sex caused her to be considered merely a helper. She did, however, paint a number of pictures most of which have been destroyed or lost. A few are in the National Gallery in London, and prove that she indeed shared the art instinct and ability with her brothers.

Through the Christian era woman has developed various talents, and a careful view shows a sequence of necessities in such developments. For instance, long before art enlisted her powers, we find her heart and mind exercised (as shown in phenomenal cases) in powerful expressions of love, 73