Page:Women Artists in All Ages and Countries original scans.djvu/13

 PREFACE.

I po not know that any work on Female Artists— either grouping them or giving a general history of their productions—has ever been published, except the little volume issued in Berlin by Ernst Guhl, entitled “Die Frauen in die Kunstgeschichte.” In that work the survey is closed with the eighteenth century, and female poets are included with painters, sculptors, and engravers in the category of artists. Finding Professor Guhl’s sketches of the condition of art in successive ages entirely correct, I have made use of these and the facts he has collected, adding details omitted by him, especially in the personal history of prominent women devoted to the brush and the chisel. Authorities, too numerous to mention, in French, Italian, German, and English, have been carefully consulted. I am indebted particularly to the works of Vasari, Descampes, and Fiorillo. The biographies of Mdlles. Bonheur, Fauveau, and Hosmer are taken, with a little condensing and shaping, from late numbers of that excellent periodical, “The Englishwoman’s Journal.” The sketches of many living artists were prepared from materials furnished by themselves or their friends, �