Page:Women in the Fine Arts From the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentiet.djvu/103

42 sible for her, took a studio, and sent to the Salon in 1875 a bust, which attracted much attention. In 1876 she exhibited "After the Tempest," the subject taken from the story of a poor woman who, having buried two sons, saw the body of her last boy washed ashore after a storm. This work was marvellously effective, and a great future as a sculptress was foretold for the "divine Sara." At the Salon of 1878 she exhibited two portrait busts in bronze.

This remarkable woman is a painter also, and exhibited a picture called "La jeune Fille et la Mort." One critic wrote of it: "Sarah's picture shows very considerable feeling for color and more thought than the vast majority of modern paintings. The envious and evil speakers, who always want to say nasty things, pretend to trace in the picture very frequent touches of Alfred Stevens, who has been Sarah's master in painting, as Mathieu-Meusnier was in sculpture. However that may be, Sarah has posed her figures admirably and her coloring is excellent. It is worthy of notice that, being as yet a comparative beginner, she has not attempted to give any expression to the features of the young girl over whose shoulder Death is peeping.

One of the numerous ephemeral journals which the young and old jeunesse of the Latin Quarter is constantly creating has made a very clever caricature of the picture in a sort of Pompeian style. Death is represented by the grinning figure of Coquelin ainé. The legend is "’La Jeune Fille et la Mort,' or Coquelin ainé, presenting Sarah Bernhardt the bill of costs of her fugue." In other words, Coquelin is Death, handing to Sarah the undertaker's bill