Page:Women in the Fine Arts From the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentiet.djvu/159

94 Mrs. Cox paints small decorative pictures and portraits, mostly of children. The Shaw prize was awarded to a child's portrait, called "Olive." Among other subjects she has painted an "Annunciation," the "Fates," and "Angiola," reproduced in this book.

A writer in the Cosmopolitan says: "Mrs. Cox is an earnest worker and her method is interesting. Each picture is the result of many sketches and the study of many models, representing in a composite way the perfections of all. For the Virgin in her 'Annunciation' a model was first posed in the nude, and then another draped, the artist sketching the figure in the nude, draping it from the second model. The hands are always separately sketched from a model who has a peculiar grace in folding them naturally."

Mrs. Cox gives her ideas about her picture of the "Fates" as follows: "My interpretation of the Fates is not the one usually accepted. The idea took root in my mind years ago when I was a student at the League. It remained urgently with me until I was forced to work it out. As you see, the faces of the Fates are young and beautiful, but almost expressionless. The heads are drooping, the eyes heavy as though half asleep. My idea is, that they are merely instruments under the control of a higher power. They perform their work, they must do it without will or wish of their own. It would be beyond human or superhuman endurance for any conscious instrument to bear for ages and ages the horrible responsibility placed upon the Fates."

Crespo de Reigon, Asuncion. Honorable mention at