Page:Women in the Fine Arts From the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentiet.djvu/265

180 London Academy. She was essentially an Italian artist, since from the age of eleven she lived in Italy and there studied her art. Such different estimates have been made of her works that one may quote a good authority in either praise or blame of her artistic genius and attainment.

Kugler, a learned, unimpassioned critic, says: "An easy talent for composition, though of no depth ; a feeling for pretty forms, though they were often monotonous and empty, and for graceful movement ; a coloring blooming and often warm, though occasionally crude; a superficial but agreeable execution, and especially a vapid sentimentality in harmony with the fashion of the time—all these causes sufficiently account for her popularity."

Raphael Mengs, himself an artist, thus esteems her: "As an artist she is the pride of the female sex in all times and all nations. Nothing is wanting—composition, coloring, fancy—all are here."

Miss Kate Thompson writes: "Her works showed no originality nor any great power of execution, and, while sometimes graceful, were generally weak and insipid."

For myself I do not find her worthy of superlative praise or condemnation ; one cannot deny her grace in design, which was also creditably correct ; her poetical subjects were pleasing in arrangement; her historical subjects lacked strength and variety in expression ; her color was as harmonious and mellow as that of the best Italian colorists, always excepting a small number of the greatest masters, and in all her pictures there is a something—it