Page:Women in the Fine Arts From the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentiet.djvu/35

xxviii his brilliant, vigorous, and voluptuous manner would attract all artists of his day to essay his imitation. But among women artists Madame O'Connell was the first who could justly be called his imitator, and her work was done in the middle of the nineteenth century.

When we turn to the genre painting of the Flemish and Dutch artists we find that they represented scenes in the lives of coarse, drunken boors and vulgar women — works which brought these artists enduring fame by reason of their wonderful technique; but we can mention one woman only, Anna Breughel, who seriously attempted the practice of this art. She is thought to have been of the family of Velvet Breughel, who lived in the early part of the seventeenth century.

Like Rubens, Rembrandt numbered few women among his imitators. The women of his day and country affected pleasing delineations of superficial motives, and Rembrandt's earnestness and intensity were seemingly above their appreciation—certainly far above their artistic powers.

A little later so niany women painted delicate and insipid subjects that I have not space even for their names. A critic has said that the Dutch school "became a nursery for female talent." It may have reached the Kindergarten stage, but went no farther.

Flower painting attained great excellence in the seventeenth century. The most elaborate masters in this art were the brothers De Heem, Willem Kalf, Abraham Mignon, and Jan van Huysum. Exquisite as the pictures by these masters are, Maria van Oosterwyck and