Page:Women in the Fine Arts From the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentiet.djvu/386

Rh frisson de sensibilité which is one of the most precious gifts of the artistic temperament, and which is quick to respond to the ideal in the real. There are some artists who, though possessed of extraordinary mastery over the materials of their art, bring to their work a spirit which beggars and belittles both art and life; there are others who seem to work with an ever-present sense of the noble purpose of their vocation and the pathos and dignity of existence. Mlle. Rapin belongs to the second category. Her ’L'Horloger' is an example of this. A Genevese watchmaker is bending to his work at a bench covered with tools. Through the window of the workshop one perceives in the blue distance Mont Sal^ve, and nearer the time-honored towers of the Cathedral of St. Pierre. Here is a composition dealing with simple life—a composition which, from the point of execution, color, and harmony of purpose, leaves little or nothing to be desired. But this is not all. It is, so to speak, an artistic résumé of the life and history of the old city, and that strongly portrayed national type gathers dignity from his alliance with the generations who helped to make one of the main interests of the city, and from his relationship to that eventful past suggested by the Cathedral and the Mountain.

"Mlle. Rapin is unmistakably one of the best Swiss portraitists, working for the most part in pastels, her medium by predilection ; she has at the same time modelled portraits in bas-relief. We are not only impressed by the intensely living quality of her work as a portraitist, but by the extraordinary power with which she has seized and