WOMAN IN ART
Donald's stories, all about the "Little Princess and the Goblin," and Miss Smith has painted the loveliest pictures for it. And the little Princess is so happy when the white doves come flying to her; her sweet face shows she is happy.
The children's artist is full of sympathy with the story and with the children who will enjoy it. Her illustrations take you right into the intimate home circle, as when Mrs. Tilbury reads to her little son about the "Fairy Wands." The mother is seated on the couch, the picture book on her lap, and the child is leaning against her, his eyes intent on the page. Then another page shows little Jeff, his savings bank in his hand, on the way to the department store to buy a Fairy Wand, so he can have what he wants by the magic touch of his wand. But there was magic in the warm hearts if not in the wand, as he learned later.
What could be a more natural sequence of such art work than that which Miss Smith has developed from it—the painting of portraits of children; and they are charming portraits. She has pleasured the child-spirit so devotedly that the child-nature is at home in her own heart, and the result of her brush work is most vital and enticing. The little ones seem to wake up from her canvas and look at you as an interesting study, innocent of the fact that you find them most interesting; or perhaps the artist opens a door that you may see them quite at home in the garden or at play on the lawn, where their beauty, color and grace seem like the bursting into bloom of a new and animated variety of flower, be it Olive, Sidney, Alice or Jean.
For the Sesqui-Centennial at Philadelphia, 1926, Jessie Wilcox Smith painted "Children at Play in Rittenhouse Square."
Matilda Brown comes the nearest to being the Rosa Bonheur of America. There were no fairies attendant with prophecies when she was born, as in the case of Mme. Lebrun, but there was a genuine artist-godfather next door who, as she approached her tenth year gave her the welcome to his studio, answered the ubiquitous why and what for, and taught her observation. Could anything have been a better beginning for a child?
Matilda was born in Newark, New Jersey, May 8, 1869, and the interested artist was Thomas Moran. He permitted her to watch every thing he did, then let her conduct her own experiments with his brushes and paint, gave her the freedom of his studio, and treated her as an equal. Her home atmosphere was most encouraging; her mother read art and art-notes to her, and every Saturday took her to the New York galleries. For a time the child studied with Kate and Eleanor Greatorex, and later with Frederick Freer, whose custom it was to travel from Philadelphia to give her lessons.
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