Page:Women in the Fine Arts From the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentiet.djvu/51

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WOMEN IN THE FINE ARTS


discovered a patience of beauty, a reconciling, in the concert of landscape mystery with labor."

Shall we call Bastien Lepage a follower of Millet, or say that in these men there was a unity of spirit; that while they realized the poetry of their subjects intensely, they fully estimated the reality as well?

The "Joan of Arc" is a phenomenal example of this art. The landscape is carefully realistic, and like that in which a French peasant girl of any period would live. But here realism ceases and the peasant girl becomes a supremely exalted being, entranced by a vision of herself in full armor.

This art, at once realistic and idealistic, is an achievement of the nineteenth century—so clear and straightforward in its methods as to explain itself far better than words can explain it. Contemporary with these last-named artists were the Preraphaelites. The centre of this school was called the Brotherhood, which was founded by J. E. Millais, W. Holman Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and William Michael Rossetti. To these were added Thomas Woolner the sculptor, James Collins, and F. G. Stephens. Other important artists known as Preraphaelites, not belonging to the Brotherhood, are Ford Madox Brown and Burne Jones, as well as the water-color painters, Mason, Walker, Boyce, and Goodwin.

The aim of these artists was to represent with sincerity what they saw, and the simple sincerity of painters who preceded Raphael led them to choose a name which Rus-