International studio (14.1901)

Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale

prejudice that operates to the disadvantage of the
true sisterhood of artists. Those who keep this
prejudice alive seem to glory in the fact that
women, as a rule, are far more positive, more
matter-of-fact than the great majority of men.
They may have presences all of poetry, but their
minds are usually all of prose. Imagination in its
highest form, that of stamping il piil nell' uno, they
have never as yet possessed. Their genius “ may
be compared more justly to the bee, that keeps
industriously close to the earth, than to the skylark
in a song-flight, that is ‘near at once to the point of
heaven and the point of home.’” To this genius the
world owes many debts of gratitude, but it has never
produced its own Phidias, nor a Donna Raphael, nor
a Mrs. Shakespeare, nor any sculptor, painter, poet,
or musician who has taken rank with the most gifted.

There are men so constituted that they can-
not mention this fact without sneering.

But discourtesy is not criticism; and
if, as Napoleon said, a child’s future,
its destiny, is always a mother’s achieve-
ment, then the greatest of all great artists
were the mothers of those men whom
we now regard as peerless. Certain it
is, at least, that women are grandmothers
to all human excellence. And this ought
to be more than enough to reconcile one’s
common sense to the familiar limits set
by nature to their own imaginative at-
tainments. The useful and necessary
thing is to recognise gladly that a woman,
in order to do her best in art, must take
instinctive delight in being faithful to
her own nature. To encourage her to
compete with men in a masculine manner
is a thing which, thousands of times, has
been proved futile, and even disastrous.

Oaks cannot be grafted upon rose trees,
nor can wrens be taught to sing like
nightingales ; and we may be sure, too,
that Mde. Le Brun’s picture of herself
and daughter, wherein motherhood has
made itself nobly real in its adorable
homeliness, has a value greater than
anyone should claim for all the affecta-
tions of mannishness that silly female
artists now turn out in such astounding
numbers. Last of all, to draw fault-
finding comparisons between the art-
work of true women and .true men, or
between any other various forms of com-
plemental beauty, cleverness, or greatness,
will ever be a sure proof of inferiority.

3<5

Altogether, the highest praise that can be given
to a sister of art is to say that her genius grows
in strength without losing its womanliness. This
can be said of very few women, but it is beyond
question true in the case of Miss Fortescue-
Brickdale. Her genius, happily, is as feminine
as that, say, of Elisabetta Sirani (1640-1665),
a wonderful girl whom Owen Meredith tried in
a poem to rescue from undeserved neglect. But
Miss Fortescue-Brickdale, before she found her
true self, did some work which did not hint
at the present character of her thought and
manner. One has in mind several pen-drawings
wherein she aimed at a kind of strength quite at
variance with her own personality. The senti-
ment is forced, and the craft of line is not only
unrhythmic, it is sometimes even rude and uncouth.
The truth is that Miss Fortescue-Brickdale had just

“AN OPPORTUNITY” BY E. FORTESCUE-BRICKDALE

(By permission of Messrs. Dowdeswell)