Studio: international art (13.1898)

Lady Artists in Germany

slight resemblance to Fritz von Uhde. In her
portraits the hands always come in as a powerful
means of expressing character. The sprightliness
of her work was apt, in her earlier days, to touch
upon the verge of sentimentality, but she has
deepened and matured into a heart-whole womanli-
ness of manner, expressive of an exquisite love of
mental and moral refinement, which never lacks
in compassion and even in sympathy for those who
run short of the ideal. She takes a very broad
view of life which leaves room for contest and for
diversity of opinion. Never would she think of
proclaiming her way of seeing and interpreting
things the only correct one. All the more certain
is she that to her as an individual it is the only
one possible. She is fully conscious of the fact
that woman will never be a path-finder in art, as
far as scientific or philosophical topics are con-
cerned. Nevertheless she knows full well that
there are phases in woman's life which can only
be expressively said in art, and that woman ought
to say them, because they have hitherto escaped
the notice of mankind as a body. Fraulein Weg-
mann never treats erotic problems as the only
point of interest in a woman's life ; on the other
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hand, she never attempts to argue love away alto-
gether, but always lets it be recognised as one of
the elements that go to make up the women her
brush represents. Into the men she portrays she
puts something of the ideal that woman seeks in
man; that is to say, her men always have some-
thing of the lord and master in them.

Pre-eminence in the treatment of colour is at-
tained by Frau Dernburg and her sister Fraulein
Seliger. They are nor painters, but have revived
the art of embroidery in this country. The art of
embroidery has been at a low ebb in Germany
for many years. There was Frau Bach at
Vienna, who revived Holbein stitch about twenty
years ago. Professor Lessing and Frau von Lip-
perheide, too, achieved a little successful work
in this direction, but without catching the true
spirit of the art. They created fashions for needle-
work by making all kinds of techniques and stitches
popular. It never struck them that the old
patterns represented the artistic language of days
gone by, which could no more be fit for everyday
use in the present than the language of Walther
von der Vogelweide or Wolfram von Eschenbach
could be made the vernacular German of to-day.