A better class of sunk down to the level of the savages. immigrants is evidently needed, and he looked forward to the day when the Saxon settler would take the place of the idle, listless Portuguese, who associates too readily and too fully with the low natives. ART. III.-1. Die Frauen in Kunstgeschichte. Von Ernest Guhl. Berlin. 1858. 2. Life, Letters, and Posthumous Works of Fredrika Bremer. Edited by her sister. New York. 1868. 3. A Commonplace Book of Thoughts, Memories, and Fancies. By Mrs. Jameson. New York. 1855. Here is an error, sir; you have made "Genius" feminine!' 'Palpable, sir,' cried the enthusiast. I know it. But' (in a lower tone,) 'it was to pay a compliment to the Duchess of Devonshire, with which her Grace was pleased. She is walking across Coxheath, in the military uniform, and I suppose her to be the Genius of Britain.' JOHNSON. Sir, you are Sir, you are giving a reason for it; but that will not make it right. You may have a reason why two and two should make five; but they will still make but four.' ' 6 It is pretty certain that the poet, whose toadyism was thus leniently dealt with by Dr. Johnson, is not singular in attributing feminity to Genius. We shall not stop to inquire if those who have imitated him have been sincere, or, like him, have simply wished to compliment some duchess or other, who has public or private means of rewarding the flattery. But we do propose, as far as the limits of the present article will permit, to investigate the validity of woman's claims, not indeed to genius itself, for those every one will concede, but to that Boswell's Life of Johnson. kind of genius in the exercise of which man has chiefly distinguished himself, and especially to that kind of genius which can only express itself by means of what is called the Artistic Faculty. The analogy of nature is certainly against woman, for it is only the male bird that sings, and he only in mating time; but we shall not permit analogies to weigh while there are facts to be had, nor shall we shift upon woman the burthen of proof. Are there any women artists? Honest old Georgio Vasari, who ought to know, asserts very stoutly, albeit with some singular qualifying phrases: 'It is a remarkable fact that, whenever women have at any time devoted themselves to the study of any art, or the exercise of any talent, they have, for the most part, acquitted themselves well; nay, they have even acquired fame and distinction.' 2 'Nor is this to be wondered at,' he remarks somewhere else, 'since they, who so well know how to produce living men, should certainly be able to make the painted semblance,'-a proposition which, if it did not conceal a fallacy, would unquestionably be unanswerable. Georgio further quotes the Orlando Furioso in support of his position, and concludes by triumphantly adducing and enumerating the works of Madonna Propertzia Rossi, a woman-artist who carved a crucifixion upon the circumference of a peachseed, and engraved a gloria, with sixty figures, in basso relievo upon the small surface of a cherry-stone! Can argument be more conclusive? In point of fact, this question of the existence of womanartists is one in which we have taken great interest. We had seen, and admired, some of the remarkable works of Rosa Bonheur, though we could not see under which rule of the proprieties a girl should find occasion to go about making pictures of all the roaring bulls of Bashan. We had fully sympathized with Mrs. L. Maria Child in her somewhat agonized zeal to justify the peculiarities and eccentricities of Miss Harriet Hosmer, an artist who shoots pistols, wears trowsers, and rides horseback en cavalier, as well as sculptures Pucks and Zenobias; and we had set to work in good faith to examine the annals of 2 Vasari. Life of Propertzia di Rossi. Art, trusting to discover therein evidence in support of woman's claim to the possession of a genuine artistic faculty. We were quite sensible that man has been unjust to woman, and has wantonly excluded her from many pursuits, whether for the reason assigned by Spenser or not, we would not say, but the fact stands, nevertheless; and moreover, our own investigations had inclined us to give a measureable assent to the words of the eloquent writer who claims that: 'Women have just as keen intelligence as men; less powers, may be, of abstract reasoning, but far finer perceptive and linguistic faculties. They need not be trained to exhaustive scholarship; but refinement of mental culture suits them, perhaps, even more than it does our sex. I imagine that the Lady Jane who read her Phaedo when the horn was calling, had as pretty a mouse-face as you ever saw in a dream; and I am sure that gentle girl was a better scholar than any lad of seventeen is now in any school of England or Scotland.' 4 Why, then, should not woman, with her warmth of soul, her enthusiasm, her quick perceptions, and her nimble intellect, be able to apply her keen sense of the beautiful to the cultivation of Art? The result of our investigations has not been very encouraging. A survey of nearly the whole field of Art has scarcely revealed to us any woman-artist who has risen above mediocrity; nor has it revealed a single one entitled to a place in the front rank, among great artists. Woman has played upon the steps of the Temple of Art from the beginning-indeed, if we may credit Pliny, it was a woman's hand, impelled by love, that traced the first portrait ever limned-but she has never gone within the threshold, never seen, much less mastered, the mysteries of the adytum. The list of woman-artists, though not long, is respectable, and the catalogue embraces some 3 But by recorde of antique time I finde That woman went in warres to beare most sway, 'D'Arcy Thompson: Day Dreams of a Schoolmaster. pleasing performances, but that is all. With a few exceptions, these women have become artists by position, as it were, from the circumstance of their fathers, brothers, or husbands pursuing Art. With a few exceptions, likewise, they have excelled chiefly as copyists, or in the minor branches of decoration, embroidery, and engraving, to which their delicate fingers fitted them. In sculpture, there have been Properzia, Sabina von Steinbach, Mrs. Damer, Miss Hosmer, to set against the whole bede-roll of mighty masters of the chisel among the other sex. Sabina, who was the daughter of Erwin von Steinbach, the architect of Strasburg Cathedral, has won considerable renown in connection with the ornamental part of that sublime building, which was entrusted to her. But it seems beyond all question that she did little more than sculpture the figures after designs furnished by her father, though to her hand those groups may very well owe something of the purity and depth of feeling so conspicuous in them." Among women painters, the most prominent names are those of Sophonisba Anguisciola, Elizabetta Sirani, Maria Robusti, Lavinia Fontana, Onorata Rudiano, Irene de Spilimberg, Madame Lebrun, Angelica Kauffmann, and Rosa Bonheur,-not one of which names, we opine, would offer any attractions to 'shoddy,' when he goes abroad in quest of 'old masters' with which to stock his gallery. Maria Robusti, who was Tintoretto's daughter, and Elizabetta Sirani, the pupil of Guido, were certainly artists of very great promise, but both died too young to have performed much, and, in estimating what they might have done, we must judge them by the achievements of their sex, rather than by those of ours. Angelica Kauffmann was deemed by her contemporaries (who likewise found surpassing genius in Benjamin West,) a rival to Raphael, but modern criticism has decided that her design was poor, her touch feeble, her color cold, and without truth. Onorata Rudiano is, perhaps, the most distinguished of all the female artists for positive achievement, but we must not look for these in the line of Art. She had only begun to paint, when, being one day at work for the tyrant of Cremona, 6 And Miss Vinnie Ream. Von Guhl. one of his minions insulted her and she stabbed him to the heart. Thereupon, she fled to the mountains in man's attire, joined a company of Condottieri, fought herself into the chief command, and for thirty years played the swashbuckler up and down Italy, with a renown that has come down to our own times, and with a self-satisfaction equal to that of Captain Dugald Dalgetty. Now it cannot be said that the sex has failed to produce its Raphael, its Lionardo, its Michelagnolo, through lack of opportunity, or by reason of those repressive influences of prejudice, social custom, legislation, or the like, which, it is claimed, have kept woman out of the professions, and prevented her from freely developing her capacity to do man's work. On the contrary, even in the darkest periods of woman's history, there has been instinctive recognition of the apparent relation between her chaste, flexuous, subtile organism, and the delicate graces and refinement of art-work, and no less an eager appreciation of all that she has done or tried to do in that regard. Even in this hypercritical and sceptic age we are always ready and ardent to welcome a poem by a woman, whether it be poetry or not, as if there was a certain consciousness at the bottom of our minds that the poet ought to come from that side of the house, whether he will or not. Hence, the cause of failure must be sought deeper than in the lack of occasion—it seems, indeed, to be contained in that defective artistic sense which is characteristic of the whole sex. Woman, indeed, has the longing after Art, but she does not possess the true artistic insight, nor has she a hand firm enough to execute even her own imperfect conceptions. We must not be deceived by the present apparent tendencies of woman towards the artistic life into belief in her genuine capacity for that life. To do so would be conceding to appetite the unlimited power of satisfying itself. These tendencies, in fact, are rather the result of the atmosphere she breathes than of the blood in her veins. As Goethe has said, apropos of a kindred matter: "What misleads young people is this: we live in a time when culture is so diffused that it has become the atmosphere which a young man breathes poetical and philosophical thoughts, which he has |