WOMEN IN THE WORLD OF ART AT THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE EXPOSITION.

The first feeling of a woman who looks back to the history of
art during the last ten years is one of pride, for she
recognizes that the exhibit made by women in the Fine Art
Department of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition is the best,
most complete, and important that has ever been made by women at
any previous exposition; that it is superior to that made at the
Chicago World's Fair in point of quality and character, and by
competent judges said to be better than that made in Paris in
1900.

As regards the St. Louis Exposition, that influence is
conspicuous which has brought about a development rather than
new foundations or new schools. In seeking subjects for the "new
thought" the "old masters" have not been lost sight of. "There
is nothing new under the sun," and as the musician draws from
the old masters his soul-inspiring theme, so the aspiring
painter studies the canvases of the past ages for his correct
guidance. And to the dispassionate observer these things prove
much with regard to the actual work being done by women artists,
and the new influences, if such they be, that have made
themselves felt during the last decade. Should we regard a work
of art as an independent entity, the result of what is called "a
separate creative act" on the part of the artist, with no
relation to its environment, we must perforce conclude prenatal
conditions in the painter which we are loath to admit. Hence we
have no reason to be ashamed of the old masters. Critics there
are who know how to judge of a picture, and critics who
constitutionally can not draw from a canvas a simple salient
good feature; they have not the knowledge of the difference
between bad and beautiful design and color, or the meaning of
harmony.

If we may apply to art what Goethe said of poetry we find that
among its votaries there are two kinds of self-half-informed
people, "dilettanti," he calls them, "he who neglects the
indispensable mechanical part, and he thinks he has done enough
if he shows spirituality and feeling, and he who seeks to arrive
at poetry merely by mechanism in which he can acquire an
artisan's readiness, and is without soul and matter."

This exposition has no doubt been the means of discouraging a
number o