THE FAIR WOMEN EXHIBITION.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 480, 13 April 1909, Page 3

THE FAIR WOMEN EXHIBITION.

'The International Society of Sculptors, Eaintors, and Gravers, which has dono so much towards, making tho London public familiar with the. infinitely varied and profoundly 'interesting phases of.' the modern world's: art, has (says the London •. corre--spondentof a. colonial paper) broken through all..'precedent,,-and extended its. hospitality this year to. some masterpieces , by Reynolds, Gainsborough, and Lely. 'l'hanks to the.committee's judicious selection and hanging,.the modem.painters for ouco do not suffer from the competition of the great dead. On Monday Mrs. Winston Churchill opened the Fair Women Exhibition at tho ■Now. Gallery, ■ when sho was surrounded by pictures of 'beautiful women of all ages, and many, nations. But the women in the pictures :wero not more. beautiful than the.living, women, who had just stepped from their carriages and motor cars. They seemed to have come to challenge tho beauties on the walls, and, they could well bear the comparison. ■ ■'■■■■. . From, the wealth of. material provided at this exhibition, it is a difficult task to single out. works for individual notice, but what is conspicuously noticed is one of tho great points.of difference between the ideals of beauty of tho eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The former was almost exclusively preoccupied with externals, with superficial grace,of bearing, and beauty of features. It was left to tho nineteenth century to discover the beauty of character and of profound emotion. 1 ;Mrs. Winston- Churchill, speaking of tho pictures said-."Wo all know that it is a nice point whether art owes more to beauty I than beauty to art.. I was told that Hoppjner.s system' was to work in the presenco of tho sitter's family, and to begin paintiiw any pretty face that came into liis fancy He I went on-to-introduco points of resemblance te the sitter till, ono of tho relations said, 'Now, it's like her!' Then ho would got up and say the picture was finished." By contrasting Hoppner's method with'that of some groat modern portrait • painters, Mrs Churchill has, perhaps unknowingly, answered tho groat question about the'mutual indebtedness of art and beauty. And the Fair Women Exhibition gives sufficient scopo for comparison to enforce the deduction that to-day art owes more of beauty, whilo in the past beauty owned more to art. The groat masters of to-day are abovo all concorned with truth, and-with tho psychology of tho sittor. In tlic South Boom there are two walls devoted to the memorial display of tho lato, Charles Condor's works, whicli show convincingly how serious a loss liis death has been to British art. '