THE PROGRESS OF WOMEN

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1354, 3 February 1912, Page 11

THE PROGRESS OF WOMEN

Women have taken nearly all of the prizes at tho Itoyal Academy schools for 1911. And it is not the first occasion on which their numerous competitors among the opposite sex have been ignominious)} - routed. Men are accomplishing moro in sculpture <».ml architectural designing, but even in these branches they do not make an impressive display of skill. Sir lidward l'oynter, president of the Academy, •says they are suffering in the first plan: from the spirit of the age —"slackucss in all things"—and secondly from tho false notion, sedulously inculcated by a pertain school of critics that education stifles genius. Reynolds's advice to the student of art was to draw nourishment from tho works of tho great masters. This is now widely condemned, and "slavish tion of tho latest extravagance of a decadent clique is applauded as evidence of an independent and original spirit." According to tho president, there is an epidemic of slovenly work in the galleries, done by artists who set much store upon their "values," and think it does not much matter if a figure is out of drawing, if troublesome details are slurred, if the difficulties of the hand and foot aro shirked, and, if in landscape work, the beautiful forms of nature are represented by coarse and meaningless smears of paint. He attributes the increasing success of women to their greater industry and stricter adherence to the old fundamentals of solid work. The most successful student of the year is Miss Margaret Lindsay Williams, a young Welsh woman, who has been awarded a gold medal and ,£2OO for a historical painting, and a first prize of .£3O, with a medal added, for the best design for the decoration of a public building.