LOOKING FOR BEAUTY.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXV, Issue 4715, 23 June 1924, Page 2

LOOKING FOR BEAUTY.

WOMAN’S CHANGING FACE. A CURIOUS EVOLUTION. Are women’s laces changing Camera studies of women jn any exhibition show fewer lovely faces. In each yvui’s Royal Academy paintings of women disappoint, not because, of iuuiiterent painting, but because of indifferent subjects, writes “An Artist m the “Daily Mail.” In any walk through the streets oi a city it is rare t 0 find a beautiful face. It is even rarer to find the type of face which ten or twenty years ago would have been described as “pleasant.” The word, iu relation to feminine looks, nas a quaintly old-fashion-ed sound. But there are many who regret the passing of the pleasantfaced woman. That pleasantness, which to most men was an even greater attraction than prettiness, suggested content, repose, sympathy. Outside of country districts, where women have grown old and content, there are few “pleasant” faces to be seen today. The modern woman, at her worst, wears a curiously fierce expression. Exaggerated enthusiasm at games produces that expression no less than devotion to work or study. At her best her face reminds one vividly of some keenly expectant greyhound waiting to be set free from, the leash. For an artist at any rate there is no beauty in restlessness. The faces of women painted by the old masters pleased by their divine stillness. Judged by modern standards these round-faced, heavy-featured women are not beautiful. Yet there is something intensely satisfying in looking, for instance, at the large-faced women of the Dutch school, with their silky straight hair, their kind eyes, and their placid mouths. Artists to-day look for their types not among women engaged in the struggle of competition with men for work, nor among those who turn pleasure into toil, but among the peasant women of any land, so little touched by time. Beauty doctors, I believe, sometimes prescribe an afternoon’s rest in a dark room, with the face heavily smeaied with cream, for the woman who wishes to regain her beauty. Pei haps the cream is an aid to prettiness—a man cannot tell. But it is certain that rest is the right prescription. Women must learn to be still if they are to be beautiful. The modern woman, as a comrade, as a friend, is delightful. But in my search for beauty*! am afraid I am seeking the impossible, for my ambition is to paint the Georgian woman with the face of a Victorian.