Part 50 (1/2)

WOODWARD, DEWING. Grand prize of the Academy Julian, 1894. Member of Water-Color Club, Baltimore; Charcoal Club, Baltimore; L'Union des Femmes Peintres et Sculpteurs de France. Born at Williamsport, Pennsylvania.

Pupil of Pennsylvania Academy a few months; in Paris, of Bouguereau, Robert-Fleury, and Jules Lefebvre.

Her ”Holland Family at Prayer,” exhibited at the Paris Salon, 1893, and ”Jessica,” belong to the Public Library in Williamsport; ”Clam-Diggers Coming Home--Cape Cod” was in the Venice Exhibition, 1903; one of her pictures shows the ”Julian Academy, Criticism Day.”

She has painted many portraits, and her work has often been thought to be that of a man, which idea is no doubt partly due to her choosing subjects from the lives of working men. She is of the modern school of colorists.

WRIGHT, ETHEL. This artist contributed annually to the exhibitions of the London Academy from 1893 to 1900, as follows: In 1893 she exhibited ”Milly” and ”Echo”; in 1894, ”The Prodigal”; in 1895, a water-color, ”Lilies”; in 1896, ”Rejected”; in 1897, a portrait of Mrs.

Laurence Phillips; in 1898, ”The Song of Ages,” reproduced in this book; in 1899, a portrait of Mrs. Arthur Strauss; and in 1900, one of Miss Vaughan.

[_No reply to circular_.]

WRIGHT, MRS. PATIENCE. Born at Bordentown, New Jersey, 1725, of a Quaker family. When left a widow, with three children to care for, she went to London, where she found a larger field for her art than she had in the United States, where she had already made a good reputation as a modeller in wax. By reason of this change of residence she has often been called an English sculptress.

Although the imaginative and pictorial is not cultivated or even approved by Quakers, Patience Lovell, while still a child, and before she had seen works of art, was content only when supplied with dough, wax, or clay, from which she made figures of men and women. Very early these figures became portraits of the people she knew best, and in the circle of her family and friends she was considered a genius.

Very soon after Mrs. Wright reached London she was fully employed. She worked in wax, and her full-length portrait of Lord Chatham was placed in Westminster Abbey, protected by a gla.s.s case. This attracted much attention, and the London journals praised the artist. She made portraits of the King and Queen, who, attracted by her brilliant conversation, admitted her to an intimacy at Buckingham House, which could not then have been accorded to an unt.i.tled English woman.

[Ill.u.s.tration: From a Copley Print.

THE SONG OF AGES

ETHEL WRIGHT]

Mrs. Wright made many portraits of distinguished people; but few, if any, of these can now be seen, although it is said that some of them have been carefully preserved by the families who possess them.

To Americans Mrs. Wright is interesting by reason of her patriotism, which amounted to a pa.s.sion. She is credited with having been an important source of information to the American leaders in the time of the Revolution. In this she was frank and courageous, making no secret of her views. She even ventured to reprove George III. for his att.i.tude toward the Colonists, and by this boldness lost the royal favor.

She corresponded with Franklin, in Paris, and new appointments, or other important movements in the British army, were speedily known to him.

Was.h.i.+ngton, when he knew that Mrs. Wright wished to make a bust of him, replied in most flattering terms that he should think himself happy to have his portrait made by her. Mrs. Wright very much desired to make likenesses of those who signed the Treaty of Peace, and of those who had taken a prominent part in making it. She wrote: ”To shame the English king, I would go to any trouble and expense, and add my mite to the honor due to Adams, Jefferson, and others.”

Though so essentially American as a woman, the best of her professional life was pa.s.sed in England, where she was liberally patronized and fully appreciated. Dunlap calls her an extraordinary woman, and several writers have mentioned her power of judging the character of her visitors, in which she rarely made a mistake, and chose her friends with unusual intelligence.

Her eldest daughter married in America, and was well known as a modeller in wax in New York. Her younger daughter married the artist Hoppner, a rival in portraiture of Stuart and Lawrence, while her son Joseph was a portrait painter. His likeness of Was.h.i.+ngton was much admired.

WULFRAAT, MARGARETTA. Born at Arnheim. 1678-1741. Was a pupil of Caspar Netscher of Heidelberg, whose little pictures are of fabulous value. Although he was so excellent a painter he was proud of Margaretta, whose pictures were much admired in her day. Her ”Musical Conversation”

is in the Museum of Schwerin. Her ”Cleopatra” and ”Semiramis” are in the Gallery at Amsterdam.

YANDELL, ENID. Special Designer's Medal, Chicago, 1893; silver medal, Tennessee Exposition; Honorable Mention, Buffalo, 1901. Member of National Sculpture Society; Munic.i.p.al Art Society; National Arts Club, all of New York. Born in Louisville, Kentucky. Graduate of Cincinnati Art Academy. Pupil of Philip Martiny in New York, and in Paris of Frederick McMonnies and Auguste Rodin.