Mrs. Roosevelt, by Miss Cecilia Beaux, seemed to me to be one of the
happiest of her creations. Nothing could exceed the skill and daintiness
with which the costume is painted, and the characterization of the head
is more sympathetic than usual, offering a most winsome type of
beautiful, good womanhood. A little child has been added to the
picture--an afterthought, I understand, and scarcely a fortunate one; at
least in the manner of its presentment. The figure is cleverly merged in
half shadow, but the treatment of the face is brusque, and a most
unpleasant smirk distorts the child's mouth. It is the portrait of the
mother that carries the picture, and its superiority to many of Miss
Beaux's portraits consists in the sympathy with her subject which the
painter has displayed."--_Charles H. Caffin_.

A writer in the _Mail and Express_ says: "Miss Beaux has approached the
task of painting the society woman of to-day, not as one to whom this
type is known only by the exterior, but with a sympathy as complete as a
similar tradition and an artistic temperament will allow. Thus she starts
with an advantage denied to all but a very few American portrait
painters, and this explains the instinctive way in which she gives to her
pictured subjects an air of natural ease and good breeding."

Miss Beaux's picture of "Brighton Cats" is so excellent that one almost
regrets that she has not emulated Mme. Ronner's example and left
portraits of humans to the many artists who cannot paint cats!

[_No reply to circular_.]



BECK, CAROL H. Mary Smith prize at Pennsylvania Academy of Fine