Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D Part 19

FISCHER, CLARA ELIZABETH. Born in Berlin, 1856. Studied under Biermann six years, and later under Julius Jacob. Her pictures are portraits and genre subjects. Among the latter are "What Will Become of the Child?" 1886; "Orphaned," "In the Punishment Corner," and "Morning Devotion."

FISCHER, HELENE VON. Born in Bremen, 1843. She first studied under a woman portrait painter in Berlin; later she was a pupil of Frische in Dusseldorf, of Robie in Brussels, and of Hertel and Skarbina in Berlin.

She makes a specialty of flowers, fruit, and still-life; her fruit and flower pieces are beautiful, and her pictures of the victims of the chase are excellent.

FLESCH-BRUNNENGEN, LUMA VON. Born in Brunn in 1856. In Vienna she worked under Schoner, the interpreter of Venetian and Oriental life, and later in Munich she acquired technical facility under Frithjof Smith.

Travels in Italy, France, and Northern Africa furnished many of her themes--mostly interiors with figures, in which the entering light is skilfully managed. "The Embroiderers," showing three characteristic figures, who watch the first attempt of their seriously earnest pupil, is full of humor. In sharp contrast to this is a "Madonna under the Cross,"

exhibited at Berlin in 1895, in which the mother's anguish is most sympathetically rendered. "Devotion," "Shelterless," and the "Kitchen Garden" are among the paintings which have won her an excellent reputation as a genre painter.

FLEURY, MME. f.a.n.n.y.

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FOCCA, SIGNORA ITALIA ZANARDELLI. Silver medal at Munich, 1893; diploma of gold medal at Women's Exhibition, London, 1900. Member of Societa Amatorie Pittori di Belle Arti, of the Unione degli Artisti, and of the Societa Cooperativa, all in Rome.

Born in Padua, 1872. Pupil of Ottin in Paris, and of the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome.

The princ.i.p.al works of this sculptor are a "Bacchante," now in St.

Petersburg; "Najade," sold in London; "The Virgin Mother," purchased by Cavaliere Alinari of Florence; portrait of the Minister Merlo, which was ordered by the Ministry of Public Instruction. Many other less important works are in various Italian and foreign cities.

Signora Focca is a professor of drawing in the Normal Schools of Rome.

FOLEY, MARGARET E. A native of New Hamps.h.i.+re. Died in 1877. Without a master, in the quiet of a country village, Miss Foley modelled busts in chalk and carved small figures in wood. At length she made some reputation in Boston, where she cut portraits and ideal heads in cameo.

She went to Rome and remained there. She became an intimate friend of Mr.

and Mrs. Howitt, and died at their summer home in the Austrian Tyrol.

Among her works are busts of Theodore Parker, Charles Sumner, and others; medallions of William and Mary Howitt, Longfellow, and Bryant; and several ideal statues and bas-reliefs.

In a critical estimate of Miss Foley we read: "Her head of the somewhat impracticable but always earnest senator from Ma.s.sachusetts--Sumner--is unsurpa.s.sable and beyond praise. It is simple, absolute truth, embodied in marble."--_Tuckerman's Book of the Artists._

"Miss Foley's exquisite medallions and sculptures ought to be reproduced in photograph. Certainly she was a most devoted artist, and America has not had so many sculptors among women that she can afford to forget any one of them."--_Boston Advertiser,_ January, 1878.

FONTAINE, JENNY. Silver medal, Julian Academy, 1889; silver medal at Amiens Exposition, 1890 and 1894; honorable mention, Paris Salon, 1892; gold medal at Rouen Exposition, 1893; third-cla.s.s medal, Salon, 1896; bronze medal, Paris Exposition, 1900. Officer of the Academy, 1896; Officer of Public Instruction, 1902. Member of the Societe des Artistes Francais, Paris; Societe de l'Union Artistique, du Pas-de-Calais, at Arras; corresponding member of the Academy of Arras. Pupil of Jules Lefebvre and Benjamin-Constant.

Mlle. Fontaine paints portraits only--of these she has exhibited regularly at the Salons for sixteen years. Among her sitters have been many persons of distinction, both men and women.

At the Salon of 1902 she exhibited her own portrait; in 1903, portraits of MM. Rene et Georges D. The _Journal des Arts_, giving an account of the exhibition at Rheims, summer, 1903, says: "The portraits here are not so numerous as one might expect, but they are too fine to be overlooked.

Mlle. Jenny Fontaine has, for a long time, held a distinguished place as a _portraitiste_ in our Salons, and two of her works are here: a portrait of a young girl and one of General Jeanningros."

FONTANA, LAVINIA. Born in Bologna, 1552. Her father was a distinguished portrait painter in Rome in the time of Pope Julius III., but the work of his daughter was preferred before his own. She was elected to the Academy of Rome, while her charms were extolled in poetry and prose.

Pope Gregory XIII. made her his painter-in-ordinary. Patrician ladies, cardinals, and Roman n.o.bles contended for the privilege of having their portraits from her hand. Men of rank and scholars paid court to her, but, with a waywardness not altogether uncommon, she married a man who was even thought to be lacking in sense.

One of her two daughters was blind of one eye, and her only son was so simple that the loungers in the antechamber of the Pope were accustomed to amuse themselves with his want of wit. She is said to have died of a broken heart after the death of this son, and her portrait of him is considered her masterpiece.

Her own portrait was one of her most distinguished works, and though it is in possession of her husband's family, the Zappi, of Imola, it may be judged by an engraving after it in Rossini's "History of Italian Painting."

Many portraits by Lavinia Fontana are in the private collections of Italian families for whom they were painted. In the Gallery of Bologna there is a night-scene, the "Nativity of the Virgin," by her, and in the Escorial is a Madonna lifting a veil to regard the sleeping Jesus, while SS. Joseph and John stand near by.

In the churches of San Giacomo Maggiore and of the Madonna del Baracano, both in Bologna, are Fontana's pictures of the "Madonna with Saints." In Pieve di Cento are two of her works--a "Madonna" and an "Ascension." It is said that several pictures by this artist are in England, but I have failed to find to what collections they belong.

Lavinia Fontana was a distinguished woman in a notable age, and if, in translating the tributes that were paid her by the authors of her day, we should faithfully render their superlatives, these writings would seem absurd in their exaggerations, and our comparatively cold adjectives would be taxed beyond their power of expression.

FONTANA, VERONICA. Born in 1576. A pupil of Elisabetta Sirani, who devoted herself to etching and wood-engraving. She is known from her exceedingly fine, delicate portraits on wood and etchings of scenes from the life of the Madonna.

FOORD, MISS J. A painter of plants and flowers, which are much praised. An article in the _Studio_, July, 1901, says: "Miss Foord, by patient and observant study from nature, has given us a very pleasing, new form of useful work, that has traits in common; with the ill.u.s.trations to be found in the excellent botanical books of the beginning of the nineteenth century." After praising the works of this artist, attention is called to her valuable book, "Decorative Flower Studies," ill.u.s.trated with forty plates printed in colors.

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FOOTE, MARY HALLOCK. Born in Milton, New York. At New York School of Design for Women this artist studied anatomy and composition under William Rimmer, and drawing on wood and black and white under William J.

Linton. Mrs. Foote is a member of the Alumni of the School of Design.

Her ill.u.s.trations have been exhibited by the publishers for whom they were made. In the beginning her work was suited to the taste and custom of the time. She ill.u.s.trated the so-called "Gift Books" and poems in the elaborate fas.h.i.+on of the period. Later she was occupied princ.i.p.ally in ill.u.s.trations for the Century Company and Houghton, Mifflin & Co. Mrs.

Foote writes that Miss Regina Armstrong--now Mrs. Niehaus--in a series of articles on "Women Ill.u.s.trators of America," whom she divided into cla.s.ses, placed her with the "Story-Tellers."

FORBES, MRS. STANHOPE. Mr. Norman Gastin, in an article upon the work of the Royal Academician, Stanhope Forbes, in the _Studio_, July, 1901, pays the following tribute to the wife of the artist, whose maiden name was Elizabeth Armstrong:

"Mrs. Stanhope Forbes's work does not ask you for any of that chivalrous gentleness which is in itself so derogatory to the powers of women. As an artist she stands shoulder to shoulder with the very best; she has taste and fancy, without which she could not be an artist. But what strikes one about her most is summed up in the word 'ability.' She is essentially able. The work which that wonderful left hand of hers finds to do, it does with a certainty that makes most other work look tentative beside hers. The gestures and poses she chooses in her models show how little she fears drawing, while the gistness of her criticism has a most solvent effect in dissolving the doubts that hover round the making of pictures."

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FORTI, ENRICA. Rome.