In Austria, in the dominions of the Emperor Francis Joseph, women painters are numerous, but those of more than average gifts are not perhaps so plentiful as elsewhere. In the Bohemian capital of Prague, Fräulein Hermine Laucota has worked her way up to a position of distinction quite on her own grounds. Leading a most retired life, devoted chiefly to the pursuit of natural history and art, she studied first in Prague, and then partly at Antwerp and in Munich, but since the year 1888 she has resided altogether in her native town. It is not in colours so much as in etching on the copper plate that she has found her medium of artistic expression, and the subjects she has chosen are for the most part of a symbolical character, as in the distinguished etching on page 307.
To come to Vienna, a couple of names of good repute occur to me: Frau Olga Wisinger-Florian and Frau Tina Blau-Lang, the latter a refined landscapist (see pages 306 and 308). The two views of the Prater will speak for themselves. With their charming freshness and their genial breadth of handling, they tell us as plain as words that "all's right with the world" in the springtime. Every touch is so bracing that it needs no praise. Frau Blau-Lang is an optimist beyond a doubt, and that as much by temperament as by choice of motive.
And when we look beyond Austria and Germany, we find everywhere among women the same enthusiasm for art, and the same unflagging courage in mastering the difficulties that thwart their every effort. That their persistence has been crowned with much success is shown in a very remarkable manner by this present book. How admirable, for instance, is the work done in Finland by Maria Wiik and Helene Schjerfbeck! In Switzerland, too, if we take a glance at the country where Anna Wasser, at the beginning of the 18th century, achieved fame by her paintings--there, too, we are welcomed by a particularly interesting painter's painter, Mdlle. Louise Breslau, who, with her thorough knowledge of modern realism, never truckles to the taste of the general public; and there, also, we find another woman painter whose art has been inspired on several occasions by the life of Christ: a woman painter so much occupied with the conception of her pictures that her technique has a tendency to lag behind the almost literary eloquence of her design. But Mdlle. Ottilie Roederstein is nevertheless an artist of real ability.