Life, 1901-12-26 · page 9 of 33
Life — December 26, 1901 — page 9: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Page 555: "Life" Magazine Feature on Artists This page showcases portraits of five female artists (Agnes Repplier, Theodosia Pickering Garrison, Emma Carlton, Madeline Bridges, and Jennie Betts Hartswick) at the top, followed by sketches and biographical text. The editorial content discusses how *Life* magazine once published a beginner artist's work as a joke about a decade earlier. The artist later reappeared professionally, prompting the magazine to reconsider. The text humorously acknowledges this error while praising the artist's improvement and "fresher lines." Additional portraits of Carolyn Wells, Kate Masterson, and S.W. Van Schaick appear below, with a section titled "A Promising Youth" describing an 1886 anecdote about a young artist submitting a drawing of a bull dog. This appears to be a feature celebrating emerging American women artists and reflecting on *Life's* role in their careers.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
THEODOSIA PICKERING : AGNES REPPLIER. GARRISON. EMMA CARLETON. MADELINE BRIDGES. JENNIE BETTS HARTSWICK. readers than his other labors, Our renders can bolleve, perhaps, slippery hill of Art, I detected beneath tho outer badness that the fleld for error in a paper of this kind {s very large,and of these drawings pecullarities rarely discovered in the efforts quickly traveled. There are no fences, and in every direction of @ beginner. For, tho beginner, as a rule, shows far more there is a downward, easy, pleasant slope. admiration for technical cleverness than for the more serious Lirg has had lots of excitement in this qualities of drawing and composition; and ho generally en- pasture. dearors to conceal his shortcomings by elaborate and misdirected Once, in the fulness of our benevo- labors, lence, we committed an error of the But this beginner had started out on fresher_linos. ° While his kind that gives tho greatest pleas- ure to the greatest number. About a dozen years ago a certain joke, when young, was purcbased by us avd printed. He then went the rounds of the press throughout the country, as is customary with mert- torious jokes, and, for all we know, made the tour of the world. Some five or six years after, he again pre- sented himecit tfor our ccnsidera- tion, Of course he was old, weary, and footsore with travel, but cleverly disguised as a newborn babe, He bore the usual certificate of infancy. Forgetting we had met before, we bought him once again, and presented him to our readers, Now, as it happoned, some- body in tho sanctum—pre- CAROLYN WELLS. fumably in response toa sud- den call from the printer— clipped this hoary traveler from one of our exchanges, and inserted him among our extracts with full credit to bis last em- ployer, And 60, in that Issue, our anclent friend was doubly honored, once in tho body of tho paper as an inspiration of our own, and once again among the clippings. We heard’ of it from Alaska to Cape Town. It caused a wave of joy to sweop the earth from pole to pole. And it rippled o'er the smiling oceans into infinite space, A Promising Youth. Ono day in 1886, when Lire was new, a tall young man about eighteen years of ago brought mea little drawing of a bull dog barking at the moon. The drawing, although reasonably bad, was accepted. A fow days later he brought in other drawings, also bad, but Interesting. Having my- KATE MASTERSON: — self, a8 @ professional, dono sume climbing up the S..W. VAN SCHAICK. comicbooks.com