The Sun.
London, England, 1857-05-25 00:00:00

NEW SOCIETY OF FE HALE ARTISTS.

There has been of late a lively movement in fa-
vour of opening up new channels for female indus-
try. While the extraordinary increase in the num-
bers of our people, now acknowledged to be un-
precedented, fills the workshops and office, as well
as the learned professions and lie army and navy,

to overflowing, there are but few employments
which afford assistance to women. The practice of
physic is closed to them, although less than two
centuries back the " doctoring" of the provincial
inhabitants was almost wholly performed by
women ; and in the United States female practi-
tioners in medicine now freely compete with those
of the stronger sex.
Since the exercise of the pencil is permitted to
ladies, and a considerable amount of artistic talent
is known to exist in England among all classes of
women, a society has been set on foot by a few ac-
tive and beneficent persons, with the object of col-
lecting the works of female artists into an exhibition
for sale. This exhibition will open on the Ist of
June, and will comprise, along with the produc-
tions of painters by profession, some contributions
from amateurs, not a few of which are understood
to possess dist:nguished merit. It is nowise in-
tended as a rival exhibition to those already before
the public, nor do the female artists wish to imply
that they consider themselves unfairly treated by
the older societies. Into these a fair number of fe-
male exhibitorl have always been admitted, and
their works (which, indeed, have ranked confessedly
anion°. the gems of the collection) adequately com-
mended But a society framed by men, for their own
advantage, and necessarily limited in numbers, can-
not open its doors to the applications of female paint-
ers without prejudice to the very design of the insti-
tution. Nor, again, can the Royal Academy exhibi-
tion serve the purpose of a sale room for water-colour
drawing', which are naturally eclipsed by their more
powerful neighbours in oil. If it be objected that
the effect of a Female Artists' Society will be to
swell the amount of mediocrity which is annually
thrown upon the town in the shape of drawings and
paintings, we would reply that in all departments
of art gradations of talent must exist ; that the ex-
hibitions actually open, such as the Royal Academy
and the Society of British Artists in Suffolk-street,
contain no small proportion of inferior specimens of
painting in various branches ; and that, supposing
the Female Artists' Society to produce no greater
an amount of mediocrity, compared with works of
merit, than the old societies, no partisan of the
stronger sex need grudge to the weaker an oppor-
tunity of entering the field of honourable compe-
tition.

It must not be forgotten by those who deprecate
the multiplication of second-rate and third-rate
pictures that the power of purchasing works of high
quality resides with a comparatively small class.
But a taste for art may be agreeably fostered by less
ambitious purchases, and the dwellers in the thou-
sand modest abodes of the metropolis may be en-
couraged to decorate and enliven their parlours with
a flowerpiece or a landscape of only a few pounds
value, without being considered to have committed
treason against " high art."