In Berlin and Dresden the interest in art was much greater in the eighteenth than in previous centuries, and with this new impulse many women devoted themselves to various specialties in art.  Miniature and enamel painting were much in vogue, and collections of these works, now seen in museums and private galleries, are exquisitely beautiful and challenge our admiration, not only for their beauty, but for the delicacy of their handling and the infinite patience demanded for their execution.

The making of medals was carried to great excellence by German women, as may be seen in a medal of Queen Sophie Charlotte, which is preserved in the royal collection of medals.  It is the work of Rosa Elizabeth Schwindel, of Leipsic, who was well known in Berlin in the beginning of the century.

The cutting of gems was also extensively done by women.  Susannah Dorsch was famous for her accomplishment in this art.  Her father and grandfather had been gem-cutters, and Susannah could not remember at what age she began this work.  So highly was she esteemed as an artist that medals were made in her honor.

As frequently happens in a study of this kind, I find long lists of the names of women artists of this period of whose lives and works I find no record, while the events related in other cases are too trivial for repetition.  This is especially true in Holland, where we find many names of Dutch women who must have been reputable artists, since they are mentioned in Art Chronicles of their time; but we know little of their lives and can mention no pictures executed by them.

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A national art now existed in England.  Hogarth, who has been called the Father of English Painting, was a man of too much originality to be a mere imitator of foreign artists.  He devoted his art to the representation of the follies of his time.  As a satirist he was eminent, but his mirth-provoking pictures had a deeper purpose than that of amusing.  Lord Orford wrote:  “Mirth colored his pictures, but benevolence designed them.  He smiled like Socrates, that men might not be offended at his lectures, and might learn to laugh at their own folly.”

Sir Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough were born and died in the eighteenth century; their famous works were contemporary with the founding of the Royal Academy in 1768, when these artists, together with Angelica Kauffman and Mary Moser, were among its original members.

It was a fashion in England at this time for women to paint; they principally affected miniature and water-color pictures, but of the many who called themselves artists few merit our attention; they practised but a feeble sort of imitative painting; their works of slight importance cannot now be named, while their lives were usually commonplace and void of incident.  Of the few exceptions to this rule I have written in the later pages of this book.

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