In his “Essays on Art,” Palgrave wrote:  “Sculpture has at no time numbered many successful followers among women.  We have, however, in Mrs. Thornycroft, one such artist who, by some recent advance and by the degrees of success which she has already reached, promises fairly for the art.  Some of this lady’s busts have refinement and feeling.”

THURBER, CAROLINE NETTLETON. Born in Oberlin, Ohio.  Pupil of Howard Helmick in Washington, and of Benjamin Constant and Jean Paul Laurens in Paris.

In 1898 Mrs. Thurber took a studio in Paris, where her first work was the portrait of a young violinist, which was exhibited in the Salon of the following spring.  This picture met with immediate favor with the public, the art critics, and the press.  The Duchess of Sutherland, upon seeing it, sent for the artist and arranged for a portrait of her daughter, which was painted the following autumn while Mrs. Thurber was a guest at Dunrobin Castle.  This portrait was subsequently exhibited in London and Liverpool.

Mrs. Thurber has painted portraits of many persons of distinction in Paris, among them one of Mlle. Ollivier, only daughter of Emile Ollivier, president of the Academie Francaise.  Monsieur Ollivier, in a personal note to the artist, made the following comment upon the portrait of his daughter:  “How much I thank you for the portrait of my daughter; it lives, so powerfully is it colored, and one is tempted to speak to it.”  Mrs. Thurber is an exhibitor in the Salon, Royal Academy, and New Gallery, London, and other foreign exhibitions, as well as in those of this country.

She now has a studio in the family home at Bristol, Rhode Island, on Narragansett Bay, where she works during half the year.  In winter she divides her time among the larger cities as her orders demand.  While Mrs. Thurber’s name is well known through her special success in the portraiture of children, she has painted many prominent men and women in Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, and New England.

Among her later portraits are those of Mrs. James Sullivan, one of the lady commissioners of the St. Louis Exposition; Lieut.-Gen. Nelson A. Miles; Albert, son of Dr. Shaw, editor of the Review of Reviews; Mrs. A. A. F. Johnston, former Dean of Oberlin College; Augustus S. Miller, mayor of Providence; Hon. L. F. C. Garvin, governor of Rhode Island; and Judge Austin Adams, late of the Supreme Court of Iowa.

THURWANGER, FELICITE CHASTANIER. This remarkable artist, not long since, when eighty-four years old, sent to the exhibition at Nice—­which is, in a sense, a branch of the Paris Salon—­three portraits which she had just finished.  “They were hung in the place of honor and unanimously voted to belong to the first class.”

Mme. Thurwanger was the pupil of Delacroix during five years.  The master unconsciously did his pupil an injury by saying to her father:  “That daughter of yours is wonderfully gifted, and if she were a man I would make a great artist of her.”  Hearing this, the young artist burst into tears, and her whole career was clouded by the thought that her sex prevented her being a really great artist, and induced in her an abnormal modesty.  This occurred about forty-five years ago; since then we have signally changed all that!