When sixteen Mrs. Ward exhibited two heads in crayon.  In 1903, at the Academy, she exhibited “The Dining-room, Kent House, Knightsbridge.”  Mrs. Ward painted for Queen Victoria two portraits of the Princess Beatrice, and a life-size copy of a portrait of the Duke of Albany.  She also painted a portrait of Princess Alice of Albany, who is about to marry Prince Alexander of Teck.

Edward VII. has commissioned this artist to make two copies of the state portrait, painted by S. Luke Fildes, R.A.

Mrs. Ward had two more votes for her admission to the Royal Academy than any other woman of her time has had.

WASSER, ANNA. Born at Zuerich, 1676, is notable among the painters of her country.  She was the daughter of an artist, and early developed a love of drawing and an unusual aptitude in the study of languages.  In painting she was a pupil of Joseph Werner.  After a time she devoted herself to miniature painting; her reputation extended to all the German courts, as well as to Holland and England, and her commissions were so numerous that her father began to regard her as a mine of riches.  He allowed her neither rest nor recreation, and was even unwilling that she should devote sufficient time to her pictures to finish them properly.  Under this pressure of haste and constant labor her health gave way and she became melancholy.

She was separated from her father, and in more agreeable surroundings her health was restored and she resumed her painting.  Her father then insisted that she should return to him.  On her journey home she had a fall, from the effects of which she died at the age of thirty-four.

Fuseli valued a picture by Anna Wasser, which he owned, and praised her correctness of design and her feeling for color.

WATERS, SADIE P. 1869-1900.  Honorable mention Paris Exposition, 1900.  Born in St. Louis, Missouri.  This unusually gifted artist made her studies entirely in Paris, under the direction of M. Luc-Olivier Merson.

Her earlier works were portraits in miniature, in which she was very successful.  That of Jane Hading was much admired.  She also excelled in illustrations, but in her later work she found her true province, that of religious subjects.  A large picture on ivory, called “La Vierge au Lys,” was exhibited in Paris, London, Brussels, and Ghent, and attracted much attention.

[Illustration:  LA VIERGE AU ROSIER

SADIE WATERS]

Her picture of the “Vierge aux Rosiers,” reproduced here, was in the Salon, 1899, and in the exhibition of Religious Art in Brussels in 1900, after which it was exhibited in New York; and wherever seen it was especially admired.

Miss Waters’ pictures were exhibited in the Salon Francais, Champs Elysees, from 1891 until her death.  From the earliest days of childhood she was remarkable for her skill in drawing and in working out, from her own impressions, pictures of events passing about her.  If at the theatre she saw a play that appealed to her, she made a picture symbolic of the play, and constantly startled her friends by her original ideas and the pronounced artistic temperament, which was very early the one controlling power in her life.  Mr. Carl Gutherz thus speaks of her good fortune in studying with M. Merson.