One of her most delightful pictures, “A Quiet Corner,” represents a retired nook in a garden, overgrown with foliage and flowers, so well painted that one feels that they must be fragrant.

LEPSIUS, SABINA. Daughter of Gustav Graf and wife of the portrait painter, Lepsius.  She was a pupil of Gussow, then of the Julian Academy in Paris, and later studied in Rome.  Her pictures have an unusual refinement; like some other German women artists, she aims at giving a subtle impression of character and personality in her treatment of externals, and her work has been said to affect one like music.

The portrait of her little daughter, painted in a manner which suggests Van Dyck, is one of the works which entitle her to consideration.

LEYSTER, JUDITH. A native of Haarlem on Zandam, the date of her birth being unknown.  She died in 1660.  In 1636 she married the well-known artist, Jan Molemaer.  She did her work at a most interesting period in Dutch painting.  Her earliest picture is dated 1629; she was chosen to the Guild of St. Luke at Haarlem in 1633.

Recent investigations make it probable that certain pictures which have for generations been attributed to Frans Hals were the work of Judith Leyster.  In 1893 a most interesting lawsuit, which occurred in London and was reported in the Times, concerned a picture known as “The Fiddlers,” which had been sold as a work of Frans Hals for L4,500.  The purchasers found that this claim was not well founded, and sought to recover their money.

A searching investigation traced the ownership of the work back to a connoisseur of the time of William III.  In 1678 it was sold for a small sum, and was then called “A Dutch Courtesan Drinking with a Young Man.”  The monogram on the picture was called that of Frans Hals, but as reproduced and explained by C. Hofstede de Groot in the “Jahrbuch fuer Koeniglich-preussischen Kunst-Sammlungen” for 1893, it seems evident that the signature is J. L. and not F. H.

Similar initials are on the “Flute Player,” in the gallery at Stockholm; the “Seamstress,” in The Hague Gallery, and on a picture in the Six collection at Amsterdam.

It is undeniable that these pictures all show the influence of Hals, whose pupil Judith Leyster may have been, and whose manner she caught as Mlle. Mayer caught that of Greuze and Prud’hon.  At all events, the present evidence seems to support the claim that the world is indebted to Judith Leyster for these admirable pictures.

MACH, HILDEGARDE VON. This painter studied in Dresden and Munich, and under the influence of Anton Pepinos she developed her best characteristics, her fine sense of form and of color.  She admirably illustrates the modern tendency in art toward individual expression—­a tendency which permits the following of original methods, and affords an outlet for energy and strength of temperament.

Fraeulein Mach has made a name in both portrait and genre painting.  Her “Waldesgrauen” represents two naked children in an attitude of alarm as the forest grows dark around them; it gives a vivid impression of the mysterious charm and the possible dangers which the deep woods present to the childish mind.