Of this statue Mr. M. H. Spielmann writes:  “The setting up of the figure, the arrangement of the drapery, the modelling, the design of the pedestal—­all the parts, in fact—­are such that the statue must be added to the short list of those which are genuine embellishments to the city of London.”

The Duchess of Argyll has been commissioned to design a statue of heroic size, to be executed in bronze and placed in Westminster Abbey, to commemorate the colonial troops who gave up their lives in South Africa in the Boer war.

ARNOLD, ANNIE R. MERRYLEES. Born at Birkenhead.  A Scotch miniature painter.  Studied in Edinburgh, first in the School of Art, under Mr. Hodder, and later in the life class of Robert Macgregor; afterward in Paris under Benjamin-Constant.

Mrs. Arnold writes me that she thinks it important for miniature painters to do work in a more realistic medium occasionally, and something of a bolder character than can be done in their specialty.  She never studied miniature painting, but took it up at the request of a patroness who, before the present fashion for this art had come about, complained that she could find no one who painted miniatures.  This lady gave the artist a number of the Girls’ Own Journal, containing directions for miniature painting, after which Mrs. Arnold began to work in this specialty.  She has painted a miniature of Lady Evelyn Cavendish, owned by the Marquis of Lansdowne; others of the Earl and Countess of Mar and Kellie, the first of which belongs to the Royal Scottish Academy; one of Lady Helen Vincent, one of the daughter of Lionel Phillips, Esquire, and several for prominent families in Baltimore and Washington.  Her work is seen in the exhibitions of the Royal Academy, London.

In 1903 she exhibited miniatures of Miss M. L. Fenton, the late Mrs. Cameron Corbett, and the Hon. Thomas Erskine, younger son of the Earl of Mar and Kellie.

[No reply to circular.]

ASSCHE, AMELIE VAN. Portrait painter and court painter to Queen Louise Marie of Belgium.  She was born in 1804, and was the daughter of Henri Jean van Assche.  Her first teachers were Mlle. F. Lagarenine and D’ Antissier; she later went to Paris, where she spent some time as a pupil of Millet.  She made her debut at Ghent in 1820, and in Brussels in 1821, with water-colors and pastels, and some of her miniatures figured in the various exhibitions at Brussels between 1830 and 1848, and in Ghent between 1835 and 1838.  Her portraits, which are thought to be very good likenesses, are also admirable in color, drawing, and modelling; and her portrait of Leopold I., which she painted in 1839, won for her the appointment at court.