BRESLAU, LOUISA CATHERINE. Gold medal at Paris Exposition, 1889; gold medal at Paris Exposition, 1900.  Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, 1901.  Member of the Societe Nationale des Beaux-Arts.  A Swiss artist, who made her studies at the Julian Academy under Robert-Fleury.

She has painted many portraits.  Her picture “Under the Apple-Tree” is in the Museum at Lausanne; the “Little Girls” or “The Sisters” and the “Child Dreamer”—­exhibited at Salon, 1902—­are in the Gallery of the Luxembourg; the “Gamins,” in the Museum at Carpentras; the “Tea Party,” at the Ministry of the Interior, Paris.

At the Salon of 1902 Mlle. Breslau exhibited six pictures, among which were landscapes, two representing September and October at Saint-Cloud; two of fruit and flowers; all of which were admired, while the “Dreamer” was honored with a place in the Luxembourg.  In the same Salon she exhibited six pictures in pastel:  four portraits, and heads of a gamin and of a little girl.  The portrait of Margot is an ideal picture of a happy child, seated at a table, resting her head on her left hand while with the right she turns the leaves of a book.  A toy chicken and a doll are on the table beside her.  In the Salon of 1903 she exhibited five pictures of flowers and another called the “Child with Long Hair.”

I was first interested in this artist by the frequent references to her and her work in the journal of Marie Bashkirtseff.  They were fellow-pupils in the Julian Academy.  Soon after she began her studies there Marie Bashkirtseff writes:  “Breslau has been working at the studio two years, and she is twenty; I am seventeen, but Breslau had taken lessons for a long time before coming here....  How well that Breslau draws!”

“That miserable Breslau has composed a picture, ’Monday Morning, or the Choice of a Model.’  Every one belonging to the studio is in it—­Julian standing between Amalie and me.  It is correctly done, the perspective is good, the likenesses—­everything.  When one can do a thing like that, one cannot fail to become a great artist.  You have guessed it, have you not?  I am jealous.  That is well, for it will serve as a stimulus to me.”

“I am jealous of Breslau.  She does not draw at all like a woman.”

“I am terrified when I think of the future that awaits Breslau; it fills me with wonder and sadness.  In her compositions there is nothing womanish, commonplace, or disproportioned.  She will attract attention at the Salon, for, in addition to her treatment of it, the subject itself will not be a common one.”

The above prophecy has been generously fulfilled.  Mlle. Breslau is indeed a poet in her ability to picture youth and its sweet intimacies, and she does this so easily.  With a touch she reveals the grace of one and the affectations of another subject of her brush, and skilfully renders the varying emotions in the faces of her pictures.  Pleasure and suffering, the fleeting thought of the child, the agitation of the young girl are all depicted with rare truthfulness.