at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, placed on equal terms of comparison with that of men, was very creditable.  There was nothing particularly helpful or suggestive in the school work being shown on equal terms of comparison with that of men, for in this field women have always kept well abreast of men, and their work has been appreciated equally with that of men.

Department B, art, Prof.  Halsey C. Ives, chief, comprised six groups and eighteen classes, the board of lady managers being represented in four of the groups.

GROUP 9.  MISS MARY SOLARI, MEMPHIS, TENN., JUROR.

Under the group heading “Paintings and Drawings,” the two classes into which it was divided represented.  Paintings on canvas, wood, metal, enamel, porcelain, faience, and on various preparations, by all direct methods, in oil, wax, tempera, and other media; mural paintings; fresco painting on walls; drawings and cartoons in water color, pastel, chalk, charcoal, pencil, and other media, on any material; miniatures on ivory.

Miss Solari reports as follows: 

    WOMEN IN THE WORLD OF ART AT THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE EXPOSITION.

The first feeling of a woman who looks back to the history of art during the last ten years is one of pride, for she recognizes that the exhibit made by women in the Fine Art Department of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition is the best, most complete, and important that has ever been made by women at any previous exposition; that it is superior to that made at the Chicago World’s Fair in point of quality and character, and by competent judges said to be better than that made in Paris in 1900.

As regards the St. Louis Exposition, that influence is conspicuous which has brought about a development rather than new foundations or new schools.  In seeking subjects for the “new thought” the “old masters” have not been lost sight of.  “There is nothing new under the sun,” and as the musician draws from the old masters his soul-inspiring theme, so the aspiring painter studies the canvases of the past ages for his correct guidance.  And to the dispassionate observer these things prove much with regard to the actual work being done by women artists, and the new influences, if such they be, that have made themselves felt during the last decade.  Should we regard a work of art as an independent entity, the result of what is called “a separate creative act” on the part of the artist, with no relation to its environment, we must perforce conclude prenatal conditions in the painter which we are loath to admit.  Hence we have no reason to be ashamed of the old masters.  Critics there are who know how to judge of a picture, and critics who constitutionally can not draw from a canvas a simple salient good feature; they have not the knowledge of the difference between bad and beautiful design and color, or the meaning