The most brilliant woman artist of the United States is without question =Cecilia Beaux=, a Philadelphian, who, as a portrait painter, compares with the very best of any nation. Her portrait of a “Girl in White,” owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, verifies what a critic said about her: “Miss Beaux has approached the task of painting the society woman of to-day, not as one to whom this type is known only by exterior, but with a sympathy as complete as a similar tradition and artistic temperament will allow. Thus she starts with an advantage denied to all but a very few American portrait painters, and this explains the instinctive way in which she gives to her pictured subjects an air of natural ease and good breeding.” =Sadie Waters=, born in St. Louis, produced a number of religious paintings, her best and largest showing the Madonna in a bower of roses. =Violet Oakley= of New Jersey had a prominent part in decorating the new Capitol at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, one of the most elaborate and costly public buildings in America. The mural painting “The Romance of the Founding of the State” in the Governor’s room is her work. =Anna Mary Richards= excelled as a marine painter. Her large canvass “The Wild Horses of the Sea” has been especially admired. =Anny Shaw=, =Grace Hudson=, =Lucie Fairchild Fuller=, =Mary Cassatt=, and =Matilde Lotz= are among the latest women artists of America, favorably known for many creditable works. * * * * * Although comparatively few women have devoted themselves to sculpture, there are several among them well worth mentioning. The first female sculptor of whom anything is known, was =Sabina von Steinbach=, a daughter of Erwin von Steinbach, the famous architect of the magnificent cathedral at Strassburg, in Alsace. After the southern portal of this minster had been erected, Sabina adorned it with the statues of the apostles, one of which, that of John, held in his hands a scroll with the following inscription: “Gratia divinæ pietatis adesto Savinæ, De petra dura per quam sum facta figura.” “The grace of God be with thee, O Sabina, Whose hands from this hard stone have formed my image.” Nothing further is known about this artist of the end of the 13th Century. =Properzia de Rossi= was an Italian woman sculptor, born near the end of the 15th Century at Bologna or Modena. The first-named city cherishes still a number of her works, among them a fine marble statue of Count Guido de Pepoli, and several figures that adorn the three gates of the facade of St. Petroneus. Vasari in his biographies of celebrated artists calls her “a virtuous maiden, possessing every merit of her sex, together with science and learning all men may envy.” And when she died in 1530, the following epitaph was written in her praise: