nevertheless provide us with evidence of a very genuine and lively activity. [Illustration: BRITISH SCHOOL, XVIII CENTURY THE SIBYL. AFTER THE PICTURE IN THE ROYAL GALLERY, DRESDEN. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY BRAUN, CLÉMENT & CO., PARIS Maria Angelica Kauffman, R.A., Painter 1741-1807] The work of Mrs. Heming is interesting in a rather more special way. It is distinctly rare to find the ordinary landscapist of her time working with an eye to truth rather than to the making of a so-called composition of the period, rare enough in fact to place her quite above the ordinary. It is at first sight a curious thing that more women painters have not even in these days been attracted by pure landscape. It is strange in the sense that they have among them such painters as Lady Butler and Miss Lucy Kemp-Welch. But no branch of art is more that of the specialists than landscape. It developed later in history than any other, and it calls to those who would tire of the didactic in human thought and who might find in the study of any obviously human affair something to remind them of a phase of experience they would, in paint, avoid. No doubt the Empress Frederick turned to landscape as an occupation of relief from the pressing human affairs in which her life was involved, and it is just in such a way that the natural landscapist turns from the human side of life to the more abstract emotions he finds in the garden of the Great Spirit. Women, I believe, are more held by the personal than the abstract. Mrs. Allingham may be one of the exceptions. In any case Mrs. Allingham claims quite a special place for herself in any sketch-survey of the work of English women painters. Few women have shown a more definitely English sympathy in landscape than she has. Her method is simple, obvious and plain for all to see. For that reason it would fail to appeal in any way to the Eclectics, or to those among them, at any rate, who, in the words of a subtle Eclectic, confound the natural with the commonplace. A distinctly home-bred feeling, such as Mrs. Allingham has among women, or, in the grand manner, Fred Walker among men, is however a very rare thing and is becoming rarer. How far it may, in individual cases, change to other things may be seen in some of the more modern painters, in the remarkably strong work of Miss Margaret Cameron, Miss Biddie Macdonald, Miss Alice Fanner, and Miss Beatrice How. This latter painter has not merely been affected in matters of technique, but gives us, most delightfully, the very sentiment of the country people she paints. It is quite a little miracle of transplanted adaptability.