And when we look beyond Austria and Germany, we find everywhere among women the same enthusiasm for art, and the same unflagging courage in mastering the difficulties that thwart their every effort. That their persistence has been crowned with much success is shown in a very remarkable manner by this present book. How admirable, for instance, is the work done in Finland by Maria Wiik and Helene Schjerfbeck! In Switzerland, too, if we take a glance at the country where Anna Wasser, at the beginning of the 18th century, achieved fame by her paintings--there, too, we are welcomed by a particularly interesting painter's painter, Mdlle. Louise Breslau, who, with her thorough knowledge of modern realism, never truckles to the taste of the general public; and there, also, we find another woman painter whose art has been inspired on several occasions by the life of Christ: a woman painter so much occupied with the conception of her pictures that her technique has a tendency to lag behind the almost literary eloquence of her design. But Mdlle. Ottilie Roederstein is nevertheless an artist of real ability. From Switzerland we must turn to Spain if we would do for ourselves what the accompanying illustrations will do for us in the pleasantest of pleasant ways. Take, for example, the airy, fresh, excellent landscape, a "Scene at Comillas," painted in water-colour by the Infante Doña Paz de Bourbon. Then, again, the "Carriage Race at Naples," by Doña Stuart Sindici, with its splendid dash and dexterity of composition, and the court outside a "Roman Hostelry," by Elena Brockmann, likewise a sunny scene, simply teem with warmth and colour, and with life and beauty. Not quite so strong and independent are the "Fisher Boys," by Antonia de Bañuelos, the conception and the execution alike being apparently inspired by that mild and noble master of Spanish painting, Esteban Murillo. Again, in Russia, we meet with a portrait-painter, Olga de Boznanska (page 316), whose work unites a certain independent character of its own with the influences of her Parisian training: qualities that marked in a much higher and more perfect degree the pictorial appeals of that young and marvellously spirited genius whose premature death cut short a career of infinite promise: Marie Bashkirtseff, the friend of Bastien Lepage, and a realist full of subtlety and of penetration. WILHELM SCHÖLERMANN. Some Finnish Women Painters By Helena Westermarck, Critic and Painter Art in Finland, pictorial art, like much else in that country, is a young growth. It is in the nineteenth century that we are first able to verify its existence, and it is only in the year 1840, or thereabouts, that we find any traces of women who seriously devoted themselves to the study of painting. The pioneers in this may be said to be Mathilda Rotkirch and Victoria Abey.