THWARTED GENIUS.

Colonist, Volume LIII, Issue 13052, 11 March 1911, Page 4

THWARTED GENIUS.

It would be interesting were- it possible, to "obtain a return" of the degree to which talent in women has been wasted by tho various forms of repression and neglect that it undergoes. An exhibition which affords a Striking instance'was recently on view at the Brighton Art Gallery. A room was given up to tho diapilay of some seventy pictures painted by the late Miss Sarah Dodson, prior to their departure for America. It is only recently—since sho died, almost unappreciated—that iher work has attracted public attention; now it is being lauded by art critics of influence as placing tlie artist amongst the finest painters of the end of the century. Her talent was 'versatile. There are magnificent works of varied classes—landscapes, portraits, figure-pieces^—such as a groat canvas of "Signing the Declaration of American Independence," and Old Masterlike Groups, sacred and classical in subject j ther© is one charming frieze of dancing Greek figures. Yet the catalogue tells us of two sadly significant facts—that she was not able to begin to study art until she was twenty-eight years of ago, owing to her father's objection to girls doing any serious work ; and that this Anglo-American woman received chiefly from France such measure of ■recognition as she gained in her lifetime. Several of these pictures havo been in the Paris Salon —not one in the English Royal Academy. Born in Philadelphia, Miss Dodson lived and painted in the South of England. She had years of ill-heath, and her fame is of posthumous growth.

I havo often wondered if Tennyson was altogether right when lie wrote that "the Fame that follows death is nothing to us!" If it be indeed so, belated recognition becomes doubly •sad. The most impressive instance is that of Emily Bronte, who died under the belief that her work was absolutely stillborn .It would indeed have proved to ha so but for her sister Charlotte's subsequent fame, which revived Emily's work and led to her being placed by many important judges —as she was, for instance, by Swinburne—amongst the very greatest of English writers. That was pure misfortune, and had little or nothing to do with her being a woman; but there are many other cases, such as that of Fanny Mendelssohn, who, like Sarah Dodson, was discouraged by her father to the utmost of his power. "Music," her father wrote to Fanny Mendelssohn, "can be to you but an amusement, and you must prepare even more carefully for your real status —that of a housewife." Nevertheless, so fine were Fanny Mendelssohn's musical compositions that her celagorater brother, Felix, did not shrink from publishing her work as his own. Yet. as she wrote in the last year of her life, t "When no one takes'tho slightest interest in one's productions, one loses ,in time not only all pleasure in them, but all power of judging of their value." Such waste of high talent is very sad.