d to "fling their paint pot into the faces of the public." Some
do not abhor Herkomer, others are banded with Matisse; but though to be
Herkomer may not be supreme, and though to be Matisse may perhaps be
insane, it must regretfully be conceded that the heights of the Royal
Academy and of Parnassus (or whatever the painter's mountain may be) are
not haunted by the woman painter. Without being carried away by the
author of "Bubbles", I am not inclined to be carried away by Maude
Goodman and the splendours of "Taller Than Mother." Lucy Kemp-Welch's
New Forest ponies are ponies, but I do not suppose that they will be
trotting in the next century; they do not balance even the work of
Furse.

Let me not be reproached because I use the low standard of the Royal
Academy, for if woman has a case at all she must prove herself on all
planes; it is as important that she should equal the second-rate people
as that she should shine among the first-rate. I do not look for a time
to come when woman will be superior to man, but to a time, quite remote
enough for my speculations, when she will be his equal, when she will be
able to keep up with all his activities. Curiously enough, the advanced
female painters are not so inferior to the advanced men painters as are
the stereotyped women to their masculine rivals. There is excellence in
the work of Anne Estelle Rice and Georges Banks, though they perhaps do
not equal Fergusson; but they are less remote from him in spirit and
realization than are the lesser women from the lesser men. That is a
fact of immense importance, for it is evident that nothing is so hopeful
as this _reduction_ in the inferiority of female painting. It may be
that masculine painting is decaying, which would facilitate woman's
victory, but I do not think so; modern masculine painting has never been
so vigorous, so inspired by an idea since the great religious uprush of
the Primitives.

Women are striving to conform not to a lower but to a higher standard, a
standard where the sensuality of art is informed by intellect. If,
therefore, they conform more closely to the standard which men are
establishing, they are more than holding their own; they are gaining
ground.

Yet they are still, in numbers and in quality, much inferior to the men.
Anne Estelle Rice alone cannot tilt in the ring against Fergusson,
Gaugin, Matisse, Picasso. And it is not true that they have been
entirely deprived of opportunity. Up to the 'se