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AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



November, 1907 



The Charming Surroundings Are Keen Incentives to Constant Painting 



Now and then an eminent Royal Academician comes 

 down to inspect the women's work and give a little practical 

 lecture on art. These visits, and the attendant examinations 

 and criticisms, together with delightful tea parties and pic- 

 nics, render the work of the art course very far from arduous. 



The pupils have big charming bedrooms with plenty of 

 light and air, daintily though plainly furnished. They rise 

 at eight and troop down to a regular English farmhouse 

 breakfast, served by rustic maids such as Jean Francois 

 Millet himself would have loved to study. 



By about half past nine the classes are arranged. Some 

 girls will group themselves about an old plow and horse 

 with rural attendants; others will decide to paint cows with 

 a background of woodland trees; others again go in for 

 figure-painting or portraiture pure and simple. Although 

 the work is very valuable from a practical point of view, 

 it also forms a most delightful artistic holiday for girls of 

 culture and refinement, who may make acquaintances 

 which develop into lifelong friendships. Then, too, the 

 pupils find they have had so excellent a training, although 



this has been acquired al- 

 most unconsciously, that on 

 leaving the school they are 

 fitted to begin paying work, 

 no matter how humble. 

 The students have been 

 trained to draw directly 

 from the living model, and 

 without the tedious train- 

 ing from the antique figure, 

 which was so prominent a 

 feature in European art 

 schools in olden days. 



Rapid s k e t c h 1 ng of 

 models in action does un- 

 doubtedly tend to give 

 elasticity and ease to the 

 drawing, and to do away 

 with wooden stiff-looking 

 effects which are to be 

 avoided. Periodically the 

 work of the students is sent 

 up to London for exhibi- 

 tion, and invitations are 

 sent out to artistic and fash- 

 ionable folk of all degrees. 

 The pictures sell extremely 

 well, for only the best are 

 on show, and being painted 

 direct from nature instead 

 of from artificial models, they have the air of the "real 

 thing" about them. 



More than once no less a personage than Sir Edward 

 Poynter, president of the Royal Academy, has gone to 

 Finchingfield for a day or two and expressed himself de- 

 lighted both with the practical and artistic work of the 

 young ladies. 



Altogether, it is no wonder these open-air art schools 

 should be growing more and more popular, and many a 

 delicate girl's constitution has been built up by a season's 

 course amid the smiling valleys, wooded hills and sunlit 

 meadows of Finchingfield. Moreover, the society there Is 

 found congenial by many a shy fragile girl, and the pure 

 sweet air, musical evenings, and constant work, act as a tonic 

 whose value can not be overrated. Besides, there is the pos- 

 sibility of winning a scholarship at the Royal Academy, 

 which may amount to as much as $1000 a year, and this will 

 enable an economical student to travel abroad and study In 

 the great Continental galleries, without which no artist's 

 education Is considered complete. 



