WOMEN IN THE WORLD OF ART

No. 51. — MISS DERING CURTOIS

AMONG the pictures which attracted attention at the exhibition at the Royal Academy, in 1892, was a powerful study of a ward in Lincoln County Hospital, painted by a young artist, Miss Dering Curtois. The picture, which is certainly the best known, if not the most successful of the works of Miss Curtois, was hung upon the line in the fifth Gallery, where it was distinguished among the surrounding canvases by its uncompromising realism and originality of treatment. The painter of the hospital ward picture received her earliest instruction in art at the Lincoln School of Art, an institution which has been responsible for the preliminary training of many capable painters, notably Mr. William Logsdail and his sister, Miss Marion Logsdail. At Lincoln the artistic studies of Miss Curtois were directed by Mr. A. G. Webster, at whose suggestion she proceeded afterwards to Paris, where she worked at Julien's studio, in the Passage des Panoramas.

While in Paris Miss Curtois studied under M. Louis Deschaps and M. Dagnan-Bouveret, and in 1886 her perseverance was rewarded by the acceptance at the Salon of a portrait of her mother. She was again represented at the Salon in the following year, when also two of her works, a painting of flowers and a drawing in charcoal, were hung at the Royal Academy. Since 1887 pictures by Miss Dering Curtois have been seen many times at the Academy, as well as at the Salon, the New Gallery, and the exhibitions of the Society of Portrait Painters. In 1892 an exhibition of her work was held at the Maddox Street Galleries, where many interesting studies - chiefly of country life - were shown.

Many of the pictures shown at Maddox Street were painted in and about Washingborough, near Lincoln, where the artist worked for some years, and which is still her principal sketching ground during the summer months. Lately, however, Miss Curtois has lived principally in London. She has taken a studio in Earl's Court, and although she still paints landscape in the open air and makes studies in the country, she devotes much of her time to decorative work, and especially to panels for organs and over-mantles.