already mentioned Mlle. Rapin holds a unique position amongst that valiant and distinguished group of Swiss lady artists to whose work we hope to have the opportunity of referring....  She is a fine example of that singleness of devotion which characterizes the born artist.  Her art is the all-absorbing interest of her life.  It is not without its limitations, but within these limitations the artist has known how to be true to herself.  Drawing her inspiration direct from nature, she has held on her independent way, steadily faithful to the gift she possesses of evoking a character in a portrait or of making us feel how the common task, when representative of genuine human effort and touched with the poetry of national tradition, of religion, and of nature, becomes a subject of noble artistic treatment.  She has kept unimpaired that merveilleux frisson de sensibilite which is one of the most precious gifts of the artistic temperament, and which is quick to respond to the ideal in the real.  There are some artists who, though possessed of extraordinary mastery over the materials of their art, bring to their work a spirit which beggars and belittles both art and life; there are others who seem to work with an ever-present sense of the noble purpose of their vocation and the pathos and dignity of existence.  Mlle. Rapin belongs to the second category.  Her ‘L’Horloger’ is an example of this.  A Genevese watchmaker is bending to his work at a bench covered with tools.  Through the window of the workshop one perceives in the blue distance Mont Saleve, and nearer the time-honored towers of the Cathedral of St. Pierre.  Here is a composition dealing with simple life—­a composition which, from the point of execution, color, and harmony of purpose, leaves little or nothing to be desired.  But this is not all.  It is, so to speak, an artistic resume of the life and history of the old city, and that strongly portrayed national type gathers dignity from his alliance with the generations who helped to make one of the main interests of the city, and from his relationship to that eventful past suggested by the Cathedral and the Mountain.

“Mlle. Rapin is unmistakably one of the best Swiss portraitists, working for the most part in pastels, her medium by predilection; she has at the same time modelled portraits in bas-relief.  We are not only impressed by the intensely living quality of her work as a portraitist, but by the extraordinary power with which she has seized and expressed the individual character and history of each of her subjects.”

Mlle. Rapin has exhibited her works with success in Paris, Munich, and Berlin.  The few specimens of her bas-reliefs which I have seen prove that did she prefer the art of sculpture before that of painting, she would be as successful with her modelling tools as she has been with her brush.

RAPPARD, CLARA VON. Second-class medal, London.  Born at Wabern, near Berne, 1857.  After studying with Skutelzky and Dreber, she worked under Gussow in Berlin.  She spent some time in travel, especially in Germany and Italy, and then, choosing Interlaken as her home, turned her attention to the illustration of books, as well as to portrait and genre painting.  In the Museum at Freiburg is her “Point-lace-maker.”  A series of sixteen “Phantasies” by this artist has been published in Munich.