its sons who value such things. Yet she assures me today that she found in Lebanon everything an artist might dream of, even if in miniature: in it there are people who buy pictures at their price; in it there are people who care for the fine arts and value them; in it there are gifted artists, "masters among them" in their art; and in it, above all this, there is a nature brimming with splendor, full of life, steeped in colors, that stirs in the soul the artist's latent spirit. But she did not find in Lebanon (alas!) a single museum to preserve for us the fruits of the fine arts... And what harm, I wonder! Is it not enough for the responsible authorities that Lebanon has a huge, handsome building of firm, smooth stone, preserving for us the remains of pieces of pottery... the traces of a jug or vessel that some Phoenician used, to quench his own thirst or the thirst of his cattle... or for some other purpose!...

Is there not in Lebanon a museum of towering columns, holding within it puny models with which people amuse themselves, and by which they help themselves to conceive works still alive at Baalbek and at Beiteddine!... And who knows — the Lebanese may yet find a museum devoted to painting, on the day when as much time has passed over our art canvases, and over us, as has passed over those people who drank from a pottery vessel... and buried their dead in coffins of lead... Then, my dear reader, people will come to gaze at the "skeletons" of our canvases, whole or frag-mentary... or at plaster casts of them... just as we go today to gaze at pieces of bone from some extinct animal they took for a man!..

Or at a piece of stone they took for a relic of value!...

I shall not dwell at length on Mrs. Zoghbi's art, but I will note quickly that it is for the most part an art of ornament and embellishment (Decorative): she recasts the whole scene to suit her feeling for delicacy and precision of arrangement, and for that reason we find her enamored of painting flowers — indeed we might say she is a specialist in that kind of painting... For a few years now she has been studying the Negroes and their forms, and to that end she settled for a time in North Africa and in Dakar, studying them at first hand; the results appeared in some of the canvases she has shown us.

In this kind of painting — the decorative — she is strong and truly masterly... precise in composition and harmony, with living, affect-ing renderings.

Mrs. Zoghbi will leave us for New York, where she will hold her next exhibition at the invitation of some friends of hers there. After that she does not quite know where her mount will set her down, except that she wishes to return to Paris. And she will spend most of her time in Argentina, as I believe, where the days may settle her at last to live out her long life — in which we pray God to fulfill for her her hopes and her desires.

And if I remember Mrs. Zoghbi in the future — and remember her I doubtless shall — I shall remember along with her, instead of women artists, men artists such as Gauguin and Rousseau... indeed I may remember no one at all along with her... and most probably — rather, more rightly — I shall remember no one at her side!...

The Children's Library

A collection of illustrated stories for children

by

Edvick Jureidini Shayboub

Two parts have appeared:

(1) Riyad on His Grandfather's Farm.

(2) Rima and the Fisherman.

The loveliest and most useful gift

you can offer your children

Price of each part:

75 piasters, mils, or fils

Order from the publishers, Dar al-Kitab,

or from all general bookstores