MARIA BROOKS.

 first picture sold for four hundred dollars, and one exhibited the fol-
 lowing year brought one thousand.
 During the five years at the Kensington
 "schools, Maria Brooks worked incessantly, not
 allowing herself so much as a single holiday
 throughout the entire period. She worked to
 win- and won.
 At the Royal Academy Miss Brooks came
 under the influence of Millais. Indeed, a num-
 ber of her pictures of this time, including
 "Miss Mischief and the the charming Con-
 valescent," were painted from Millais' models.
 This use of the same model, quite as much as
 any .similarity in composition and treatment,
 may account for the fact that more than once
 pictures by Miss Brooks on the Academy
 walls were taken for paintings by Millais.
 "1READY FOR A BOWL." Ten years ago, after many successes
 in London, Miss
Brooks, at the invitation of a gentleman
of Montreal who owned some of her :: ?
pictures, came to Canada to paint a
number of portraits. Fresh commissions

and then she concluded to return to
England by way of New York.
 Strange to say, though she reached
"New York duly on her return trip, she
never took passage to England; she is
still in New York and all because of a
picture of a child. This picture-child, in
black hat and cloak, fur-trimmed, against
a yellow background, holding a hoop, DUMSY."
"Ready for a Bowl," is in her studio
to-day. It is not a boy or a girl, and yet, queerly, it is both -for it
was at first a study from an English boy, but the face not being quite