"La Petite Soeur" by Elizabeth Nourse |
'At length we reached the last station, and there we found the sleighs which had been waiting for hours. There were three of them - four horses each, one for us, one for the baggage, and one carrying an immense torch, close to the ground, to drive off the wolves and to show the way.
I shall never forget my first arctic night; at least it answered all the purposes of an arctic night. . . . The scene was ravishing, I was perfectly delighted, forgetting all my woes, my hunger, my fatigue, the cold - everything - for there was something intoxicating in that long night's ride.
The drivers were so picturesque, the sleighs, the prancing horses, with their hundreds of bells, and then the beautiful blue sky above us, glittering with stars, and the snow, snow covering everything.
I was anxious to see some wolves, but probably the torch kept them off. However, it was better not to have been eaten up, although I would rather have liked to be able to describe it afterwards. I was sincerely glad when we had to cross some water, which was considered rather dangerous, and when we lost our way, my joy was complete . . . and when we arrived here the servants all came out to meet us and kissed our hands.'
Elizabeth spent six weeks in the Ukraine and made many sketches and some watercolors there, but she found it impossible to paint the peasants because it was not customary for the landowners to go into their cottages and she herself could not communicate with them. She therefore took some peasant costumes back to Paris and in 1895 fashioned an interior in her studio to resemble a Russian cottage, blocked the light to simulate its small, high windows, and painted 'Les fileuses russes.'"