Remarkable, Unconventional Isabella

Isabella Stewart Gardner

Isabella Stewart Gardner was born in New York City on April 14, 1840 into wealth and privilege. She learned early on that an elevated station in life couldn't stop bad things from happening. Her baby Jackie died of pneumonia in 1864 when less than one year old.

Isabella was inconsolable for nearly two years. Upon her phycisian's advice, her husband, Jack took her to Europe. She found solace in travel and returned to America a healthy, happy woman. By this time, Isabella was known as Mrs. Jack. She had abandoned hope of motherhood, and had also abandoned conventions imposed on women of her class.

Newspapers carried sketches of her strolling with lions borrowed from the zoo. She drove horses and cars at breakneck speed. She smoked cigarettes. She went to boxing matches. She had a pair of large diamonds mounted on gold springs and wore them like antennae in her hair. Once, to attract notice to a concert by an unknown musician she favored, she stood at the door of the concert hall handing out programs. A passionate athlete and sports fan, she was seen at the symphony wearing a hatband inscribed ''Oh You Red Sox.'' A dahlia was named for her, as was a peak in the Isabella mountain range in Washington.

With her money she could have been the poster girl for the idle rich. Instead, she found her passion: collecting art. In 1917, she wrote to a friend:

"Years ago I decided that the greatest need in our Country was Art… We were a very young country and had very few opportunities of seeing beautiful things, works of art… So, I determined to make it my life's work if I could."

In the late 1890s, Isabella and Jack rapidly built a world-class collection of paintings and statues, tapestries, photographs, silver, ceramics and manuscripts, and architectural elements such as doors, stained glass, and mantelpieces.

After Jack's death in 1898, she commissioned the construction of Fenway Court, a personal museum based on a Venetian palazzo, to house their vast collection. Involving herself in every detail of the design and installations, she personally supervised the placement of every last piece, and then took up residence in an apartment on the fourth floor.

When she opened her home to the public on New Year's Day in 1903, guests listened to the music of Bach, Mozart, and Schumann, gazed in wonder at the courtyard full of flowers, and viewed one of the nation's finest collections of art. The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum had been born.

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

There was also a time when she offered the use of the third floor to John Singer Sargent as a studio. He painted several portraits at that location including the one of Mrs. Fenway and her daughter.

Isabella Inviting Guests to See Venetian Fireworks
gifted to her by Anders Zorn, 1894

In old age she practiced a miserly frugality that astounded her cold, hungry houseguests; she explained she was protecting the funds she intended to leave for the maintenance of her museum. Isabella died at Fenway Court on June 17, 1924 but she remains an ever-present force within its walls.

She ordered that all the art work must remain exactly as she arranged it. If it is moved or changed in any way, the entire collection must be sold. The museum appears much the same today as it did the day it opened.

The only changes are now the empty frames that once held a Vermeer, a Manet, three Rembrandt and five Degas works which were stolen in 1990. Two thieves dressed as police officers overpowered the guards and stole 13 works of art valued at around 300 million dollars. Despite a 5 million dollar reward, the art work has yet to be recovered, and remains the largest art heist in modern history. Is Isabella rolling over in her grave, or loving all the attention?!

To see photos of the absolutely beautiful museum that Isabella furnished to house her fabulous painting collection, see the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Facebook page or go to their site at www.gardnermuseum.org.

Information from a variety of sources including:
http://thewritesisters.blogspot.com/2009/04/women-of-wednesday-isabella-stewart.html
http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/12/28/reviews/971228.28middlet.html
http://www.gardnermuseum.org/the_museum/introduction.asp

Introducing Isabella Stewart Gardner

My first meeting with Isabella Stewart Gardner had left me duly Unimpressed. The encounter had been through a portrait of her by John Singer Sargent. She looked like a wannabe Madame X with her fair skin and black dress, and there was something stiff and unappealing in both her pose and expression.

Isabella Stewart Gardner

It seemed like that's just the way John Singer Sargent felt about her, too. "The first time Isabella met Sargent was in England in 1886 by introduction of Henry James. When he finally painted her two years later it was on his first professional trip to America. The painting started in December of 1887 in Boston. For Sargent, it proved difficult. She was a restless sitter, given her high energy, she would continually look out the window to see what was happening on the river outside their home at 152 Beacon Street, Boston. Sargent grew frustrated and after eight unsuccessful attempts was willing to give the entire enterprise up but she was reported to have insisted “ . . . as nine was Dante’s mystic number, they must make the ninth try a success," and it was." "She loved the painting and thought it the best portrait John ever did, even tried to get Sargent to admit as much. Her husband, on the other hand, who was painted by Mancini, had an opinion altogether different and expressed it in a letter to his wife from New York: 'It looks like hell, but looks like you.'” (Morris Carter, 1925) Isabella was a dedicated - and energetic - patroness of the arts. Upon the creation of her art museum in Boston in 1917, she explained: "Years ago I decided that the greatest need in our Country was Art… We were a very young country and had very few opportunities of seeing beautiful things, works of art… So, I determined to make it my life's work if I could." And so, she collected art - and artists - and encouraged, and supported them. The more I learned about this lady, the more I liked her - and the same happened with Sargent. At the end, it was he who asked her to sit for another portrait. This time it was a lovely watercolor - a tender, caring portrait of this remarkable lady.

Mrs. Gardner in White

"This, Sargent's last portrait of Isabella Stewart Gardner, was painted at Fenway Court in September 1922 when she was eighty-two years old. It appears to have been painted on Sargent's initiative. In an undated letter he wrote to Mrs. Gardner from the Copley-Plaza Hotel: 'It is very nice of you to be willing to let me try a water-colour - Will you propose an afternoon of next week?' Mrs. Gardner had suffered a debilitating stroke in December 1919, which had left her right side paralyzed. As Sargent depicts her, pale and fragile, sitting on a day-bed with cushions propped around her, she might seem a diminished figure, but swathed in translucent white cloths and spiritually disembodied, she has the shrouded mystery of a priestess or seer, radiating a haunting, other-worldly presence. As a characterization, the water-colour is more intimate but no less iconic than the notorious full-length portrait of Mrs. Gardner, and it seems to have appealed to her taste for the dramatic and exotic. She said that the new painting was keeping 'everyone's tongue busy wagging' and confessing that 'even I think it is exquisite.'" "The portrait might be seen as Sargent's pictorial valediction to a remarkable collector, patron and friend. Mrs. Gardner died less than two years after it was painted; Sargent was named in her will as one of her pallbearers, but he was unable to attend the funeral."

 

(Excerpts from "John Singer Sargent, The Later Portraits" by Richard Ormund and Elaine Kilmurray.)

 

Next: Just Who Was Isabella Stewart Gardner?

Why I Draw Plaster Casts

I am a plaster cast drawer these days...and thought that I would like to share Why.

Reason Number One: My Teacher Told Me to Do It
I admire my teacher's beautiful work (www.carlsamson.com) and figure that if he is willing and gracious enough to pass on his knowledge, I will do what he says to do. He received his training from an outstanding group of teachers (Allan Banks, RH Ives Gammell and Richard Lack) who all are from an academic background...and that includes plaster cast drawing. That tradition goes way back to Italy as this video from Angel Academy in Florence, Italy explains:




Reason Number Two: Working from a cast is working from a model that does not move

• Live models vary their positions; it is inevitable. A cast does not. You can depend on seeing the same relationships and shapes. It is an "easier" ballgame in which to play - so to speak.

Reason Number Three: The cast (your model) is always there whenever you have the time

• I now have the cast(s) set up in my art room. Winter is a great time for plaster cast drawing. When I get home from work or wake up early before going to work, it is a simple matter to switch on the spotlight and to start drawing.

Reason Number Four: The cast helps you to see values more clearly

• Since casts are basically ivory, you are not dealing with issues of color. It is easier to concentrate on learning to create form, the bedbug line, distinctions in values and so on.

Reason Number Five: The cast gives you more time to observe art principles for yourself

• When I first started this process, it was in a small class under the close supervision of my teacher. For about eight Saturday mornings, we worked on our cast drawings. He taught us how to use the sight-size method, the Boston School approach to drawing, and other important principles. Now that the class is over. I still have the privilege of getting occasional and valuable input from him, but essentially I have become the day-to-day decision maker and evaluator of my work.
  
  As I spend time with Homer's unchanging head, I have the luxury and time to think about what it is that makes a shape look rounded or how each edge of a shape is saying something about the shape next to it or discerning the planes of a face. Really - this list can go on and on because as I embrace this exercise, I look for more and more truth to discern. I write down my "lessons" and my teacher's critiques on the margin of my drawing. I'm collecting them and saving them as visual and written reminders of this journey.
  

How many of these casts will I do? I've heard that it may be ten, but probably it will be as many as it takes until I understand and can apply the principles that are being taught. I am now on number six and am still learning. As long as I am learning, I am happy.

Is cast drawing the only kind of art I do? No, nope, no way! At the present, I am working on a painted portrait from a live model, regular plein air painting, a still life...plus my Tuesday Morning Meeting sketches. Principles from the cast drawing apply to those other efforts as well. Ah, yes...I also like to read art books which is also valuable - as I'm sure you'd agree!

Homer	The Unknown

How Bunker Went About His Landscape Painting

Dennis Miller Bunker, The Brook at Medfield, 1889
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

When I get out to paint nature, my brain gets an attack of ADHD. The colors, the changing light, how to distinguish the shapes and varieties of foliage overwhelm my ability to interpret what I'm seeing onto canvas. Any method which will break these whirling dervish thoughts down into simple-to-follow steps is welcome.


RH Ives Gammell in his biography, Dennis Miller Bunker, gives some insight into how Bunker went about painting his lovely landscapes:

"He was certainly in full possession of a very sound method of landscape painting when he arrived at Medfield in the early summer of the following year (1889). His way seems to have been to

1. lay in first the larger masses of color on his canvas, a procedure he was able to carry out with great rapidity and accuracy.
   
   

2. In so doing he established once and for all the general tonality of his picture, pitching it in a key which allowed for sufficient luminosity while avoiding the chalky and insubstantial look which so often mars the work of plein air painters. Bunker's unerring judgment in this matter of key is one of the main factors in the success of his landscapes.
   



3. Once the larger masses were properly established and the canvas covered, he would proceed to work into these areas with broad touches of color. As the pictures progressed these touches naturally became smaller until, in the more finished canvases, the workmanship bore some resemblance to the pointilliste technique of the Frenchmen. But Bunker's feeling for paint quality and fine surface of pigment did not desert him.

Although he necessarily sacrificed some of this surface quality in his unrelenting pursuit of visual truth, several of his landscapes have a beauty of workmanship very unusual in pictures executed out of doors with a similar pictorial purpose."

Dennis Miller Bunker's Warning to His Fiancee

Dennis Miller Bunker

Dennis Miller Bunker was a student of William Merritt Chase (Art Students League and National Academy of Design in New York) and of Jean Louis Gerome in Paris (Ecole des Beaux Arts). Afterwards in Boston, he was in a small sketch group with Joseph DeCamp, spent the summer of 1886 with Abbott Thayer and then the summer of 1888 with John Singer Sargent. He taught at Cowles Art School in Boston in which William Paxton was his best pupil.

On October 2 Bunker married Eleanor Hardy in Boston. The couple then moved to New York. Returning to Boston to celebrate Christmas with the Hardy family, Bunker fell ill. On December 28 he died of heart failure, probably caused by cerebro-spinal meningitis. His legacy was passed on to his students, notably William MacGregor Paxton, who then taught RH Ives Gammell, who in turn taught a number of very fine, current painters.

As I read Gammell's biography of Bunker, I was interested in how he developed as an artist and how he lived, and also in some of the attitudes that artists of that time held. You might be surprised - and perhaps unpleasantly - because they are certainly not reflected in most attitudes these days.


Do You Realize What You're Really Getting Into?

Here is an excerpt from a letter to Eleanor with a dire warning of what it would be like to be the wife of an artist:

"Do you know what it is to live with a painter? Of course you don't! Do you see me getting up at two in the morning with a candle to look at my picture or rising at six to play on the piano, as I did yesterday, in a dressing gown, with my eyes half open or sitting up all night to fight over something that will seem to you of no importance? Will you care for the species of chimpanzee that we suspect of great talent? Will you feel the pang and the weeks of distress that come when you paint a poor thing? Will you be able to stand the conceit and absurd and idiotic talk when we've done a good morsel of painting? ...Are you to see me rude to all sorts of swagger people and afraid of the wash-woman?"

"You must try and realize how dull and monotonous an artist's life is. There is absolutely nothing but work, work, work. And there is nothing in the work of an artist that shows his personality.

You are marrying a man whose highest ambition is to conceal his identity, to remain above his work and apart from it, not to appear in it in any way - to be as cold and calm as a machine. Oh! if I only could, I might some day learn to paint! What I am trying to tell you is not to nourish any ideas of an artist people whom you see may expound to you. Don't think, as they do, that the charm of an artist's work must be found also in his own personality. It is always apart, or should be, should have nothing to do with it, and that is what makes it such an infernal trade. Never to play on one's own twopenny flute but to keep the big end in view always; to remain patient and cold and quiet and work like a dog from morning 'til night; there is no other way of arriving even at talent, unless one is cut out of larger stuff than I am.

I wish I could sink myself completely out of sight, so that when people looked at my things they would never think how they were made, never think that they were clever, or never think, above all, that they were personal. Great painting should have no stamp of its maker. I dream of doing a thing that is absolutely stupid - I mean what I say - absolutely stupid in style and manner of work but also in subject, and then have it of a truth so gigantic and bare and big that no one will ever forget it. But God knows how such a task is ever to be accomplished!

Certainly not by being smart for a few years and glittering in the sun and pleasing the bourgeois. It is so easy to be smart in Art, so easy to catch this and that quality of the time or the taste, the frightful smug taste of the public, so easy to do all manner of tricks of sentiment, of lies that people love and hug and live with and praise! Oh! how differently I can think of it! It costs more courage, more true courage, to do a thing with a true sentiment and in a true impression than any form of danger we can face, I think. Never to palliate a line or a tone; to know the precious value of what is human and beastly in us as well as what is great and noble..."

from RH Ives Gammell's biography of Dennis Miller Bunker

Tomorrow I will post some of his paintings and ask the question: Do you think that it is possible to hide your identity as you create a painting?

Reminding Myself: About the Unity of Effect

In the Studio
William MacGregor Paxton

Often people assume that realistic or classical painting is merely copying subject matter. They do not realize that good painting is very much like a good game of chess. There are strategies according to which a painter will create his work. To emphasize his vision of the subject, the artist will create particular types of edges, make alterations in the composition, and alter values and colors. As he pays careful attention to these things, he must also pay parallel attention to the Unity of Effect. RH Ives Gammell, an excellent artist and legendary teacher in Boston, wrote on the Effect in his biography, Dennis Miller Bunker:

On Unity of Effect
"People untrained in the art of painting often believe that finish is attained by simply adding detail to detail and consequently they dismiss it as a mere by-product of industry and patience. Unfortunately this view does not correspond with the truth.

For an essential characteristic of all fine painting is unity of effect, and this unity is destroyed by any detail stated in a false relation to the other component parts of the picture. This is particularly true of the type of painting we are here discussing, the purpose of which is to recreate on canvas the impression made on the painter's eye by the landscape before him.

To achieve this end, each detail must be set down with the degree of definition and coloration which it holds for the eye when the focus of vision is adjusted so as to include the entire scene depicted. Piecemeal notation of individual detail immediately destroys the requisite unity of impression and turns the canvas into a compilation of separately observed visual facts. This invariably results in a hard, dry look, destroying all breadth of effect and offensive even to those who are quite unaware of its technical cause.

It is, in fact, one of the most serious defects which a painting can have and perhaps the most difficult defect for an earnest painter to avoid. The ability to carry a picture to a high degree of finish without losing its unity of impression is the mark of a master and requires artistry of the highest order. It is the central problem of the type of painting which takes for its main theme the interpretation of the beauty of the visible world."

from RH Ives Gammell's book, Dennis Miller Bunker, pp. 65, 66

Living through Winter in Paris, 1880s

Boulevard Saint Martin in Winter, Paris 1913

What was it like to live through a winter in Paris in the late 1800's? For many students both at Julian's and the ateliers, it was far from glamorous, but they were willing to endure much for their art. Here is Cecilia Beaux' description of her experience:

"Our pension was in the quarter of the Pont de l'Ama, but not near to the river and its beauty. All that a skimping French pension could mean in mid-winter was ours. Mdlle. de Villeneuve, our keeper, bore her considerable years, which had borne much skimping, too, under a brown wig and a long nose. She carried Fi-Fi, a tiny, old dog with rattling teeth and a cracked bark, constantly under her arm. She had bony fingers, and for the first time I heard the rattle also of keys.

Friends were expecting us and there were others there who were to become friends. Our room was au premier, and was furnished in Bon-Marche imitations of Louis XV, and of course second-hand at that. We were to spend a few months in a type of French house which at that time Americans, who wished to appear respectable, and even stylish, used to frequent. Our room looked into a side street. We did not know then that we should have been thankful that in this quarter it was not a court that our windows commanded, and although the street was in itself monotonous, we soon found that on all stories our opposite neighbors were not.

Probably our waterproofs and cotton gloves had already instructed our landlady in the type of art students we represented, and she guessed that we were too serieuse even to recognize the character of the tenants en face. They were much on the balconies and one of them used to come out and water her flowers in a red flannel petticoat.

Our room was, of course, unheated, though it had a pretty chimney-piece and a clock, and what heat the previous summer had left behind had died long since between the closed windows and door. I was not pampered, and of course steam heat was unknown to me at home, but I had never known the damp, penetrating chill of never-heated houses in winter. Of course, a wood fire was impossible for us, but they wheeled us in a Schoubersky, a black charcoal stove, which could travel from room to room and never demand a chimney. Our chimney was a very retiring one, but with the Schoubersky approximately near it, we might avoid suffocation.

Until May, we never saw the sun, but I had started immediately at the Julien Cours in the rue de Berry, and my good circulation did the rest, for a polite little French woman in the adjoining room used to borrow our Schoubersky in the morning and forget to return it.

We were far from touching the high elegance that existed near us. We wore shabby clothes, demodee [outmoded], and prim, and until spring came and we did a little shopping, we were invisible in the street. Our complexions always proved that we were English, our ulsters bore out this fact, and the cochers [coachmen] shouted, "Anglaise [English]!" when they wanted to be rude.

In February and March, the snow had fallen sparsely and melted. It never lay upon the pavements of Paris, and I learned what it was to leave a chill house for the bitter chill of outdoors. Not once did we see the sun, and perhaps this had something to do with another moment of ecstasy.

One morning in early April, we met, and saw, the first of Spring in Paris. All of youth, hope, and joy seemed to be in those shafts of sunshine, pouring through virgin leaf and violet shadow, and in the voices that called this and that from cleverly manipulated pushcarts heaped with flowers, vegetables, fruit, whose fresh moisture the sun touched with rainbow hues.

Every French heart bounded with the hour's happiness, and I knew that my heart was French, too. We saw the French sky for the first time; a Heaven not too high to be mixed with Earth's quality. Tender blue and white lifting large forms over, but in perfect unison with wall and verdure and the sumptuous greys of Paris."

from Background with Figures by Cecilia Beaux

Study at l'Académie Julian in Paris

Académie Julian . 1889

Cecilia traveled with a friend to Paris to study art at the Académie Julian. At that time, women were not allowed to study at the École des Beaux-Arts, but at Académie Julian they were provided with the same classes as men [which were preparatory for l'Ecole] including the drawing and painting of nude models. There were separate classes for men and women. Since this academy is often mentioned in artists' biographies, I thought that it would be interesting to share some of her experiences there.


"I had worked alone, and fully believed that, in Paris, I should be among brilliant and advanced students, far ahead of a practically untaught American. I was to learn that the Academie Julian was a business enterprise, and could not be maintained for gifted students only.

I began, of course, with an 'Academy,' a full-length drawing. 'Tony' - that is Tony Robert Fleury - was to criticise that week, and at the hour entered a young-middle-aged and very handsome man, with a face in which there were deep marks of disappointment; his eyes, grey and deeply set, smouldered with burnt-out fires. How un-American they were! As I observed him from behind my easel, I felt that I had touched for the first time the confines of that which made France and Paris a place of pilgrimage. Into the room with him came something of what he had come from and lived in. The class, although accustomed to him, was in a flutter. I was still and icy with terror, fearing among other qualms that I might not understand him and blunder hideously.

My turn approached. He sat down. I knew only enough French to stammer out, as my defence, that it was my first attempt in Life-Class. He muttered something in a deep voice that sounded like an oath, and plunged me deeper in woe. The class, which understood better, looked around. I began to hear that he was quoting Corneille. He asked me where I had studied, and my story did not seem to account for my drawing. He rose, not having given me any advice, but bent his cavernous eyes on me with a penetrating but very reserved smile and turned to the next. The class had gathered round by this time...and when le Maitre had left, they rushed to me, and, if it had been the practice of the day, would have borne me on their shoulders. Of course, I listened to all the criticism I could get wind of, and was to learn that analytical methods were not used in the French cours.

M. Julien, the organizer and director of the cours, had been a prize-fighter by profession, and whatever the turn of fate or necessity that directed his ambitions toward the realm of the Fine Arts, he was certainly an example of the versatility of the French mind. He had never attempted to become an artist, but he had frequented the milieus and haunts of artists. The lobbies of the Salons and the Exhibitions were familiar to him.

He was a big, handsome man, who never for a moment forgot his position of manager only, and held the masters who came to criticise the class in high reverence. Nevertheless, he had an eye on every pupil, and would appear unexpectedly in the class, a serious and observant figure, decidedly on the watch.

We had no luxuries. The room was kept warm by a stove, on the models' account. But for that, I fancy we should often have drawn with numb fingers. The patience and fidelity of the models to their job was pitiful. There were so many others to take their place, if they failed. One poor thing, who had the face of a worn-out provider, and with her aging countenance and shabby clothes, would never have been noticed by anyone, had a slender and perfect form with exquisite articulations. She used to fetch a large basket of mending from behind the screen during the rests, and drawing a forlorn skirt about her shoulders, fall to with French zeal upon small ragged stockings and patched underwear. I heard that she was a favorite model for the 'Printemps,' 'Sources,' and 'Jeunesse' that we were to admire in the Salon before long.

Jeunesse by William Bouguereau

Every week subjects for composition were given out. The compositions were handed in on a Saturday, and the student who had produced the best in the opinion of le Maitre had the privilege of first choice of place on Monday morning for the new pose. This, in such a crowded room, was an immense advantage, but punctuality was also the price, for without it one's chance was given to the next. I had the good luck to win it pretty often. The compositions were shown on the wall and we all stood behind Fleury, or whoever the critic of the month might have been. He stood growling before them with folded arms. Pointing to mine, he said savagely, 'Qui est-ce qui a fait ca (Who did this)?" I stood quaking before him, for he was often bitterly ironical. 'Humph,' he said, 'c'est vous? Je n'ai pas vu les autres, mais je sais bien que c'est la meilleure (It is you? I haven't seen the others, but I know very well that it is the best).'


The next day Julian came to the class. He held up my composition, and looked at me smiling. It was to be accrochee sur le mur. This was the highest honor the work of a student could hope for, and the wall showed a meagre collection of examples, charcoal studies from the model, and a few paintings, and once there, it was forever. They were never to yield their place. Once worthy, always worthy - a record of the Cours.


What peace, what space for deliberation, there was in being a student! I did not have to think of exhibition, or any of the sordid growths that flourish about student life when permitted, and in fact are planted by their directors in many schools now. It was all between the fascinating object and myself. Not even the Master would come between. He would say little. If I felt that my work did not interest him, something was wrong, and I was goaded into greater effort. If I felt sympathy in his 'vous etes dans une tres bonne voie (you are on the right track),' I could go on with a happy sigh."

from Background with Figures by Cecilia Beaux

Portrait of Admiral Lord Beatty

Cecilia had approached each of her three commissions differently. Her approach was to accommodate her subject as far as possible. Her goal was to capture not only their appearance, but their character as well. Today we find her painting the English Navy hero, Admiral Lord Beatty.

"The American Committee on War Portraits, setting about to choose representative figures from England's Army and Navy, rested their decision upon Field Marshal Haig and Admiral Lord Beatty. They were approached through our Ambassador, Mr. Davis. Both kindly consented and kept their engagement with the readiness and 'sense of duty' that is part of their code.


Beatty was young, in the early forties, a gallant man; and in his spirit and conduct had fully measured up to the stern tradition of the British Navy. Of course, it was a simple matter for anyone to have a general idea of the appearance of any and all of the heroes of the day;shop windows, newspaper, and magazines displayed photographs and reproductions liberally. The well-known figure of Admiral Beatty in cap or Panama, slightly tipped, I had often wondered over, feeling that more than that must be found in the real man, and when I called at Hanover Lodge on an October morning,the soft English quiet of Regent Park, the lawn, big trees, and pretty yellow house seemed a strange introduction and contrast to the personality I was in search of.


A middle-sized, unsmiling man in a blue serge suit shook hands with me. I, too , could be business-like, prompt and short, and he soon relaxed a good deal as we paced the deck. I explained exactly what my object was, which he did not really know, being only concerned to accommodate the American Ambassador.


Early in our interview he had said that he would give me one or two sittings, on which I did not comment. He now took out a small notebook and asked me when I wished to begin. Of course, I said whenever it suited him, I had no other engagements. 'How about tomorrow?' said he, adding politely, 'It's just as well to get disagreeable things over, eh?' With this appeared his first smile and a nice one.


Lord Beatty was prompt for his appointment, as might have been expected, and I asked for only time enough to make a few decisions in regard to position and lighting. The direct light of the studio brought out bold forms. I saw that it was a falcon face; the nose broad at the base, unbelievably fine at the end, the brows bending toward it, eyelids heavy and full, over-large, far-seeing grey eyes. A falcon ready for the chase.


After I had seen Lord Beatty, I never had any doubt as to the type of painting that, if successful, would best present him. Tradition being the mainspring of his life, it must be the starting point of his portrait. It must be something seized, not thoughtfully accumulated and built up.


Before the next sitting, I had made the composition on a small panel of the exactly desired shape. The stretcher was made and the canvas mounted. The background was rubbed in. A blank space was left for the head and a few other indications gave the canvas that look of promise. I thought it would be wise to begin without disturbing the canvas, and so prepared a board and paper on another easel for a charcoal drawing to be transferred. A drawing must be made which must contain all the elements of the head and which would be my only material, if I should never have another sitting.


Concerning the next visit, I have little to report. Lord Beatty looked at the two easels, the blank paper and partly covered canvas and made no comment. I said, 'I have to draw the head first,' and we began. Little was said, at least that I can remember. Neither of us was obliged to rest, although I stopped long enough to offer mercy to the model. I found the forms of the very original face before me intensely absorbing.


The drawing turned out to be the most comprehensive as well as the most direct drawing I ever made, just less than life-size and easily transferable. The clarity and simplicity of the sitter seemed to take possession and pervade everything. If this had been Lord Beatty's only visit, a painting could have been made from it. To one accustomed to innumerable sittings of three hours each, the enterprise was strenuous hunting, and could not have been carried out on continuous days. How thankful I was for the quiet studio, for the absence of calls or engagements. I could be as slow and reflective as an owl appears to be. I was literally alone the entire day.


When Lord Beatty came to his third appointment, which he was kind enough to do without protest, the drawing still stood beside the canvas, on which the head was now drawn and lightly massed in, in monochrome upon a background which was likely to 'fit' with very slight adjustment. In this instance, it seemed best to prepare the palette beforehand, ignoring a superstition which prohibited doing this until after the arrival of the subject.


When the hour was over, the Admiral came behind to look 'Oh, you've done the hair and the forehead.' 'Yes,' I said, indicating the three main divisions of the head. 'Next time it will be the middle space, eyes, etc., to the base of the nose, and the time after that, the lower division.' The Admiral made no objection.


A little Cockney actor was an essential support. Always ready, cheerful, glad of the fire, where he might even dry his soaked shoes, build up the greying coals, and fill the kettle. With his help I could proceed upon certain spaces in the canvas requiring careful adjustment, without strain. What was important in gold braid and buttons could never have been found with any zest between two lights, if Lord Beatty had been wearing them. Even the hands could be done (for the first and only time in the experience of the artist) from the model. They held the sword and in some way, Lord Beatty's smooth fine fingers appeared in the end.


The more I saw of the Admiral, the more I was aware of that childlike, earnest quality that all great performers have - along with all the conscious ones, which must be reckoned with. Absurd as it sounds, it is the quality which can only be called 'innocence' as a child is innocent. I have recognized it in such men as Roosevelt and Cleveland. Undoubtedly Lincoln possessed it, and I believe it can be found in all outstanding characters and is one of their most winning assets. Napoleon had it; Anatole France called him 'un enfant, mais un enfant grand comme le monde' (A child, but a child as big as the world).


After two months of uninterrupted work, and having reached my furthest limit in it, it was perhaps well that my separation from the picture should be brusque. I was summoned to Paris, and as kind friends looked after it and all affairs concerning it, I did not see it again for some time.


What I remember as the final episode took place on the next to the last of Lord Beatty's visits to the studio. He had been standing before the drawing, and said something that manifested his appreciation of it. I expressed a desire to give it to him - he had been so kind about posing. A slight shade of doubt crossed his face, and I at once went on to explain that the drawing was not mine, as Mr. Pratt, the chairman of the committee had stipulated that all studies and sketches made for the portraits were to be his. There could be no doubt that he would be delighted to present the drawing to Lord Beatty, if he cared to have it. The Admiral turned quickly and said like a true Briton, 'Tell him to come over and fight me for it.' Then we laughed, and the drawing was his."

from Background with Figures by Cecilia Beaux

Tomorrow: Cecilia Goes to l'Academie Julian in Paris