Cecilia Beaux, First Critique at l'Academie Julien

"Ernesta Drinker," 1905 by Cecilia Beaux

Cecilia Beaux wrote: "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 criticize 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 defense, 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."

To be continued

(Excerpts from Cecilia Beaux's autobiography "Background with Figures.")