Cecilia Beaux, Studying with Katherine Drinker

"Lady Darwin (Maud DuPuy),"
a pastel by Cecilia Beaux

Cecilia Beaux wrote: "My uncle, who became the directing power at every point in my development, had a relative, Miss Katharine Drinker. Miss Drinker was an artist who devoted herself to the painting of historical and Biblical pictures. Her studio was at the top of an old house at Fifth and Walnut Streets, on Independence Square, so that that exquisite monument standing in its grove of trees, was always near and visible to me as I came and went.

I am glad that the studio was typical, traditional. It was the first studio I ever entered. On its threshold, everyday existence dropped completely out of sight and memory. What windows there were, were covered with hangings nondescript, as they were under the shadow of the skylight, which was upright, like a broad high window and without glare. There was a vast sweeping curtain which partly shut off one side of the room, and this, with other dark corners, contributed to its mystery and suggestiveness.  The place had long been a studio, and bore the signs of this in big, partly obliterated figures, outlines, drawn in chalk upon its dusky wall, opposite the light. 

But the manifestation of what proved to be a life-long first cause and study, that of the miracles of light and what they could develop and hide, were here first revealed to me in all their full volume and simplicity. Objects and people took the light, or were hidden by it, as they are in Rembrandt's paintings. Large spaces of obscurity swept upward from gleaming forehead or fold of silk. This was all an everyday matter in the studio, and it was never mentioned to me, but I ignorantly revelled in its deep enchantment, in no way understood, and asked no questions. I sat nearly all day at an easel with my back to the room and the light.

I was set to copy with Conte crayon on a yellowish paper, very glaring in the light, a series of lithographic drawings. The subjects were beautiful, and I knew it and adored them. It was my introduction to Greek sculpture, as interpreted by 'Julien,' and the prints were very well known as school studies, but not to me. The broad spaces of the drawings, their evolved finality, that permitted not the slightest deviation in scale, measure or direction, put them much farther beyond my powers than I knew.  

But by my sheer ignorance of the difficulty, and a vaulting desire for victory, I overcame these chimeras without remembered struggle. But the quality of the line baffled me completely. The gritty blackness of the Conte crayon, the harsh glare and impervious texture of the yellow paper were untameable. Even the caress of a soft finger tip to unify the line would not avail. My copy was correct - and ugly - a hateful travesty to my eyes. Yet my teacher leaned over me to say that I was doing very well. She did not seem to understand my stammered, almost tearful, complaints."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Background with Figures" by Cecilia Beaux.)