Cecilia Beaux, The Voyage to Europe

"Ethel Page as Undine" by Cecilia Beaux

Cecilia Beaux wrote: "My uncle decided to aid me in every way possible to go and study in Europe. He settled up my studio affairs, the steamer passage, passport, letter of credit, etc., and most important, a companion for the trip. A cousin came from Montana to sail with me on the Red Star steamer, the Nordland, to Antwerp. It would be a winter voyage and not less than twelve days long. 

An artist friend, Henry Thouron, well acquainted with Munich, Paris and the Galleries, made monochrome drawings on oil sketchboards to be used in making color studies in the Louvre and elsewhere. I had an 8 x 10 of Titian's 'Entombment,' the same of the 'Madonna with the Rabbit,' also an Infanta Marguerite and a head of Rubens, besides several of the more modern Masters. The value of such 'preparatifs,' has not diminished with the years. 

The fifteenth of January is not a propitious day for embarking on an Atlantic voyage, particularly for one to whom the sea is unknown. But the unpropitious season furnished me with the most interesting and memorable of all my fourteen crossings. Our course took us at once out into what was probably the worst weather to be found. I suffered all the torments, or thought I did, of which soul and body, and that mysterious agent called 'morale,' were capable. 

But there came a day when the ship's heaving and plunging were no more to me than the swing of a bird on a bough. We moved steadily on a surface which was impressive only in having changed its color fundamentally. No one had told me this would happen. 

Sky and water were harmonized in tones devoid of the slightest hint of magenta. No thin, skimmed milk of color here. The grey of the low-hanging sky had been somehow achieved by the simplest use of ivory black, ochre and cream.  True, the small tossing waves had a tint in their curve of the yellowish side of a green summer apple, and the cloud's underside of a blue plum's dark moulding.

We landed in Europe for the first time in Northern Belgium, during the last week of January. Three days at most were spent in Antwerp and Brussels, then we reached Paris and entered it without any memorable foretaste. Of what it was to occupy in the future of my life, I was not vouchsafed a glimpse."

To be continued

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