Lippincotts Magazine of Popular Literature and Science | Page 8

her experience in an atelier
des dames in Paris! She had come down the hill from her dark little
room on Montmartre, fancying that the gray December day was
crystalline, that the dingy Rue Germain Pillon--with its dirty gamins of
both sexes in cropped hair and blouses or white caps and black gowns,
its frowsy women slouching in doorways, its succession of odorous
cuisines bourgeoises, vile-smelling lavoirs, cheap fruit-shops and
plebeian crémeries, its slimy cobblestones, its gutters running not with
laughing waters, and sending up scents not of spicy isles ensphered by
sun-illumined seas--was a rainbow arch over which she passed with
airy tread toward the Krug studio. For had she not at last finished for
ever the detestable photograph-coloring which had been a daily
crucifixion of all her artistic feelings for years? Had she not at last
reached the Enchanted Land for which she had labored and pined for
half her life? Had she not clothes enough to last her with patient
mendings and persistent remakings for two years? Had she not a
thousand dollars at the Crédit Lyonnais? And did not that stately
entrance before her lead into a spacious courtyard, and that courtyard
open upon the famous Atelier des Dames, where, at the feet of
celebrated masters of form and color, she was to learn some of the
mysteries of the art to which she had vowed her life?

[Illustration: "JE VIEN ME PROPOSER COMME MODÈLE,
MESDAMES."]
Within the court, before the handsome building whose story after story
of immense north windows showed it to be a collection of artists'
studios, she found an interesting tableau vivant. A group of chattering
models came laughing across the sunny court. In one corner loomed a
huge square object surmounted by the conical crown of a Tyrolean hat.
Nothing else was visible except a pair of gaitered feet mixed among the
legs of a sketching-easel, making the whole seem some queer
phenomenal creature which science had not yet classified or named.
Before this phenomenon stood--or rather fidgeted--a beautiful Arabian
horse with flashing eyes, and limbs clean cut as if by Doric chisel in
marble of Pentelicus. This superb animal was held by two grooms, one
at his head, the other holding first one foot, then another, as the order to
pose the unwilling model fractionally in the attitude of a prancing,
curveting Bucephalus came from the square, five-legged, unnamed
creature in the corner.
"Ah!" thought Paletta as she followed her shadow over the sunny
pavement, "the famous animal-painter Jacques is behind that great
square canvas, I know, for I saw him there yesterday painting a
struggling sheep."
The large room was closely packed with easels--so closely, indeed, that
an inadvertent motion of hand or foot often sent a wave of excitement
through the whole atelier. Heads of every color, from youthful flaxen to
venerable gray, were bent over their labors. Hecubas and Helens
worked side by side; maulsticks everywhere gave the scene the
appearance of a winter-denuded thicket; plaster hands, feet and torsos
hung upon the walls; bull-headed Nero swelled upon a shelf beside the
mutilated Venus which is a revelation of the glory that merely human
beauty can attain without a gleam borrowed from the divine; fat
Vitellius seemed to snore open-eyed beside lean and wakeful Julius
Cæsar; a mask of Medusa leaned lovingly upon the shoulder of Dante;
Apollo Belvedere smiled upon an écorché--in atelier parlance "skun
man;" finished and unfinished studies of heads, bodies and detached

sections of bodies hung from nails in every possible and impossible
place. Upon a slightly elevated platform sat the model in his usual
street-costume, with oily hair, parted in the middle, falling in long
waves upon his shoulders. A spiky circle rested upon his brow, and
upon his face was such a stupendous yet futile effort after an expression
of divine sweetness and resignation as caused maulsticks to separate
themselves every now and then from the denuded thicket and to wabble
vaguely about his mouth or play wildly in his hair, accompanied by the
commands, "Posez la bouche!" "Posez les yeux!" or, in good American
accents, accompanied with a sniff of wrath, "Call him a good Christ?
Umph! He'd pose better as a first-class Cheshire cat."
[Illustration: "THE BEST CHRIST IN PARIS."]
The model's divine smile broadened suddenly into a very human grin.
"Do you understand English, monsieur?" demanded Miss New Haven
suspiciously, remembering the freedom with which the personal merits
and defects of the French and Italian models were usually discussed in
their presence in the Anglo-Saxon tongue.
"A leetle, mademoiselle: I have lived in Londres during two years."
"As artists' model?"
"Oui, mademoiselle. I have made the Jesuses, the St. Johns and the
Judases for the great English artists teel I have ennuied myself
énormement."
"Why?"
"Because ze artists Anglaise are