The Genius (6 page)

Eugene collected and reported faithfully every day, and had
managed to save a little money. Margaret was now a part of his
past. His landlady, Mrs. Woodruff, had gone to live with a daughter
in Sedalia, Missouri, and he had moved to a comparatively nice
house in East Twenty-first Street on the South Side. It had taken
his eye because of a tree in a fifty foot space of ground before
it. Like his other room it cost him little, and he was in a private
family. He arranged a twenty cent rate per meal for such meals as
he took there, and thus he managed to keep his bare living expenses
down to five dollars a week. The remaining nine he spent sparingly
for clothes, car-fare, and amusements—almost nothing of the latter.
When he saw he had a little money in reserve he began to think of
looking up the Art Institute, which had been looming up in his mind
as an avenue of advancement, and find out on what condition he
could join a night class in drawing. They were very reasonable, he
heard, only fifteen dollars a quarter, and he decided to begin if
the conditions were not too severe. He was beginning to be
convinced that he was born to be an artist—how soon he could not
tell.

The old Art Institute, which preceded the present impressive
structure, was located at Michigan Avenue and Monroe Street, and
presented an atmosphere of distinction which was not present in
most of the structures representing the public taste of the period.
It was a large six storey building of brown stone, and contained a
number of studios for painters, sculptors, and music teachers,
besides the exhibition rooms and the rooms for the classes. There
were both day and evening classes, and even at that time a large
number of students. The western soul, to a certain extent, was
fired by the wonder of art. There was so little of it in the life
of the people—the fame of those who could accomplish things in this
field and live in a more refined atmosphere was great. To go to
Paris! To be a student in any one of the great ateliers of that
city! Or of Munich or Rome, to know the character of the artistic
treasures of Europe—the life of the Art quarter—that was something.
There was what might have been termed a wild desire in the breast
of many an untutored boy and girl to get out of the ranks of the
commonplace; to assume the character and the habiliments of the
artistic temperament as they were then supposed to be; to have a
refined, semi-languorous, semi-indifferent manner; to live in a
studio, to have a certain freedom in morals and temperament not
accorded to the ordinary person—these were the great things to do
and be. Of course, art composition was a part of this. You were
supposed ultimately to paint great pictures or do noble sculptures,
but in the meanwhile you could and should live the life of the
artist. And that was beautiful and wonderful and free.

Eugene had long had some sense of this. He was aware that there
were studios in Chicago; that certain men were supposed to be doing
good work—he saw it in the papers. There were mentions now and then
of exhibitions, mostly free, which the public attended but
sparingly. Once there was an exhibition of some of the war pictures
of Verestchagin, a great Russian painter who had come West for some
purpose. Eugene saw them one Sunday afternoon, and was enthralled
by the magnificence of their grasp of the elements of battle; the
wonder of color; the truth of character; the dramatic quality; the
sense of force and danger and horror and suffering which was
somehow around and in and through everything that was shown. This
man had virility and insight; stupendous imagination and
temperament. Eugene stood and stared, wondering how such things
could be done. Ever afterward the name of Verestchagin was like a
great call to his imagination; that was the kind of an artist to be
if you were going to be one.

Another picture came there once, which appealed to another side
of his nature, although primarily the basis of its appeal was
artistic. It was a great, warm tinted nude by Bouguereau, a French
artist who was startling his day with his daring portrayal of the
nude. The types he depicted were not namby-pamby little slim-bodied
women with spindling qualities of strength and passion, but great,
full-blown women whose voluptuous contour of neck and arms and
torso and hip and thigh was enough to set the blood of youth at
fever heat. The man obviously understood and had passion, love of
form, love of desire, love of beauty. He painted with a sense of
the bridal bed in the background; of motherhood and of fat, growing
babies, joyously nursed. These women stood up big in their sense of
beauty and magnetism, the soft lure of desire in their eyes, their
full lips parted, their cheeks flushed with the blood of health. As
such they were anathema to the conservative and puritanical in
mind, the religious in temperament, the cautious in training or
taste. The very bringing of this picture to Chicago as a product
for sale was enough to create a furore of objection. Such pictures
should not be painted, was the cry of the press; or if painted, not
exhibited. Bouguereau was conceived of by many as one of those
dastards of art who were endeavoring to corrupt by their talent the
morals of the world; there was a cry raised that the thing should
be suppressed; and as is always the case in all such outbursts of
special class opposition, the interest of the general public was
aroused.

Eugene was one of those who noted the discussion. He had never
seen a picture by Bouguereau or, indeed, an original nude by any
other artist. Being usually at liberty after three o'clock, he was
free to visit some of these things, and having found it possible to
do his work in good clothes he had come to wear his best suit every
day. He was a fairly presentable youth with a solemn mien, and his
request to be shown anything in any art store would have aroused no
surprise. He looked as though he belonged to the intellectual and
artistic classes.

Not being sure of what reception would be accorded one so
young—he was now nearing twenty—he nevertheless ventured to stop at
the gallery where the Bouguereau was being exhibited and ask to see
it. The attendant in charge eyed him curiously, but led him back to
a room hung in dark red, and turning on a burst of incandescent
bulbs set in the ceiling of a red plush hung cabinet, pulled back
the curtain revealing the picture. Eugene had never seen such a
figure and face. It was a dream of beauty—his ideal come to life.
He studied the face and neck, the soft mass of brown, sensuous hair
massed at the back of the head, the flowerlike lips and soft
cheeks. He marveled at the suggestion of the breasts and the
abdomen, that potentiality of motherhood that is so firing to the
male. He could have stood there hours dreaming, luxuriating, but
the attendant who had left him alone with it for a few minutes
returned.

"What is the price of this?" Eugene asked.

"Ten thousand dollars," was the reply.

He smiled solemnly. "It's a wonderful thing," he said, and
turned to go. The attendant put out the light.

This picture, like those of Verestchagin, made a sharp
impression on him. Curiously he had no longing to paint anything of
this kind. He only rejoiced to look at it. It spoke to him of his
present ideal of womanhood—physical beauty, and he longed with all
his heart to find a creature like that who would look on him with
favor.

There were other exhibitions—one containing a genuine
Rembrandt—which impressed him, but none like these that had
definitely stirred him. His interest in art was becoming eager. He
wanted to find out all about it—to do something himself. One day he
ventured to call at the Art Institute building and consult the
secretary, who explained to him what the charges were. He learned
from her, for she was a woman of a practical, clerical turn, that
the classes ran from October to May, that he could enter a life or
antique class or both, though the antique alone was advisable for
the time, and a class in illustration, where costumes of different
periods were presented on different models. He found that each
class had an instructor of supposed note, whom it was not necessary
for him to see. Each class had a monitor and each student was
supposed to work faithfully for his own benefit. Eugene did not get
to see the class rooms, but he gained a sense of the art of it all,
nevertheless, for the halls and offices were decorated in an
artistic way, and there were many plaster casts of arms, legs,
busts, and thighs and heads. It was as though one stood in an open
doorway and looked out upon a new world. The one thing that
gratified him was that he could study pen and ink or brush in the
illustration class, and that he could also join a sketch class from
five to six every afternoon without extra charges if he preferred
to devote his evening hours to studying drawing in the life class.
He was a little astonished to learn from a printed prospectus given
him that the life class meant nude models to work from—both men and
women. He was surely approaching a different world now. It seemed
necessary and natural enough, and yet there was an aloof atmosphere
about it, something that suggested the inner precincts of a shrine,
to which only talent was admitted. Was he talented? Wait! He would
show the world, even if he was a raw country boy.

The classes which he decided to enter were first a life class
which convened Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings at seven in
one of the study rooms and remained in session until ten o'clock,
and second a sketch class which met from five to six every
afternoon. Eugene felt that he knew little or nothing about figure
and anatomy and had better work at that. Costume and illustration
would have to wait, and as for the landscapes, or rather
city-scapes, of which he was so fond, he could afford to defer
those until he learned something of the fundamentals of art.

Heretofore he had rarely attempted the drawing of a face or
figure except in miniature and as details of a larger scene. Now he
was confronted with the necessity of sketching in charcoal the head
or body of a living person, and it frightened him a little. He knew
that he would be in a class with fifteen or twenty other male
students. They would be able to see and comment on what he was
doing. Twice a week an instructor would come around and pass upon
his work. There were honors for those who did the best work during
any one month, he learned from the prospectus, namely: first choice
of seats around the model at the beginning of each new pose. The
class instructors must be of considerable significance in the
American art world, he thought, for they were N. A.'s, and that
meant National Academicians. He little knew with what contempt this
honor was received in some quarters, or he would not have attached
so much significance to it.

One Monday evening in October, armed with the several sheets of
paper which he had been told to purchase by his all-informing
prospectus, he began his work. He was a little nervous at sight of
the brightly lighted halls and class rooms, and the moving crowd of
young men and women did not tend to allay his fears. He was struck
at once with the quality of gaiety, determination and easy grace
which marked the different members of this company. The boys struck
him as interesting, virile, in many cases good looking; the girls
as graceful, rather dashing and confident. One or two whom he noted
were beautiful in a dark way. This was a wonderful world.

The rooms too, were exceptional. They were old enough in use to
be almost completely covered, as to the walls, with the
accumulation of paint scraped from the palettes. There were no
easels or other paraphernalia, but simply chairs and little
stools—the former, as Eugene learned, to be turned upside down for
easels, the latter for the students to sit on. In the center of the
room was a platform, the height of an ordinary table, for the model
to pose on, and in one corner a screen which constituted a dressing
room. There were no pictures or statuary—just the bare walls—but
curiously, in one corner, a piano. Out in the halls and in the
general lounging center were pictures of nude figures or parts of
figures posed in all sorts of ways which Eugene, in his raw,
youthful way, thought suggestive. He secretly rejoiced to look at
them but he felt that he must not say anything about what he
thought. An art student, he felt sure, must appear to be
indifferent to such suggestion—to be above such desire. They were
here to work, not to dream of women.

When the time came for the classes to assemble there was a
scurrying to and fro, conferring between different students, and
then the men found themselves in one set of rooms and the women in
another. Eugene saw a young girl in his room, sitting up near the
screen, idly gazing about. She was pretty, of a slightly Irish cast
of countenance, with black hair and black eyes. She wore a cap that
was an imitation of the Polish national head-dress, and a red cape.
Eugene assumed her to be the class model and secretly wondered if
he was really to see her in the nude. In a few minutes all the
students were gathered, and then there was a stir as there strolled
in a rather vigorous and picturesque man of thirty-six or
thereabouts, who sauntered to the front of the room and called the
class to order. He was clad in a shabby suit of grey tweed and
crowned with a little brown hat, shoved rakishly over one ear,
which he did not trouble to take off. He wore a soft blue hickory
shirt without collar or tie, and looked immensely self-sufficient.
He was tall and lean and raw-boned, with a face which was long and
narrow; his eyes were large and wide set, his mouth big and firm in
its lines; he had big hands and feet, and an almost rolling gait.
Eugene assumed instinctively that this was Mr. Temple Boyle, N. A.,
the class instructor, and he imagined there would be an opening
address of some kind. But the instructor merely announced that Mr.
William Ray had been appointed monitor and that he hoped that there
would be no disorder or wasting of time. There would be regular
criticism days by him—Wednesdays and Fridays. He hoped that each
pupil would be able to show marked improvement. The class would now
begin work. Then he strolled out.