LOVE AMONG ARTISTS

Evening Star, Issue 20137, 30 March 1929, Page 4

LOVE AMONG ARTISTS

ROMANCE AND TRAGEDY LOT OF BEAUTIFUL MODELS MODERN BOHEMIA OF LONDON AND PARIS. Is tlie life of the artist’s model an adventure, a romance, or, as a recent episode in tho career of Dolores has suggested, a tragedy? (writes Henry S. I)oig in the ‘Sunday Dispatch’). Sometimes it is a 1.1 three. That is why beautiful women often adopt it, as amateurs, competing with the professional models, for the joy of seeing themselves immortalised in famous works of art. There is no greater thrill for the flapper than the hope of seeing herself in next year’s Academy as Venus.

And sometimes we forget that there are men models as well as women. It is not long ago since old Colarossi died —one of the most famous of them. Everybody knows Millais’ picture of the boyhood of Raleigh. Colarossi, the son of an Italian peasant; posed for tho sailor, and tho two eager-eyed boys were the sons of the painter. Sometimes the work is very exhausting. Mr Albert Toft, the sculptor, once hired a policeman and a soldier to pose for a special piece of work. He had to assist them to a seat after ten minutes, both of them being in a fajnting condition. One of the most famous of living modejs is Miss Amie Cortez, of New York. She was so popular that she was elected Mayor of Greenwich Village, the Chelsea of New York, and signalised her election by establishing a Court of Love, where problems of the sexes could be-discussed and a solution found.

j Occasionally an artist’s model finds i her career an admirable training. Irene Dincloy, a few years ago one ol Chelsea’s most beautiful models, went from Chelsea fo the films, and there found I immediate success and a wider tame ’as one ol the waiting ladies in I ‘ Madame Pompadour.’ I Miss Dinoley has had her portrait in , tlie Academy at least half a dozen times. CHILD MODELS. Children are often the best models, 1 and Mr J. H. Dowd, tho well-known artist, often finds ideal subjects, in

ideal poses, by (be Round Pond in Kensington Gardens. Barrio was not t'iii* astray when he gave Peter Pan a Ideal habitation and a name in that famous playing ground. Sometimes the art models of to-day are actresses and waitresses, sometimes ladies of position and title. Intellectual capacity is not always essential, but one of the most distinguished models. Miss Eileen Mayo, who sits occasionally for such well-known painters ns _ Mrs Dod Procter and Mrs Laura Knight, is herself a distinguished painter. One of Barrie's characters said that to ask a man to make a ioke and also to see it is like asking a man to do two men’s work. Miss Mayo docs two women's work, ami her own pictures are quite as good as her poses. Artists sometimes complain that they suffer much from the vagaries of their models. Sometimes the complaint might, well be the other way round. Whistler was a man of moods and once poured turpentine over a picture he had painted, destroying it. Then he turned the girl model out of the studio, saying it was all her fault because she laid not had her hair cut. Next day he sent her £lO as a consolation prize.

“ Kirchner Girls ” were a tremendous vogue a few years ago. Kirchner. a young English artist trained in Vienna, fell in love with and married the beautiful model he had made world-1 anions. A TRAGIC MARRIAGE.

Tt was a tragic- marriage. Kirchner, at the height of his career, fell a victim to appendicitis. His widow roamed about the streets of New York, iantastically dressed, and moaning aloud; “ Raphie, wo hist dn?” (“Raphael, where are you?”). She took to drink and drugs. Slie bad an idea that a man who had killed her dog had intended to kill her. The Black Hand gang, she declared, vas pursuing her. She hired bravos to y retort her, spending all her money on this hallucination until her attorney had her bank account sequestered. Her ambition was to be painted as Ophelia in the famous mad scene—an ainbition she never achieved.

Artists are some times, ;.nd with good reason, a little ihy ol tho amateur model. A Whistler st'-ry is told in this connection. A beautiful married woman, avid for t'.e thrill of posing ter . great artist, sat for him for a por trait of a woman bathing. Afterwards, confronted with the fact that her husband would certainly recognise her, she sent her maid to tie ‘tmlio v.nila she dined with the artist. The maid's instructions were to dc-sti-oy the face of the sitter, which she did. Whistler had liis revenge by sending for the maid and painting her laic in the picture instead of that of the mistress. Like mistress like maul, he said, only much better looking and mud) better behaved. IN PA BIS.

Life in artistic circles in Pars id not what it was when .'Turgor write his ‘ Vie dc Pioheme,’ nor O'cn when Uu Manner gave us ‘Trilby.’ There are no doubt charming models to be mot drinking beer and talking art with the young lions of painting in cafes like the Dome and the Rotonde. But they do not darn the socks and cook the meals of the artist of the future. The Bohemians of the brush seem to he quite satisfied to leave these elevating tasks to their landladies. And the models complain that much of their occupation has been taken from them by amateurs, many of them American girls, who come over to study art in Paris, subsidised by their wealthy American parents. 'When a woman model can afford to dispense with wages, and ev--n to lend money to artists, the professional model is naturally at a serious disadvantage. There are not many cases of the vampire woman to bo found in tho studios of Montmartre and Montparnasse outside the pages of the novelists. There is not much use vamping young artists who are usually and artistically hard-up. THE WRONG KIND.

Just as women who frequently appear in the police courts describs themselves without any justification as actresses, so many women ■in Paris, who find themselves mixed up in a crime passionelle, give out that they are artists’ models. Their only connection with art is that they take well-to-do elderly gentlemen—their sugar daddies, as they are called—to the Bohemian cafes of Paris and try to induce them to buy bad pictures for good money—with a secret commission to themselves. They are not artists’ models, not even vampires, but mere gold diggers. Whistler, who was a very forthright man, had a celebrated red-haired model, known to Chelsea fame as Joe. Stott, of Oldham, got it into his head that Whistler bad (rented - her rather shabbily, and while walking down Bond

street told him so. Whistler replied with bis usual effectiveness. He simply pushed Stott through a shop window. What enraged Whistler, as it enrages many artists of to-day, is the tendency of some models to pontificate nn art._ As a rule these girts are not distressingly intellectual, and when they believe that it is they, not the artists, who get hung in the Academy, painters, an irascible race, not unnaturally lose their tempers. Whistler, who did not suffer fools gladly—men or women—put his view in a nutshell, “ Tf,” he said, “ association with art and artists confers a right to expound art, then the policeman on duty at the National Gallery must be our greatest living authority.” OLD MASTERS. Some great artists have made models of their wives, some of their cooks. Fra Filippo Lippi fell in love with a nuu who sat as his model for a painting of the Madonna. She fell in love with him and they ran away and got married. Their sou became'a painter as famous as his father. Romney, the great English portrait painter, was dazzled by "Lady Hamilton, the former servant girl who fascinated Nelson. He painted her over a score of times, which led a cvnic to recall the remark that Botticelli painted forty masterpieces, of which ovw fiixty we in the United States of America. Leonardo da ’\ inci fell in love with the wjfe of a rich old Florentine nobleman, Francisca del Gioconda. Nobody knows whether she returned his love or whether she deceived her aged husband after her association with the genius. Her baffling smile tells us nothing—you will find it in the famous Mona Lisa in the Louvre.