Girl with Brush and Canvas

by Carolyn Meyer

  A middle-aged man with wild, uncombed hair seemed startled by this bunch of boisterous intruders. “I’m Stieglitz,” he said. He gestured grandly around the room. “And this is Auguste Rodin.”

  The drawings were no more than careless lines in ink or pencil, a few with a watercolor wash. Many were of nudes, and it was as if the sculptor had never had a lesson in human anatomy. In some drawings the intimate parts of the naked bodies were obscured by an arm or a thigh, but others revealed everything, and I was too shocked to say a word. These scribbles made no sense to me.

  Gene and the others were loudly outspoken in their disapproval.

  “This is not art!” one cried. “It is depravity of the worst kind!”

  “Completely offensive, even to the most liberal of us!” shouted another.

  “Please explain, sir, why you’ve chosen to display this travesty of art!”

  “Rodin is first and foremost a sculptor,” Mr. Stieglitz replied calmly. “I suggest that you take note of how he uses just a few strokes of the pen to convey the idea, the essence of the subject.” He was trying—successfully, I thought—not to let the young art students bully him.

  But our League boys were having none of it. They engaged Mr. Stieglitz in such a violent discussion that he was shouting, his whole body quaking. I’d been standing quietly in a corner. Had I come alone, I might have examined the drawings more closely, but with all the noise and shouting I was too embarrassed to show any interest at all in the drawings. I simply wanted to get out of there.

  At the last moment, as the others crowded into the elevator cage, Gene seemed to remember me. “Come along, Patsy!” he boomed, seizing my arm. “No need to expose you further to this filthy stuff.”

  The gate closed, and as the cage began its clattering descent, I saw Mr. Stieglitz standing with his fists on his hips, glaring fiercely at us.

  “So now you’ve seen the famous Alfred Stieglitz, Patsy,” Gene said. “He may be a fine photographer, but he’s certainly no judge of art. What a joke, that Rodin!”

  14

  New York—Winter 1908

  GIVING UP DANCING WHENEVER I FELT LIKE IT DID not mean I’d given up a social life.

  One of the students in my still life class was George Dannenberg, who’d come to New York from San Francisco. George was twenty-five—five years older than I was—and ruggedly handsome. He attended classes on a scholarship, and he was so poor that, when class was over, I sometimes saw him eating the apples or grapes or whatever edible items that had been so carefully arranged on the table.

  I called him the Man from the Far West.

  When George invited me to a costume party on Valentine’s Day, I dressed as Peter Pan in boys’ clothing I’d borrowed from a friend of Flo’s. Flo had a knack for getting acquainted with lots of people quickly. And she was a free spirit: she convinced me that it was all right to wear trousers in public.

  Two weeks later, George escorted me to a Leap Year dance. I was supposed to wear masculine attire. He lent me his only suit—trousers, threadbare coat, white shirt and bowtie—and showed up himself in a long gown with a moth-eaten fur wrap thrown over his shoulders. I have no idea where he found that ensemble, but oh, did we have fun! All evening we reversed roles, and I pretended that I was a boy, even when we danced. Those monthly dances at Chatham prepared me for that—I was the only girl who knew how to lead.

  George belonged to the Society of American Fakirs, about two dozen League students who had founded a group dedicated to painting parodies of works of our teachers and other established artists, like Sister Angelique’s favorite, Winslow Homer, and the portraitist John Singer Sargent. George had lampooned Sargent’s portrait of a wealthy society couple, transforming them into dressmaker’s dummies. The Fakirs renamed the paintings and the painters with puns. They even mocked our favorite teacher, Mr. Chase, who seemed amused by it. George talked me into joining the group.

  Every spring the National Academy of Design held a show at its Venetian-style building on Fifth Avenue, with the New York upper crust assembling to drink champagne and pay top dollar for works of the best-known artists, like Homer and Sargent, as well as some of our teachers, such as Mr. Chase, whom we liked, and Kenyon Cox, the anatomy teacher, whom we didn’t.

  The Fakirs staged a mockery of the Academy’s gala, pouring cheap wine into old glasses and jars and dressing fit to kill in whatever tattered finery we could find. We put on our own show of paintings at the League that parodied the work of those famous artists and went to great lengths to produce a catalogue filled with satiric cartoons and articles headed with the Fakirs’ motto, “Never let art interfere with pleasure.” The idea was to sell our “fakes” to raise scholarship money. My parody of Winslow Homer’s two farm boys in a pasture sold for five dollars. Sister Angelique would have been horrified—and maybe secretly pleased.

  For a year I had worked hard to absorb whatever Mr. Chase had to teach in his still life class, and at the end of the term my painting of a dead rabbit lying next to a copper pot was chosen to receive the Chase Award. The prize was a hundred dollars and a scholarship to spend the summer at an art colony on Lake George. A rustic lodge set among towering pines in the Adirondacks at the southern end of the long, narrow lake had been turned into a retreat where artists of all kinds, including writers and musicians, could get away from the city for a few weeks to pursue their projects. The retreat was called Amitola.

  I was thrilled to win such a prestigious prize, grateful to receive the prize money, and excited to be spending the summer at Amitola. But it was wrenching for me to leave New York, not knowing when I’d come back. When I wasn’t in class at the League, I was painting, and when I wasn’t painting, I was visiting galleries and exhibitions. New York was where I was forming my opinions about art.

  All of my friends were making art, talking about art, arguing about art. The arguments sometimes got quite fierce, among the students as well as among the artists who were our teachers. Mr. Henri, who’d urged his students to see the Rodin show, was very controversial: his realistic paintings were considered ugly by Mr. Chase. Mr. Henri detested the National Academy of Design, saying it was much too conservative and too powerful. And we had all heard the story about Mr. Chase arguing with Mr. Stieglitz about the Rodins and banging down his silk hat so hard that he smashed it flat.

  Instead of going south to Williamsburg in June, I took the train north to Lake George. Amitola had spectacular views of the lake; at night the lodge was lit by lanterns. The evening meal served in the timbered dining room was communal, and conversation was encouraged among the artists. Often there was music. Breakfast could be solitary or not, but I’d never liked to talk in the mornings, and kept to myself. The kitchen help packed lunches that we took with us to eat whenever and wherever we wished.

  I was surrounded by beauty—a field of daisies, a sailboat with a red sail on the dark lake, a line of blue mountains in the distance—but none of it inspired me. I started a few paintings and then lost interest, preferring to go on long walks alone and then return to my room, make a few sketches, and let it go. I’d been like that as a student at Chatham, but soon after I enrolled at the Art Institute in Chicago, I had recognized that I could not afford to be so lackadaisical, and I worked steadily to catch up to the others. Now I fell back into my old pattern—working hard when I was inspired, not doing much of anything when I wasn’t.

  Twenty other students from the League had been invited for the summer. Among them were Eugene Speicher and George Dannenberg. Gene had won the fifty-dollar Kelley Prize for his portrait of me. Gene and George were competitors at the League, and now they were competitors for my attention. Gene was both persistent and insistent, but I was resistant. George was an extraordinarily disciplined worker. His creative energy always seemed to be focused. He’d work like a demon until all hours, but he felt happiest tramping through the woods. I often went with him. We were spending more and more time together.

  Near the end of July we were
all invited to display our work, competing for a prize that would be awarded by a jury of local art collectors. Gene entered his portrait of me. One of the judges was a rich businessman named Stieglitz, who turned out to be the father of wild-haired Alfred Stieglitz at the 291 gallery. The younger Stieglitz helped his father pick the winning painting: Gene’s portrait. By then I had been in New York long enough to become familiar with Stieglitz’s reputation as a photographer. It was ironic that he’d awarded Gene the prize, given that Gene had deplored 291’s showing of the Rodins.

  Late one afternoon George knocked on my door. “I have an idea,” he said. “There’s a grocery store in the village on the other side of the lake, where all those big mansions are. Let’s row across and find that store. I bet they have fruit and cheese and a decent loaf of bread. Maybe even a bottle of wine! We’ll buy something and have a delightful little picnic on the shore and then row back with the rest.”

  It was an appealing idea. “What about a boat?”

  He grinned. “I’ve arranged to borrow one. Your ship awaits you, mademoiselle.”

  We collected our sketchbooks and pencils, because we were, George pointed out, dedicated artists and not a couple of bohemians drifting idly through summer days without serious purpose.

  The rowboat was tied up at a wooden dock. I was about to climb in when I heard a familiar “Halloooo!” It was Gene Speicher. “Off for a little excursion, I gather?” Gene asked.

  “Pretty obvious, isn’t it?” George muttered under his breath, and began untying the rope.

  “We’re going across the lake to get some things for a picnic,” I explained, adding impetuously, “Want to come along?”

  George’s head jerked up, and he was scowling. I’d said it out of politeness, thinking that Gene would just as politely refuse.

  But Gene was oblivious—maybe intentionally. “A capital idea!” he said. “It’s a magnificent day for an outing!” He took my hand to help me down into the rowboat. I didn’t need his assistance, but there it was.

  George pushed the boat away from the dock and set the oars in the oarlocks. Gene tipped his cap down over his eyes and settled in comfortably to soak up the afternoon sun. “I’ll row coming back,” he said.

  George rowed sullenly all the way across the lake. There was no conversation. I concentrated on the sound of the creaking oars and the gentle splash of water and tried to ignore the growing irritation of the two rivals. I liked both men, George far more than Gene, and I should never have suggested that Gene come along. But it had happened, and there was nothing to do now but put up with it until we’d bought the groceries and rowed back. George would surely think of some diplomatic way to ditch Gene, and that would be the end of it.

  When we reached the western shore, George tied up the boat, and the three of us set off in search of the grocery store. It was not as easy to find as we expected, and we wandered aimlessly until we encountered an elderly fellow on a bench, puffing on a pipe and watching a mallard and her ducklings. He pointed his pipe in the direction we should go.

  The grocery catered to well-heeled summer people, who must have sent their cooks or housekeepers when they ran out of Russian caviar or preserved pheasant or pâté de foie gras. Gene explained, in a tone that plainly irritated George, that pâté de foie gras was French for goose liver paste. We eventually filled a basket with delicacies that neither George nor I could afford. Flush with his fifty-dollar prize money for my portrait, Gene paid for it all.

  “It’s the least I can do,” he said. “If it hadn’t been for you, Patsy, I wouldn’t have won that prize.” Then he couldn’t help bragging: “The League has promised to publish it in next year’s catalogue as a example of excellent student work, and they’ve hinted that they may hang it as part of their permanent collection.”

  George grimaced. “You can treat Patsy. I’ll reimburse you for my part. Let’s go.”

  When we got back to the dock, the rowboat was not there.

  “The rope must have come undone,” George said, “and the boat drifted off. Surely it can’t have gone very far.”

  We walked up and down the shoreline, searching for some sign of the missing boat, until we met the elderly pipe-smoker again. “Two young fellers climbed in a boat like the one you’re talking about and rowed off with it.”

  “When was that?” Gene asked.

  “’Bout half an hour ago, I’d guess. Headed up toward Diamond Point.” He waved his pipe in that direction.

  We looked at one another.

  “Stolen,” George said. “Obviously, it’s been stolen.”

  “It appears that we have a nice long stroll ahead of us,” Gene said.

  We set off glumly. It would be about an hour’s walk, George estimated. We had left late in the afternoon and spent quite a lot of time selecting groceries, and now it was getting on toward evening. We stopped long enough to eat some of the bread and cheese and pâté, which none of us enjoyed, and then began to make our way around the southern end of the lake. Soon we found ourselves slogging ankle-deep through marshland created by underground springs that fed the lake. We were wet, mosquito-bitten, and thoroughly miserable when we came upon a large pond. A stand of cattails reflected on the black water. Invisible insects pricked the shimmering surface. Beyond the pond, the woods, dark except for flashes of white birch, appeared mysterious, unfathomable. It looked the way I felt—wet and gloomy and mysterious. I stopped to take in the scene.

  “Do you need to rest, Patsy?” Gene asked solicitously, reaching for my hand in the deepening twilight.

  I yanked my hand away. “No. I just want a moment to look,” I said, adding, “and to feel.”

  A sliver of moon was rising when we finally emerged from the marsh and stumbled up the outdoor stairs and onto the wooden porch at Amitola. Lamplight glowed. Voices were hushed. We said good night and went to our rooms. I was still hungry, but Gene had taken the rest of our delicacies with him. I was too tired to care. I kicked off my wet shoes and lay down, still in my clothes. In seconds I was asleep.

  I woke up before sunrise the next morning. Without bothering to change my clothes, I stuck my feet into my damp shoes, grabbed my watercolors and paper, and found my way back to the marshland and the place where the cattails had been reflected in the still water. Morning mist rose from the marsh. The cattails stood silhouetted against a sky the color of pearl. The light had changed, but the mystery I had experienced the night before was still there—without the gloom. It came to me, suddenly and overwhelmingly, that the way I felt dictated how I saw that scene. I worked fast to capture the feeling in deep greens and black.

  I knew that it was the best work I had done since I’d arrived at the lake. Later, I showed it to George. He studied it for a long time. I didn’t have to explain a thing.

  “Will you give it to me, Patsy? Then I’ll have a part of you.”

  I nodded yes.

  George took a long step toward me, buried his fingers in my curls, and kissed me. I returned his kiss. It was the first time. I had been waiting for this kiss, and I knew that it would not be our last.

  From then on we were together as much as we wished, paddling a canoe on the lake—the “stolen boat,” taken as a prank, had been recovered, but we decided to borrow a canoe the next time so that Gene wouldn’t invite himself along. We spent hours tramping through the woods, sometimes talking, sometimes not saying a word. We were so closely attuned that there was no need for conversation. I wondered if this is what it was like to be in love. George was the first man for whom I’d had strong feelings, and it touched me deeply. Gene had finally figured out that something serious had developed between George and me, and he didn’t interfere.

  One night darkness came on faster than we’d expected, and we lost our way. We fell asleep on a bed of pine needles and crept back to Amitola at dawn without being detected. It was the loveliest night I’d ever spent.

  At the end of summer we prepared to go our separate ways, George home to California and I
back to Virginia. Our parting was sad—I even wept a little—and our futures uncertain, but we promised to write. That was the only thing either of us could promise.

  15

  Williamsburg, Virginia—Fall 1908

  DURING THE YEAR THAT I HAD BEEN AWAY, MY father had changed into someone I hardly recognized. The fun-loving Irishman who had once played the fiddle and danced with his children, the forward-looking businessman who was the first to install a telephone in his Sun Prairie house, had now become withdrawn and silent. After the grocery and the feed and grain business folded, he had launched O’Keeffe & Sons Building Materials. But people in Williamsburg wanted only traditional houses of brick and sometimes clapboard, and they were not interested in buying the concrete-and-clamshell blocks. He still owned the nine-acre strip of land next to the gracious old mansion we’d once lived in, and he decided to use the inventory of unsold blocks to build a new house on it.

  He’d made a few rough sketches of what he wanted. Francis, newly graduated with a degree in architecture, helped with the construction. Fourteen-year-old Alexius pitched in as well.

  “What do you think?” I asked Francis. “Did you advise him on the design?”

  Francis rubbed his eyes. “It’s what he wants. He didn’t ask for my advice, and when I made some suggestions, like the placement of the doors and windows, and eliminating the awkward gables, he didn’t want to hear anything I said.”

  “Maybe Mama can get him to listen.”

  “She says it’s his project and he’ll do what he wants.”

  “That two-story concrete porch on the front—”

  “I know. It’s clumsy; there’s no other word to describe it. And the design of the roof is all wrong—it will let rainwater leak down inside the concrete blocks, so the house will likely always be damp. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to live there.” Francis looked at me with a wry grin. “Except those oddball O’Keeffes.”

  The oddball O’Keeffes moved into the house, and we tried to make the best of our situation. Almost all of the money Papa had made on the sale of the property in Sun Prairie was gone, and he had not yet hit upon a way to earn more. A partnership set up to sell land came to nothing. An arrangement to ship peanuts and watermelons from a pier rented on the York River went nowhere.