by Elise Hooper
Finally May’s name was called. A plain-faced woman gave a terse greeting at the door of Mr. Hunt’s studio. “I’m Miss Helen Knowlton and serve as Mr. Hunt’s deputy,” she said, inspecting May with unblinking eyes. May kept her face composed but wanted to giggle nervously at the woman’s self-important usage of the word deputy. “Please, set out your work for inspection.”
May followed the woman to a counter, piled high with heaps of canvases, and lifted her portfolio onto a cleared-off section. She towered over the wisp of a woman. Miss Knowlton surveyed May’s presentation of work from Europe with a deliberation that left May wondering if she underestimated the woman’s jurisdiction over the studio. “You have a confident line and your drafting skills appear solid,” Miss Knowlton said. May felt surprised by the relief she took in the woman’s approval.
Heavy footsteps signaled the arrival of Mr. Hunt, and May turned to find an older, lanky man in a dark suit striding across the room to join them. While Miss Knowlton stood barely five feet tall with silvery blond hair pulled back into a practical bun at the nape of her neck, Mr. Hunt loomed a couple of inches over six feet tall with a long straight nose, balding head, and bright blue eyes looking out from over an unwieldy white beard that practically reached his chest. “Miss Alcott? Based on the landmarks in some of your sketches, it appears you’ve spent some time in Europe.”
“I did. A year, sir.”
“Yes, yes, I can see it made an impression on you.” He pulled at his beard as he studied May’s sketches. “European travel is always transformative for any artist. I myself studied in the studios of Millet and Couture. Those experiences left me a changed man.”
She nodded, but Mr. Hunt looked up from her sketches expectantly, making her feel the need to say something. “Unfortunately, Napoleon’s war changed our itinerary. We were forced to avoid Paris.”
“Ah yes, it’s a pity so many critical works were destroyed.” He sighed. “And now the remains must be assessed, and Paris will recover. She always does. But still, what a senseless waste.”
“We made the best of it and went to Rome instead.”
“I studied art in Rome years ago. While certainly different from the fine ateliers and collections in Paris, it offers its own charms and lessons in art history.”
“Yes, we made do in Rome, second-rate sorry art capital that it is.” This flippant response somehow bubbled up within her anxiety; she froze as the words left her mouth. Miss Knowlton’s eyes widened.
To her immense relief, the wrinkles on Hunt’s face crinkled, and he gave a shout of laughter, pounding his hand on the table where her portfolio lay. “Ha! Quite so, quite so. Good for you. Don’t let us get too uppity here in Boston.” He continued to chuckle as he paged through samples of May’s work, and then he looked up at her with a squint in his eye. “I like to see humility and a good head on an art student’s shoulders. After all, artists and their pretensions hold no tender with New Englanders. Let me guess, did you study with Dr. Rimmer?”
May nodded.
“He can be a bit of a schoolmarm at times, but I daresay, he’s a fine instructor. Did you hear he’s teaching down in New York City now? Miss Knowlton, what’s the name of the place?” He reminded May of an actor with a forgotten line, as he waved a hand at his deputy for a cue without looking at her.
“Cooper Union School of Design for Women, sir.”
“Right, right, that’s right. Well, your figures are true to proportion and configured correctly, but look a bit stiff. Nothing a bit more time with a live model can’t solve. Your landscapes demonstrate a lively line and competent understanding of light and shadow.” He turned to Miss Knowlton and nodded before taking his leave from May with a small bow.
“Well, there we are,” Miss Knowlton said, tightening her lips into a line. She pulled a ledger from a drawer under the desk upon which May’s portfolio rested and banged the drawer shut.
“This is a class exclusively for women. Mr. Hunt doesn’t believe a woman’s capabilities should be considered inferior in any way to a man’s, and he’s committed to cultivating the talent of the women of Boston. In this class, I trust you understand models are partially draped to maintain decency. All students will commence with drawing until they are granted permission to move along to oils. Once we have established you are prepared to start with painting, I’ll begin painting basics with you until you’re ready to join those who have already advanced to that stage. Mr. Hunt provides critique and general instruction to every student regardless if a student is painting or sketching.”
“Thank you.” May gathered up her portfolio with hands trembling in excitement.
“I believe you will find Mr. Hunt’s instruction to be transformative. But I have a word of warning: your name precedes you. Just because your sister is famous, don’t expect any special status within this classroom. You must earn your way ahead, like everyone else.” Miss Knowlton’s gray, unblinking eyes bore into her. Her complexion was pale, almost to the point of transparency, and threads of blue veins running under the surface of her skin were visible, giving the woman a cold, otherworldly countenance.
May opened and closed her mouth several times, but nothing came out.
“You may go.” Miss Knowlton’s sharp little chin bobbed toward the door. May walked out of the door, reeling. She did not see the faces turned toward her as she numbly walked down the hallway. Once she reached the stairwell, she paused and reached for the railing, realizing the task ahead. She needed to prove herself to Miss Knowlton, and presumably others. She would work so hard that no one would ever mistake her for Amy March again.
Chapter 19
May was assigned an easel at the back of the studio. From a spot at the front of the room, Alice waved to her. A few other women turned and nodded pleasantly as May winched her sketchbook into place. In the group of about thirty women, she recognized several familiar faces from Dr. Rimmer’s class. Many of the women were surrounded by oils, whereas May only had charcoal. She hoped for a swift promotion from sketching to painting so she could sit at the front of the class with her friend.
A sudden hush fell through the ranks as Mr. Hunt strode into the room. “Ladies, please take out your sketching supplies. I’d like to see you do a drawing from memory. Don’t agonize over the details. You have ten minutes to provide me with a view of something you saw this morning.”
There was a flurry on all sides that reminded May of a flock of birds preparing for flight and then only the scratching of charcoal and rustle of paper. She stared at the sheet of paper in front of her. Her charcoal met the page, and she outlined a lamppost out in front of the Common and sketched the newsboy who always stood at the corner of Tremont and Park Street. Mr. Hunt prowled around the other side of the room. May dashed in some shading lines to try to illustrate the morning’s stark light out on the street.
“Stop agonizing over every minute detail. Poetry is not in the details,” Mr. Hunt called out to the class. “Consider the values of what you are sketching.”
His steps neared May and paused behind her. “Where’s the light? Where are the shadows?”
She sketched in the angle of the visor on the boy’s hat, accentuating the bent line of it. Hunt moved on. May’s heart pounded loudly in her ears, as she drew over her original sketch.
When the ten minutes were up, everyone leaned back from their easels and looked at the work around them. May’s sketch pad revealed a tangle of blurred charcoal lines. Miss Knowlton passed by her easel, pausing to frown.
“Start with the line of the figure’s balance first—don’t muddle it in afterward. The contrast of his body line should be obvious against the straight lamppost. The central themes of any piece of work should not be treated as an afterthought.”
May nodded in Miss Knowlton’s direction, but wistfully watched Alice put away her sketch and take out her paints.
AFTER A FEW months, Mr. Hunt delighted his students when he announced the class would begin to work from live models. On the appointed day, a m
odel entered the room wearing a diaphanous gray pelisse as a toga. The screech of wooden easels being dragged into position quieted as women positioned themselves around the model. May edged her easel forward, but Miss Knowlton stopped her.
“Miss Alcott, I’d like you to work with a charcoal study of this Dürer print. Please, think about value. Work your light and shade thoughtfully.”
May took the Dürer print, trying to ignore the frustration rising in her.
A handful of women remained hanging back with May, working on studies clipped to the sides of their easels. Alice moved up to sketch from the model.
Tears pricked at May’s eyes. She blinked them back and prayed no one noticed as she kept her head down. She ignored the ache in her chest and studied the Dürer.
When she got home that evening, she found Louisa lying in bed, reading a newspaper. May dropped her art satchel to the floor. Charcoal pencils spilled out of the top and rolled around her feet.
“It seems as though everyone is painting but me.”
Louisa peered at her sister over the top edge of her newspaper. “Some of those women—Alice included—have been studying longer than you.”
May glowered and withheld from telling Louisa about Miss Knowlton’s warning before class. She sat down on the side of her bed and kicked a pencil across the room with her stockinged toe.
Louisa frowned as she read the paper. “Remember Anne Whitney?”
“How could I forget her? She made me feel dreadful about my art in Rome.”
“Well, there’s an article about how the Boston Arts Committee just denied her an award for a sculpture after the judges discovered it was created by a woman.”
May began to unpin her curls and groaned. “How unfair.”
Louisa climbed out of bed and handed May the newspaper. “I’m going to go visit her in the morning.” She pulled a black velvet dress out of the wardrobe and smoothed the lace collar down before facing her sister.
“And the sooner you abandon the idea that life is fair, you will be more productive. This world doesn’t owe us a thing.”
MAY TRIED TO be patient and improve her skills. With the new year, Miss Knowlton finally—with a rather reluctant nod of her head, May thought—endorsed May’s promotion from master studies to life drawing, but still, she wanted to paint. Week after week of that frigid winter, May huddled against her easel and created sketch after sketch while growing increasingly confused.
“Watch your semi-tones,” Miss Knowlton would say, leaning over May’s shoulder, pointing to a body part. “Don’t be so aggressive with your dark lines.”
“Attack your subject!” Mr. Hunt would say. “Be spontaneous! You should be less concerned about technique and focus more on your great idea. What truths are you trying to reveal?”
May drew and drew.
“Your proportions are off on this model. Not everyone has the ideal form you learned from Dr. Rimmer.” Miss Knowlton would shake her head. “Draw what you see.”
May ricocheted between Mr. Hunt’s grand words of inspiration and Miss Knowlton’s practical criticism and steered for the middle. She began to doubt all of her efforts.
“LADIES, PLEASE WELCOME our guest lecturer to class today.” Mr. Hunt stood on a podium beside the model and gestured toward the front row of class. “This is Miss Gardner. She hails originally from Exeter, New Hampshire, but has studied in Paris for the last several years.”
May leaned out from behind her easel, eager to catch a glimpse of the painter she met two years prior at the Williams & Everett gallery show. The same thin, dark-haired woman stood and turned to face the students.
“I must leave class in a bit to meet with a client, so you’ll all have the pleasure of Miss Gardner’s instruction today. In the meantime, let’s get started. Miss Knowlton, please hand everyone a stub of charcoal. Not a pencil, a stub.” Miss Knowlton darted around the room with a pail of charcoal castoffs. The glass rattled in the windows at the back of the room from February’s gusty wind. May shivered and surveyed the nubby thumb of charcoal in her hand with doubt.
“You’re all too consumed with details,” Hunt said. “Use the charcoal to capture the essence of the model’s basic line and values of light to dark.”
All of the women who had studied under Dr. Rimmer balked at Hunt’s commands and stared at their blank papers. The idea that details created realism had been drilled into them. How could they let that all go? It was like they stood on a beach being pounded with heavy surf and were expected to dive right in.
“Go on,” Hunt ordered from the front of the room.
May pushed some stray hairs out of her line of vision, raised the stump of charcoal to her paper, and created a contour line of the model at the front of the room. She squinted to simplify the model to a range of tonal shades and got to work.
Perhaps half an hour passed. “Stop working. Please walk around and see the difference in what you have all produced by just focusing on the basics.”
As a whole, the studies with thick charcoal were a truer representation of form and volume. A giddy sense of freedom overtook the women, and whispers replaced the silence of the room.
“Yes.” Hunt folded his arms in front of him and looked down at his students from where he stood next to the model. “Remember, are you creating something believable and interesting? I once worked on a portrait of one of our esteemed judges, and a viewer attempted to use calipers to determine if my representation of the man’s nose was exact. ‘Sir!’ I exclaimed, ‘is Mr. Sumner’s character confined to his nose? No measuring is needed in my studio!’”
The class laughed along with Mr. Hunt’s reenacted indignation, and May realized no one—aside from Miss Knowlton, of course—appeared to be preoccupied with anything outside of Mr. Hunt and their own easels. The knot in her chest untied a little, and she took out a fresh piece of paper.
“Now continue working from the model but don’t forget to continually consider the entirety of what you are attempting to depict. If we were striving for exact likeness, we could go down to Mr. Harold’s Photographic Emporium on Copley and pose in front of a camera. You must search for the inner truth of your subject. And with that final word, I’m off. Miss Gardner, the class is all yours.”
Miss Gardner nodded from a spot amidst the easels and called out. “Ladies, please keep working.”
The model shifted her pose, and May started a new drawing. Miss Gardner continued to circulate around the room until eventually stepping up onto the podium. “With all due respect to Mr. Hunt’s instruction, it seems some of you are pushing this new discovery of inner truth too far. While it’s tempting to throw away those measurement calipers, clients will want to see something recognizable on the canvas when they hire you.”
A hum of confusion ran through the women, and Miss Gardner raised her hands to silence everyone with a severe look. “When you’re working with clients—and I assume it’s your goal to make some money from this endeavor—you better demonstrate a firm grasp of being able to paint what is right in front of you convincingly.”
A woman in the second row raised her hand. “Are you advising us to paint exactly what we see without any reflection of character?”
Miss Gardner gave a sly grin. “I’m advising you to find the balance between painting your subject with mastery and sensitivity. In other words, if a client hires you to paint a portrait of his horse-faced wife, you better find a way to make those horsey features attractive.”
She began lecturing about lighting and perspective and quickly immersed herself in sketching from the model to demonstrate what she meant. Without preamble, she hauled another easel up to the front, explaining that she wanted Miss Knowlton to demonstrate techniques for posing models.
“Landscapes are my specialty. I’m afraid portraiture is not my forte,” protested Miss Knowlton, looking at the podium reluctantly.
“Nonsense, I know your work. Of course you can teach basic posing strategies. Now please, come up here.”
> Soon the class was watching both women at work. A hush fell over the class as the women watched, mesmerized by the demonstration and Miss Gardner’s tactical words of advice while she sketched. May suspected many of her classmates hadn’t considered actually trying to make a living from their work until now. Mr. Hunt took all of his women students seriously, but he had never spoken so frankly about running a business from art as Miss Gardner did.
When class was over for the day, May walked back to her sketchbook and sighed at her attempts at figure drawing. She closed her strained eyes and rubbed at them.
“It’s not that bad,” a voice said. May opened her eyes to see Miss Gardner standing next to her with a hand on her hip. She pointed at May’s sketch. “Look, if you work more on weight distribution starting in the lower back and pelvis, it should solve some of your figure’s stiff-legged look.”
May cocked her head and could see what Miss Gardner meant. “Yes, thank you. Today’s lesson was incredibly helpful. To watch a demonstration—”
Miss Gardner interrupted and grinned. “Yes, I’m under the impression there’s a lot of talk in this room. Now I need to be at a friend’s house on Beacon Hill in twenty minutes and could use some help with directions. Walk with me?”
Eagerly, May packed up her possessions, and the two women walked toward the Common against a piercing headwind.
“These New England winters are brutal.” Miss Gardner pulled her hood up. “Now tell me, what is Hunt’s class really like?”
“It’s marvelous to have an opportunity to study with someone who believes in our abilities, but I’m terribly far behind my other classmates. I know this will sound like petty grumbling, but I swear Miss Knowlton will never promote me to painting. I’ll never become an artist at this rate.”
“What in the world do you mean? Don’t wait for anyone else to call you an artist. You spend hours trying to improve your art, day after day. You may not make any money off it, but I’d say you’re an artist. When I left home to study art in Paris, people thought I was mad. But you have to ignore all of that and work endlessly to make your visions a reality. Stake a claim on your ambitions. If you wait around for other people to define you, you’ll be saddled with their expectations—and that’s dangerous territory for a woman.” Panting, Miss Gardner fanned her face with her hands. “Good lord, please slow down. I don’t have your long legs.”