Lift My Eyes

by Magdalen Dugan

  The distance is great, and the journey will be long. I will take the Transcontinental Express Train from San Francisco to New York City. This is advertised as taking eighty-three hours, or a little less than four days and three nights. I will have a sleeping compartment on the train and take my meals in the dining car. How different this will be from my last journey across the country in our covered wagon only ten years ago.

  In New York, I will stay with a friend of Mrs. Phoebe Hearst, wife of William Randolph Hearst. I am so grateful for everything she has done for me—the paintings she has commissioned, the patrons she has introduced, and most of all the way she has believed in my talent and my ability to use it. I recall her advice when we last met.

  “Matilda, you have said that you want to paint, and you have established that you can. Do not be content to become what they call ‘an accomplished woman.’ This is the stereotype of the charming dilettante who holds court in her parlor. Rather, marshal your will and all your talent to become a painter, a good painter. Being a woman or a man has little to do with it.”

  This is my commission.

  Two days after I arrive in New York, I will embark on an ocean voyage that could take eight days or more depending on the weather. This will be an unprecedented adventure, dangerous in a way different from crossing the country in a covered wagon—not too little water but so very much water that the ship labors to navigate. Still, when I was out on the Monterey Bay on a small ship I enjoyed it very much; the captain said I got my “sea legs” quickly.

  When we reach Paris, I will be met by another friend of Mrs. Hearst’s who will help me to get settled in a room near L’Académie. My classes will begin about two weeks after that, in mid-September, so I will have the delicious opportunity to become acquainted with Paris.

  It will be very hard to say good-bye to Mama and Papa, especially because I do not know when I will see them again, but I have expected this since I am a woman now and must make my own life. But Paul—I cannot yet imagine life apart from the brother who has shared everything with me these many years. I try to tell him this after supper as we sit in the backyard, looking at the stars together one last time.

  “Now, don’t go getting sentimental, Tillie. You are about to have the time of your life. This is what you have always wanted and always prepared for. You are going to be an artist.”

  “Will you come to visit me in Paris?”

  “You’ll just have to get really successful and rich and send me the money for the trip.”

  “What about you, Paul? Are you going to get successful and rich?”

  “Sure, Tillie. I’m doing just fine at the photography studio. I will be able to make a good living at it. What I’ve never told you before, though, and what I’ve known almost all along is that you are in a different league than I am. No, don’t argue. It’s a fact. I don’t mind it at all. You can be a great painter, Tillie, so go be great. Work hard, be brave, and don’t let anything stop you. And one more thing, Tillie. Try to find peace. It’s hard for people with great talent to find peace. It’s hard for you.”

  At this moment, I am not really listening to what he is saying. I am looking at his wonderful face and thinking of who he is to me. “You have taught me so much, Paul. You have helped me learn to see. I would not be going to Paris if not for you.”

  Paul puts his arm around my shoulder and we sit in silence for a while, looking up into a sparkling sky. “Go to bed now, Tillie,” he says at last. “Morning will be here soon and you have a life ahead of you.”

  *****

  OCTOBER 1883

  (THREE YEARS LATER)

  Paris

  It is raining, of course—it is nearly always raining—but I must drive into the country regardless. I paint animals, I tell myself, and the animals I am currently sketching are to be found only in the country—a small flock of sheep in a meadow. But both my mind and my body resist working in the rain. I know that the moment my driver helps me from the carriage my boots and skirts will be soaked by the watery mud of the road. As uncomfortable as it will be to sketch all day in wet boots, I can accept this, perhaps because it is unavoidable. What is worse, what annoys me to no end, is being weighed down and chilled by layers of skirts that become yet more sodden as I traipse across the meadows.

  For whom must I so attire myself? My humble, kind driver, a farmer whose wife no doubt pins up her skirts to accomplish her own work in the wet fields?

  And I wonder, if Rosa Bonheur were here beside me right now, would she laugh and chide me for my slavery to convention? She would. She would do what best serves her work, and always has done. Her famous practices of wearing men’s clothing and cutting her hair short were born of simple need: no woman was allowed to enter the slaughterhouses, so she masqueraded as a man in order to study the animals’ anatomy.

  I can hear her deep, authoritative voice as if she were standing beside me: “Ma chère fille, think first what is good for the work. This is the norm for your every choice.”

  Suddenly I know exactly what to do. I have no men’s trousers, and truth be told I would not dare to don them if I had, but from the box on my dressing table, I take a handful of pins and begin hitching up my skirts as boldly as any good French farm wife. Today, I tell myself, this lady’s skirts will stay dry and her damp stockings will soon dry in the breeze as she draws.

  Indeed, they do.

  *****

  APRIL 1889

  (SIX YEARS LATER)

  Ecouen, France

  I am writing a letter:

  Dear Paul,

  I can hardly wait until you arrive in July, and I spend all my spare time preparing for your visit. We will have Bastille Day on the fourteenth, and Paris will be most exciting for you.

  I have now taken a studio and rooms at Ecouen, a little village near Paris. The country round about is pretty for backgrounds, and as the village is built on a hill the views are very fine. Nearby is a handsome castle. I am sorry to say I could not finish my picture for the year’s Salon. I started a canvas of four oxen and spent considerable time upon it, but unfortunately for me, the farmer could not spare his oxen any longer, just at the time when I most needed them to finish my picture. It is too late to start another. I feel bad, for my friends will expect to see some of my works at the exposition. It is difficult to paint animals that farmers use for their work. One loses so much time with them, and ought to own the animals to be able to study them well.

  I have been making studies of plowed ground for my picture. There is nothing more difficult to paint, as the light and even color changes every few minutes. The sky effects here are beautiful, and at this season dark stormy clouds fill the sky. Sometimes I get the benefit of them and come home like a drowned rat; in fact, I have to work in the rain half the time.

  Yes, I still complain a great deal, but as you remind me always, I am doing exactly what I choose.

  Come soon.

  Yours,

  Tillie

  *****

  DECEMBER 1894

  (FIVE YEARS LATER)

  Paris

  Rosa Bonheur and I are taking tea in my Paris rooms, and I am sharing with her a newspaper article praising my painting, A Street in Cairo, being shown in the San Francisco Ladies’ Art Exhibition. But it is not my painting that concerns Rosa.

  “This exhibition is good, I think,” Rosa says. “In San Francisco, many women are sérieuses about their art, and critics now recognize them. It is good for women in Europe, too, and everywhere. Does this paper talk of the statue of Queen Isabella by Harriet Hosmer?”

  “Oh, yes,” I answer, scanning the article. “Yes, here it is. The statue was commissioned by the Isabellas in Chicago last year, to give the Queen equal credit with Columbus for discovering America. It is being displayed before the twenty-three-foot Pampas Palace. Well, critics and public alike praise the statue, but the Isabellas women’s group is suffering quite a bit of resistance toward their message. It seems that it took weeks of negotiation to find
a good place for the statue at the exhibition.”

  “Domage. A shame. But of course there is la résistance. Isabella is the symbol of the woman who has power and influence. Very frightening for the little people. This is difficile for Harriet Hosmer, to mix art with politics. She must be sérieuse, but at the same time she must laugh at la résistance, as I do. If she does not, she loses her heart and cannot work.”

  “But, Rosa, I never mix art with politics. I have no desire to do anything but paint. Sometimes I wonder whether that is selfish.”

  “Non! C’est bon, ma chère. This is good. This is your personnage. You are a private person. But if you are true to yourself, you help our cause.”

  Rosa is different from me in so many ways. Her presence is large and often fierce. She challenges people to open their minds. Though painting is her first commitment, as it is for me, she has others that she is almost as passionate about. Yet she has never even suggested that I should try to imitate her, but has always paid attention to supporting my own strengths. In these years of separation from my mama in California, Rosa has been like a mother to me, sharing her greater life experience, teaching me to focus on what is essential.

  *****

  SEPTEMBER 1890

  (FOUR YEARS EARLIER)

  Rosa Bonheur’s Chateau at By

  The air is cool and crisp, beginning to tinge the oak leaves with red, gold, and orange even as the sun warms our faces. We are strolling through Rosa’s private zoological gardens where we can see to either side of a tree-lined path not only deer, gazelles, and shaggy ponies from Iceland, but wild boar, and even a lion who is so well fed he simply regards us mildly from a distance. It is a marvel to be here, a marvel to paint here in the company of so great a painter. But at this moment, we are resting from our work and Rosa is regaling me with her stories.

  “All of Paris was talking of me behind their hands, behind their fans…”

  “Behind your back, we say in English.”

  “Oui, this, too. And the notoriété was worth the problèmes. I was selling many paintings. The Horse Fair became famouse, and the English Queen Victoria invited me to London.”

  “Did you wear men’s clothing to meet the Queen?”

  She ignores my teasing tone, stops in her tracks, and faces me gravely. “There was no need to wear the men’s clothing for Queen Victoria. She is a woman, and a queen. She understands what I do. Ma chère, I am the living art. My short hair, my trousers, my cigar, these say to the world: ‘If I must behave as a man to be treated as his equal, then so I shall.’ Why say this to a woman who knows that she can rule an empire, and does?”

  “I see…but I am not great as Queen Victoria is, or as you are, and I shall never be so. My paintings might become great; they are very well received. But I myself do little but paint, and that does not make me interesting. Am I fulfilling my potential, Rosa?”

  She grasps me by both arms and speaks into my eyes. “Ah, ma chère, to be great, as you say, this is not l’idée importante. Non. Avoir le courage de vos convictions! Have the courage of your beliefs, Tillie! Live them. This is l’idée importante. Make true art. If this makes you famouse—bien—this is good. If not, this is also good. To be great is no objectif. It is only a result.”

  I nod, beginning to understand. “My papa had the courage of his convictions when he would not take sides in the war, even though it was dangerous, and when he refused to give in to the Ku Klux Klan. And when he started making beautiful furniture and instruments again and again no matter what happened to stop him.”

  “Oui. And as you do when you go where you need to go and paint what you see. You are la fille of your father.”

  “Yes, I am my father’s daughter. It makes me happy to hear you say so.”

  “I know this is so. I am also my father’s daughter. He taught me to make art and not to be afraid. This is what kept you at l’Académie, even when it was très difficile, non?”

  We exchange a knowing look and laugh together like soldiers after a difficult battle won. A battle that was indeed during my first year at L’Académie, one in the midst of which I could not laugh.

  *****

  SEPTEMBER 1880

  (TEN YEARS EARLIER)

  L’Académie de Peinture de Paris

  What am I doing here in this strange country with its strange language, here in this studio, in this sea of young men who are staring at me, not bothering to hide their curiosity and scorn? How am I to function here?

  My teachers at the San Francisco School of Design have believed in me, believed I was ready to study in Paris. Kind Mr. Virgil Williams of the San Francisco Art Association has had the confidence to fund my tuition and expenses. But that was in America, a young country, a hopeful and possible country. This—this is Paris, for many centuries a city of great painters, and I am a twenty-one-year-old woman, apparently the only woman in my class.

  Our professor enters and welcomes us to our course of study. He speaks briskly in French. Though I can understand only a little, I gather that we will not sketch today indoors, but tomorrow in the countryside. Today we have a visiting artist, one who is very successful in depicting the realistic nature scenes we will study, Monsieur Emile Van Marcke. He enters, stately with full white beard, a broad forehead, and a tuft of white hair.

  Monsieur Van Marcke advises us to work first with our eyes to see, and only then with our hands to portray. Of the paintings he shows us, both his own and others’, I very much admire his Cows in a Meadow, the brindled cows and sweet white calf walking toward the viewer with such movement and life, a little black dog flanking them. Perhaps one day, if I work very hard, I shall be able to study with him privately, and to learn to show such movement in a painting.

  As class closes and we file to the door, one young man breaks from the group of gawkers and approaches me. He is tall and dark in the French manner, with large brown eyes. He might be handsome if his face were not so marred by insolence and a mean spirit.

  “Mademoiselle, es-tu perdu?” he addresses me insultingly in the familiar form, with a mocking bow. “Puis-je t’aider?” He is asking whether I am lost, and whether he may direct me. His friends snicker in their little clique.

  My face becomes hot, my breathing quickens, and the old shaking feeling comes over me. I do not answer, not only because I do not yet trust my command of the language, or of my temper, but more so because he does not deserve a reply. I meet his stare and breeze past him through the door. Fuming with rage, I walk home so quickly I barely see my surroundings. When I arrive at my rooms the only possible recourse is to paint. I don my smock and begin to create a sky such as I remember from September mornings in Franklin. Under it I intend to place Bert who will walk toward the viewer in the lively manner of Emile Van Marcke’s cows. As I lose myself in mixing Prussian blue with white until it is the perfect shade of clear morning light, it slowly occurs to me that the rudeness of those young men has in fact done me a service. It has posed an important question that I am gaining the clarity to answer. Am I lost? No, I most certainly am not. I am once again among hostile men, again challenged, but I am in Paris, a city of painters, and I am becoming a painter in spite of anything they can say or do.

  *****

  SEPTEMBER 1874

  (SIX YEARS EARLIER)

  San Francisco

  “No, sir, I am not in the wrong room,” I answer Professor Virgil Williams, who is to be my new teacher at the California School of Design. “I am learning to paint. I am your new pupil, sir. Matilda Lotz.”

  Mr. Williams looks baffled, and the students, nearly all young men though all older than my fifteen years, whisper and laugh.

  “Silence, pupils. Continue your sketches while I make some inquiries.” He leaves the room, leaves me standing in front of these unwelcoming strangers. I glance around the studio and soon forget the other students when I notice the model, a woman seated on a raised platform at the center of the room. She is draped in a white, Grecian-style garment with her ha
ir piled atop her head to expose bare white shoulders, arms, and throat. She points a graceful bare foot, and her ankle and part of her calf extend from her skirts. I have never before seen so much of another human body. It is exquisite, and I want to draw it.

  A young woman also a few years older than I am rises and walks toward me. Her palms are dark and shiny with pencil rubbings. She is smiling politely, and her face looks intelligent and well-intentioned.

  “I am Ella Hopps,” she says, “but you may call me Nellie. Why don’t you take a seat until Professor Williams returns?” She gives her head a toss. “Pay no attention to these unmannerly children,” she continues at a volume meant for their ears. “They know so few ladies of any sort, and we ladies who draw confuse them.”

  I nod and smile my thanks, sitting toward the outside of the circle of students, who eventually lose interest in me and return to their work. Hoping that I will have some time to complete a sketch, I take my tablet and pencils from my satchel and begin to look carefully at the model’s feet, making first a few tentative strokes, and then sketching in earnest.

  I have no idea how long I have been working when Professor Williams returns and approaches me.

  “Miss Lotz,” he begins, “I must apologize. I was not apprised of your joining our class. I understand that Mrs. Hearst has sponsored you here.”

  A buzz of whispers rises from the students. Mr. and Mrs. Randolf Hearst are greatly respected in San Francisco society, and I am very grateful that they have taken an interest in my drawing. Evidently, their patronage may help me to get along in class, too.

  “But I see you have already begun.” He nods his approval of my initiative, takes the sketch from my hands, and studies it. “This is not bad, Miss Lotz. You have shown judgement in beginning with a small study of the feet, and for the most part your lines are accurate. Look here, the curve of the heel is so. Here the shading needs to be adjusted. And there.” He guides my hand through the corrections. “Very well. Carry on.”