vandeveer_19160523 / His Chef d’Oeuvre

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Esther Vandeveer. “His Chef d’Oeuvre”

Esther Vandeveer. “His Chef d’Oeuvre; It gained him a reputation which profited him not.”
The Richmond Virginian 7:115 (23 May 1916) : 2
Virginia Chronicle / Library of Virginia : link
same story (minus subtitle, but a clearer scan), at Locomotive Engineers’ Journal 50:10 (October 1916) : 864-867
via google books : link

entirety below —

George Ashley at twenty-two was an artist with a highly artistic temperament. He bad been brought up among women who were of the very best, and he idealized woman in the abstract. Having had nothing to do with others, he knew nothing about them. Indeed, he had his own conceptions of the spiritual beauty of a good woman and knew neither her strong points nor her foibles. Possibly he might have come nearer the composite of an excellent woman had not his associates been very youthful and their characters not entirely formed.
Ashley was ambitious to paint a picture of his Ideal of womanhood. He did not care to portray a Madonna; there were already sufficient Madonnas in the world, some of them painted by artists that he could not hope to emulate. He desired to give his ideal the garb of the twentieth century. Of course all depended on his model. His conceptions were like a flock of birds, flying in the air and refusing to remain quiet long enough to be photographed. Genius must have a foundation on which to build, and when the foundation is established there must be a starting point. A novelist who evolved in words one of the great pictures of the world said that he paced the floor for days dreaming it, but had he not finally begun to write his dreams would never have been anything but dreams.
Where was George Ashley to find a woman through whose physical perfection shone this purity that he wished to depict? He was not rich, but had the means to go about looking for his model. This he did. He visited different countries. On the street, in hotels, in public gardens, he was constantly peering into the faces of women he met looking for that which would serve to concentrate his dreams and reduce them to reality. Many a countenance he noticed, thinking that it was the one he wanted, but on examination was found deficient. Friends became interested in his search, and his attention was called by different persons to a number of women who it was supposed might serve his purpose.
The artist while in Florence, Italy, having run short of funds, established a studio for the purpose of keeping in practice and recouping his finances. He soon achieved some reputation as a portrait painter and received orders enough to maintain him and keep him reasonably busy.
One day an American lady and her daughter came in to his studio, the mother saying that he had been recommended to her to paint her daughter’s portrait.
If Miss Helen was not beautiful she was at least comely. Ashley looked at her inquiringly, as he did at all women who might possibly serve his great purpose, but saw nothing in her face to indicate that he had found his model. After an inspection of pictures he had made Mrs. Laurence took him aside and made a bargain with him to make a full length portrait of her daughter, offering a price which was at once accepted, for Ashley’s ideas of money were more vague than was his ideal of a good woman.
When Miss Laurence appeared for her first sitting she was arrayed in spotless white clinging drapery that showed her line figure to the best advantage. Her coiffure was of the simplest. All that dress could do to represent purity was effected. Then, too, the girl’s face was stamped with innocence. She looked with her blue eyes into those of the artist with a perfect trustfulness.
“Paint me as I am,” she said to him. “Don’t flatter me. If you should make a Madonna of me I should not like it. I am imperfect, and a perfect person represented on the canvas would not be I.”
Ashley questioned her as to what she considered imperfections and was convinced by her replies that she did not know the meaning of the word — that is, she was innocent. While working on her features he chatted with her to draw out her individuality. Her voice was sweet, and it was evident from what she said that she was profoundly ignorant of the wicked part of the world she lived In.
Ashley made a discovery. He had been looking for a woman whose countenance expressed purity. He now formed a theory that innocence and purity are synonymous. Whether he was right or wrong is an open question. It began to dawn upon him that having found innocence it would serve to influence him in portraying purity. He did not realise that for some time he had already been under thla influence. He was first made aware of it by noticing in the face he was putting on the canvas evidence that he was on the way to realize his ideal. He was not so Impractical aa to suppose that he would ever realize that ideal, for he well knew the impossibility of any such realization. He simply knew that he had found an inspiration.
He found something more than an inspiration. He found that which he had never before experienced — love. This was quite naturally the result of peering into the face of a pretty girl for hours at a time and striving to consider her at her best that he might make a successful picture of her. His determination to make her his model for his masterpiece waa an additional reason for his falling in love with her. There was a fascination about his subject which he supposed had been revealed probably to him alone. He could not see how any other man should be enthralled as he had been, for he laid his enthrallment to his peculiar perceptive faculties which enabled him to perceive a perfect embodiment of purity.
When the picture was finished it was a marked success, not as a portrait, but as a representation of purity. The model’s mother accepted it without comment, though it was not a likeness of her daughter, for it was a beautiful picture. It was placed in a conspicuous position and much admired, but few of those who were acquainted with the subject recognized it as her portrait.
Meanwhile Ashley had become so absorbed in his model that he failed to be elated with his success. During the last sittings his subject, by frequent casting down of her eyes under his gaze, by pouting her pretty lips at any inattention on his part, had given evidence that her innocent heart had gone out to meet his. Since he was poor and had not yet made a name for himself in his profession, he hesitated to declare his love.
Nevertheless he was unable to tear himself away from Miss Laurence, nor did she seem inclined to part with him. After the finishing of her portrait, or, rather, his conception of purity, he was unable to work. The mornings usually found him in one of the galleries, where he expected to meet the girl who had captivated him. He was seldom disappointed, though she was not always alone. While she was sitting for him, so far as he knew her time was exclusively his own, but now that she had no engagements with him she was free to go about with whom she liked, and since he was not occupied he had an opportunity to meet her in other company.
Although Ashley suffered the pangs of jealousy upon seeing Miss Laurence with other cavaliers, she always reassured him with one of her sweetest smiles on such occasions and not infrequently would make it plain to him that she wished him to join her. When relieved of her other attendant she would take him to the Boboli gardens, in rear of the Pitti gallery, than which there is no more fitting place for lovers. These gardens are representative of the medieval method of cultivating shrubbery and flowers. The perfume of the latter alone is conducive to love.
In the evening they would walk together on the Arno embankment, which when the lamps are lighted is as near fairyland as any real scene that can be produced. But it was in the apartment occupied by Miss Laurence and her mother, where the lovers were alone together, that Ashley broke down and confessed his love and his fears.
She received this confession and his fears with no definite response.
He was hoping one morning that a reputation would come from his masterpiece to enable him to muster courage to propose to his model, when, taking up a morning journal, he saw an announcement that a young American had the night before committed suicide by jumping from the Ponte Vecchio, a medieval bridge, into the Arno. It was hinted that the young man had taken himself off for love of a fair countrywoman. Ashley recognized the name of a man he had seen with Helen Laurence one day in the gallery of the Pitti palace and to whom he had been introduced by her.
As an American, Ashley considered it his duty to go to the lodgings of the young man to learn if anything was to be done in the premises. On reaching the house — a pension on the Lung Arno, which means in English the Arno embankment — he made inquiries of the proprietor. He told the artist that the suicide’s mother and sister were there and a brother was expected during the day.
“I noticed,” said Ashley, “that an American lady was the cause.”
“Yes, signor; the lady whose portrait is now attracting so much attention. This episode will likely make the artist’s fortune.”
Ashley seemed turned to marble. He stood looking at the man as if stricken by some fearful calamity. The other, who was handing a key to a guest at the moment, did not notice his changed appearance and continued:
“The American is not the only one who has suffered from this same cause. An Englishman made a great ado when the lady refused him, and one of our own citizens, a prince, fell into the same pit. Among her victims she is named La Belle Dame Sans Merci, after an English poem.”
Ashley staggered out into the open air. Standing with a hand on the stone coping that protects the sidewalk from the river, it seemed for a while as if he would be another victim to La Belle Dame Sans Merci. But presently, steadying himself by the coping, he walked slowly in the direction of his studio.
The idle prediction of the landlord was fulfilled. The story attached to his picture of purity was well known, and every one visited it from curiosity if for no other reason. Since the name of the artist was attached to it, he might have taken advantage of the reputation it gave him to make a fortune, but he never painted another picture and was never seen again in Florence after that morning.
After the suicide the story concerning Miss Laurence’s part in the matter was hushed up. It appears that, having heard of the young American who was hunting for a model of purity, she made a bet that she would sit for the picture and that it would be a success. She, too, left Florence immediately after the tragedy and returned to America, where it is to be hoped she repented of her many sins.

29 July 2024