The Shadow Portrait

by Gilbert, Morris

“Extravagant? Can you imagine what could’ve been done with that money? People are starving to death all over New York, and here he had to transform that grand ballroom into the Palace of Versailles. The story said he had tailors brought in from Paris who worked for weeks on all kinds of costumes made with silks and lace and pearls. Everybody dressed like in the Court of Louis XV. Apparently some fellow even came dressed in a full suit of armor inlaid with gold that cost a fortune. Foolishness, if you ask me!”

  “Yes it is. I agree.”

  “I wish some of that money could go to Mary Ann’s friend, George Camrose. He could use it in that little church he’s with.”

  “Mary said you’ve been going to the church.”

  “Yes. I go every Sunday. George is a fine minister,” Phil nodded, his tone shaded with admiration. “He comes straight at you with the truth. Preaches the gospel red hot and served up with plenty of hot peppers.”

  Cara laughed aloud. “It sounds like a supper you would have out west.”

  “Well, he’s pretty fiery, but at the same time you know he cares about people, and that makes a difference. I’m willing to take straightforward stuff as long as I know the man preaching it has a real love in his heart for people.”

  “Mary Ann’s very fond of him.”

  “Yes, I know. I suppose your father has still forbidden her to go to the church. I never see her.”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “What does he have against Camrose? He’s a young man who would make a fine son-in-law.”

  “He’s going to Africa. Father knows he’d lose Mary Ann.” Phil wanted to say, A woman of her age is able to make her own decision, and if God’s calling her, she ought to go. However, it was not time for that, and he knew it would hurt Cara. Instead, he said, “Let me see some of your new paintings.”

  “Oh no. Not today.”

  Instantly Phil knew something was wrong. “What’s wrong?”

  “I haven’t been painting lately.”

  Phil leaned forward, his eyes intent, and asked, “What’s the matter, Cara? Are you disturbed about something?”

  “I . . . I don’t know.” Cara could not put into words why she had ceased to paint. A few times she had gotten out her oils and her canvas and had started in on a new picture. But every time she tried to put paint on the canvas, Phil’s words kept ringing in her ears. Art should be like life, not just pretty flowers. It had angered her at first, and she had struggled through producing one rather miserable example of a still life, then had put her paints away. Now she said, “I don’t know, Phil. I just don’t feel like it.”

  “I think you ought to force yourself. I don’t believe in inspiration.”

  Startled, Cara looked at him. “You don’t? You don’t think artists have to be inspired?”

  “I believe more in perspiration than inspiration. Sometimes I start on a painting and it just comes from nowhere. The paint,” he said, with an intense look in his fine eyes, “just seems to lay itself on the canvas. That’s good, and I like it. But there are other times when I can’t do anything right. I can’t think, my fingers won’t work right, and the paint won’t go on right. Nothing seems to work right. What am I supposed to do then?”

  “Wait until you feel it.”

  Phil suddenly leaned over, stood up, and paced the floor, finally coming to sit down beside her on the chaise lounge. “Did you ever hear of a plumber saying, ‘I don’t feel like unstopping that drain.’ ” He made a posture, putting his hand over his heart and looking up to heaven. “I just don’t feel it,” he moaned as if he were in pain.

  Cara laughed. “That’s ridiculous, Phil!”

  “Why’s that? A man knows the plumbing’s got to be fixed. He doesn’t wait until he feels like fixing it. He just gets down and finds out what’s the matter, and he keeps working until it’s fixed. So, when I start painting, no matter how hard it gets, I just keep on going. You know, some of the best things I’ve ever done have come when I didn’t feel it. I struggled, but I kept going until I finished.”

  Cara sat entranced as Phil Winslow spoke of his art. She realized that he had a great talent and had put his talent to better use than she had. She had no one to talk to about art, and she longed for a friend who shared her love for painting. She had read books about art, but they became dry and dull. But this man before her was exciting and vibrant and alive with a passion for capturing real life in his paintings. His eyes sparkled, and from time to time he got up and paced the floor, throwing his arms about with abandon. It was extremely exciting to her, and her eyes glowed as she sat and listened avidly.

  Phil suddenly broke his words off and gave a sharp laugh. “The end of my lecture on inspiration,” he said. “You get the idea.” He came over and sat down beside her. “I don’t mean to overwhelm you with my half-baked ideas, Cara.”

  “They’re not half-baked at all. I see exactly what you mean,” Cara said earnestly. “You’re saying that most artists use inspiration, or the lack of it, to justify their laziness.”

  “Why, that’s exactly right! You’re a smart woman. You think exactly as I do.” Phil reached over and picked up her hand and held it. “I’m glad there’s at least two of us that feel like that. Most people don’t, you know.”

  Cara was tremendously conscious of the warmth and strength of his hand on hers. He was unconscious of his strength and held her hand so tightly that it ached, but she did not try to withdraw it. Instead, she smiled and said, “Tell me some more about your theories on art.”

  Phil gladly obliged, and it was only when he looked at the clock on her mantel an hour later that he started, saying, “My word, look at the time! I’ve been prattling here for over an hour, Cara! Why didn’t you shut me up?”

  “Please go on, Phil. I find it all so interesting.”

  “No, I’ll come again another time, if I may.”

  Phil stood to his feet and Cara rose with him. Her eyes were bright, and she said, “I can’t tell you how much I’ve enjoyed your visit.”

  “Have you really? I wasn’t sure whether I ought to come. Our ideas are a little bit different—not about inspiration, perhaps, but about other things.”

  “I know. I thought a lot about what you said, Phil.” She wanted to say more, but at that moment the clock began to chime, and they both glanced at it. “Promise you’ll come back,” she said.

  “All right, I will.” He hesitated, then said, “I had Clinton bribe the servants not to tell your father I’ve been here.”

  To Phil’s surprise, Cara laughed. “I was going to do the same thing myself,” she said. “I will anyhow. A double bribe never hurt anything.”

  Phil was pleased with her levity. “That sounds good to me.” He put his hand out, and when she put her hand in his, he held it gently, then bent over and kissed it. It was something he had never done, but the fragility and the obvious difficulty of her circumstances moved him. He looked up to see color spread into her cheeks and said, “I enjoy being with you, Cara. I’ll see you again soon.”

  When the door closed behind Phil, Cara stood absolutely still for a moment. Charley came over and looked up at her quizzically, turning his head to one side. He barked once to get her attention, and leaning over, she scooped him up and buried her face in his fur. “Be still, Charley,” she said as he wiggled around and began licking her chin. She carried him over to the lounge and sat down. She remained still for a long time, abstractedly stroking Charley’s silky coat. She knew she would remember every word that Phil had said and would go over the scene again and again.

  “I hope,” she whispered to Charley, “he comes back tomorrow.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Taking an Offering

  When Phil Winslow grew discouraged and it seemed no one would ever buy even one of his paintings, he would seek out the older man who had become both a close friend and a valued counselor. Now he walked slowly along the snowy street, so preoccupied with his struggle for recognition that he didn’t even notice the children enga
ged in a ferocious snowball fight around him. Suddenly a hard-packed missile skimmed his cheek, stinging him and making him look up in surprise.

  “Hey, watch out there!” He grinned and reached down, scooping up a handful of the loose, wet snow. Quickly molding it into a firm ball, he took careful aim and sent the snowball flying at the grinning, redheaded ragamuffin nearby but missed as the boy agilely dodged out of the way.

  “Nah, you couldn’t hit nothin’!” the boy yelled with delight, before packing another snowball and firing back at Phil. Phil took it on the shoulder, then threw himself into the fight. Enjoying the contest, he tried to return the boy’s well-aimed volleys for a few minutes, but then, throwing his hands up in surrender, he laughed and shook his head. “You’re too good for me, bud,” he said. “You need to be pitching in professional baseball.”

  “That’s what I’m gonna do,” the redhead said, nodding confidently. “You just wait and see. Someday you’ll be sayin’, ‘I got hit with a snowball by Red Pickens back when he was only ten years old.’ ”

  “Red Pickens. I’ll remember that name,” Phil said, then passed on down the street.

  An arctic blast had hit the city the night before, and now the cold cut to the bone. Looking up, he saw the inevitable washing out on lines strung between the buildings and across balconies, frozen, stiff, and hard. Instead of floating in the breeze, long underwear, shifts, shirts, trousers, and dresses swung in unison like a frozen wave as the wind whipped them back and forth. Pulling his overcoat closely about him, Phil blew on his hands, then jammed them into his pockets. He made his way along the streets until he arrived at a three-story red-brick building that had once been a mansion but now was a run-down tenement house. Moving up the steps, careful not to slip on the snow that had packed into slippery ice, he knocked on the door.

  Almost at once it was opened by a short man with a shock of dark hair and a walrus mustache. A cigar was clenched between his teeth, sending a spiral of gray smoke upward, and Robert Henri removed it long enough to say, “Come in, cowboy, before you freeze to death.”

  Henri always called Phil “cowboy” because of his background, and now his brown eyes glinted as he said, “You bring anything for me to look at?”

  “Not this time, Robert.”

  “You’re getting lazy,” Henri grunted. “Come on in. We’re having a lively discussion.”

  As Phil stepped into the smoke-filled apartment, he saw two other painters, George Luks and John Sloan, sitting at the kitchen table. Their wives were gathered on the sofa, enjoying their own visit. Phil greeted the women, then joined the men at the table. Soon he was sipping strong coffee and enjoying the talk. He glanced at the three men and thought, There probably are no three better artists in all of America, but nobody knows it.

  His judgment may have been good concerning their abilities, but the three men had received little recognition for their particular type of art. Robert Henri, who was recognized more for his teaching than for his own painting, had one rule. “Forget about art,” he would tell his classes, “and paint pictures of what interests you in life.” For Henri this meant the city of New York. He had passed on to some of his students his passion for painting the denizens of the Bowery and the Lower East Side, the poorest and most crowded parts of the city. Now his students carried out his concepts with vigor, boldness, and vision.

  John Sloan, who sat next to Phil, was a man no one would notice in a crowd. Average in all things, from his nondescript brown hair and mild blue eyes, he preferred unsavory sections of New York like the Tenderloin. He turned out picture after picture of the tawdry, vice-ridden life he found there, preferring to paint ordinary people rather than Mrs. Astor’s “Four Hundred” of the social elite. He had run for the state assembly as a Socialist the previous year and readily admitted that he was glad to lose. He was forty years old now and had sold only three paintings, but his biggest success had come when President Theodore Roosevelt had admired one of his paintings—”Three Women on a Roof Drying Their Hair”—but had not purchased it. Sloan felt strongly about art, and sometimes his deep bass voice would rumble until it overwhelmed those who listened to his passionate discourses.

  George Luks, who sat next to Henri, was, in Phil Winslow’s opinion, the best painter of the group. At least the best portraitist. He had led a fascinating life, studying in Paris and Dusseldorf, and he used broad swatches of color to energize the figures in his paintings. He was a burly man, powerful and thick shouldered, much like the men in his many paintings of bar scenes.

  Luks had brought a painting, and Henri had placed it on an easel. Now they all criticized it loudly and enthusiastically. It was a system that was hard on artists, but Henri felt that the only way to improve a man’s work was to make him see how he could have done better, starting by showing him where he went wrong.

  “George, this painting has a lot to be said for it,” Henri observed mildly. The picture was of a crowd of immigrants, the background a row of tenement houses. “You’ve made it too busy,” Henri said. “There are so many people that the viewer can’t really concentrate on any one.”

  “Have you ever been down on Hester Street?” Luks demanded aggressively. “That’s what it looks like, Robert!”

  “An artist just doesn’t paint what something looks like. He’s got to cause the viewer to see what he wants him to see.”

  “I don’t agree with that at all,” Sloan spoke up. He sipped his coffee thoughtfully, then rumbled, “It’s our job to paint what we see. That’s what George saw down on Hester Street, and that’s what he ought to paint.”

  Henri, however, only became more emphatic. “That’s not the way art is! Art always selects!”

  “I don’t understand that,” Phil said. “What do you mean, ‘selects’?”

  “Well, suppose someone set out to describe in detail everything that happened to a character in a novel. He could include scenes of all the actions a character might do, but it would make the book terribly slow and boring. The writer carefully selects the scenes he wants his reader to remember. Those that are important to his story.” Henri turned to Luks and poked at him with his finger. “And that’s what you haven’t done in this one, George!”

  “I’m not sure I agree.” Sloan shook his head. “I think the busyness here is what George was trying to get at, wasn’t it, George?”

  “Why, of course!” Turning to Henri, George’s face grew animated, and he raised his beefy hands to illustrate his point by gesturing and pointing at the fine details of the painting. “I wanted to show what life was like on Hester Street, and that’s how busy it is. This fellow right in the front, wearing the white hat and smoking the cigar—I suppose he’s the central figure. But suppose I left everybody else out. Why, it wouldn’t have been like Hester Street at all—unless it was midnight.”

  The argument went on with energy, and Phil was amused when Luks grew somewhat antagonistic, but finally Robert Henri smiled. He was a charming man and a great teacher. “I think you’re right after all, George, and I do get the sense of tremendous activity from your painting. You were right and I am wrong.”

  Luks stared at his teacher. He had been prepared to offer a more rousing defense, but now he could not, since Henri had given him such praise. Embarrassed, he turned to Phil and said, “You didn’t bring anything?”

  “Didn’t have anything worth bringing,” Phil shrugged. “I thought I might just pick up some hints from you fellows.”

  “That’s no good,” Henri said in disgust. “The only thing that teaches a painter anything is to paint! I’ve been to enough art classes to know that all you learn to do is talk about painting.”

  “That’s right,” Sloan said quickly. “There’s too much talk in art and not enough doing. How many people do I know that started out with some talent, but they wound up talking about what they were doing, and not doing it!”

  The companions continued their talk around the table, Sloan and Luks puffing away on their pipes, until their wive
s shooed them away from the table long enough to set it. Then they all sat down to a plain but nourishing meal of roast beef, cabbage, and fresh-baked biscuits.

  When all were finished and the women had cleared the table and started washing up, Phil took a chair back in a corner and mostly just listened to his fellow artists’ conversation, contributing only occasionally. It was a time of peace and enjoyment for him, for his visits to Henri’s were always encouraging. Finally he rose, however, and promising to bring some of his work to the next meeting, he took his leave.

  On his way back down Eighteenth Street, he stopped in at George Maxim’s Gallery. Maxim, as usual, was sitting on a high stool behind the counter, reading a German book. His eyes lit up as Phil walked in, and he carefully marked the book with a slip of paper. “Well, good to see you, Phil.”

  “How are you, Max?”

  “Fine . . . just fine.” He came around to shake hands with Phil, then said regretfully, “No sales as yet, but you’re a young man. Your time will come.”

  Phil had been encouraged by all the talk at Henri’s, but during the walk the enormity of his quest suddenly had come upon him. He knew there were hundreds, or maybe even thousands, of young artists—and old ones, too, in New York—all thinking they were going to be successful painters someday. He was well aware that most of them would never fulfill their dreams. He had begun to wonder if he would be one of those impoverished, unnoticed painters who spent their entire lives pursuing a goal that could never be achieved.

  Some of his concern must have shown in his face, or perhaps in the droop of his shoulders, for Maxim quickly led him to a table next to the stove.

  “Sit down,” Maxim said. “We can have some tea, and I’ve got a cake from the bakery.” Ignoring Phil’s protests, he pushed him into a chair, and soon the two men were washing down pieces of a moist and fragrant plum cake with sips of strong China tea.

  Maxim waved at the paper, saying, “I see that Oklahoma’s just become a new state. How many is that now?”