Adda was of Puritan stock. I was Early Victorian. We were a couple of prim prudes by education. Neither her family nor mine had ever produced an artist or even known one—tales of artists’ life in Paris were not among the type of literature that was read by our people. If they had ever heard of studying Art from the nude, I am sure they only connected it with loose life in wicked Paris, not with Art. The modesty of our families was so great it almost amounted to wearing a bathing suit when you took a bath in a dark room. Their idea of beauty was the clothes that draped you, not the live body underneath. So because of our upbringing Adda and I supposed our art should be draped.
Neither of our families nor we ourselves dreamed that Art Schools in new clean countries like Canada and the United States would have any other kind. It was a shock to us to see that close walled corner in the school with the notice “Life Class—Keep Out”. Mrs. Piddington nosed curiously and asked me questions; balked by the “keep out” notice on the Life Class door, satisfied that my ignorance and indifference were not put on, she gave up bothering.
One morning a student of the Life Class, a woman of mature years and of great ability, offered to give me a criticism. Everyone acknowledged that “a crit” from a life-class student was worthwhile. They did know how to draw. The woman gave my work keen attention.
“You should now go into the Life Class, your work is ready,” she said.
“I will never draw from the nude.”
“Oh? Then you will never be a true artist, never acquire the subtlety in your work which only drawing from the nude teaches both hand and eye, tenderness of flowing line, spiritual quality, life gleaming through living flesh.”
“Why should Art show best through live bareness? Aren’t statues naked enough?”
“Child, you’ve got things wrong, surface vision is not Art. Beauty lies deep, deep; it has power to draw, to absorb, make you part of itself. It is so lovely it actually makes you ache all the time that it is raising you right up out of yourself, to make you part of itself.” Her eyes strayed across the room to the Venus, beautiful but cold standing there on her pedestal. “One misses warmth of blood, flutter of breath in that.”
A girl model slipped through the outer door and darted behind the curtain that hung before the entrance to the Life Class. Priggishly stubborn, I persisted, “I shall go on studying from the cast. Look how the creature scuttles behind the curtain hiding herself while she turns the door knob.”
The woman’s voice softened. “Poor little shrinking thing ashamed of her lovely body, never trained to have a model’s pride.”
“Is there anything to learn in being a model? Could a model be proud of being a model?”
“Indeed, there is much to learn and professional models are very proud of their job; most of them too are deeply interested in Art. San Francisco is too new yet, there are not enough professional artists for nude models to earn a livelihood at posing. The school picks up any unfortunate who, at his wit’s end to make an honest living, takes what he can get.”
“Modelling an honest living!”
“Assuredly, that little girl supports her aged parents, hiding from everyone how she does it, burning with shame, in constant agony that someone will find out. A trained model would exult in her profession, be proud of her lovely body, of the poses she has taught it to hold by long hours of patient practice, proud that artists should rejoice in her beauty and reproduce it on their canvas, proud of the delight and tenderness that flow through the artist’s hand as he directs the paint or the charcoal, proud that it was her lovely life that provoked his inspiration, made her come alive on the canvas, will keep her there even after her flesh-self has gone. Child, don’t let false ideas cramp your Art. Statues are beautiful but they do not throb with life.”
Her talk showed me the difference between the words nude and naked. So convinced was I of the rightness of nude and the wrongness of naked in Art that I said nothing to Adda. Momma was always hovering in Adda’s background. Momma’s eye was a microscope under which her every action was placed. Had it not been for Momma I could have made Adda understand. Momma never would. I did not discuss naked and nude with Adda.
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