Studio: international art (9.1897)

Bus hey Models

irksome, if more remunerative occupation of tilling
the soil.

Under this category, however, must not be
included the grandfathers of the hamlet whose
mundane task is done, and who have an
indisputable right to pass the evening of their
days in blissful repose, and to earn a little beer
and tobacco money by permitting their fine old
rugged features to be transferred to paper or to
canvas by young aspirants to a niche in the temple
of artistic fame. Certain of our imaginative
transatlantic cousins aver that there is a village
in the State of Illinois which is so healthy " that
people are obliged to go somewhere else to die,"
and although Bushey cannot perhaps claim to
approach such a truly admirable standard of
sanitation, the salubriousness of the locality is
no doubt responsible for the large number of
hoary-headed swains who appear to rival Old Parr
or even Methuselah himself in ripeness of years ;
and these ancients are naturally much sought after
as models by Professor Herkomer's pupils.

When the gates of the school are opened and a
selection made from the expectant groups, the
chosen ones, young and old, are marched through
the cloisters to the preliminary class-room, where
they ascend the throne and sit as well as the
infirmities of old age or extreme youth will permit :
while, flushed with enthusiasm and inexperience,
the budding artist not yet admitted to the life
class, tries to reproduce their charms in sooty
charcoal drawings and weird experiments in oil.
These charms not infrequently prove on paper to
be of a nature calculated to strike dismay into the
hearts of their owners—an extensive and blobby
nose, a vivid shock of that shade of hair known
locally as " carroty tops," and a face that exhibits
planes, bones, or features in such a way as to
impress their existence forcibly and indelibly upon
the mind of the most careless observer, and to
cause those in authority to exclaim with Words-
worth, " Avaunt! this vile abuse of pictured
page."

When requisitioned for a sitting it is difficult
to persuade a villager that he is not required
to be "dressed all in his best," and one is
often saddened by the sight of a stiff, starched,
cropped and hair-oiled old swell in whom, at first
sight, one fails to recognise the weather-worn,
unbarbered, and consequently picturesque rustic
of yesterday, who has got himself up to have his
" fortygraft tooked."

In the seclusion of a private studio these old
fellows often prove themselves to be decided
" characters." Like most sitters, they sit with
unlimited patience and heroic endurance when
allowed to talk about themselves. This usually
means the recitation of a catalogue of nearly all the
disorders known to medical science that have
occurred in divers regions of the Busheyite's
anatomy, and one hears with mixed feelings of the

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" haricot veins " and " screwmatics " which are a
source of trouble to one old gentleman whom all
the lady students devoutly adore. In the talk of
these old country people one often catches some-
thing suggestive of the primitive life that still
lingers on in such old-fashioned places as this,
despite the modernisation and "betterment"
which are gradually spreading their pall over the
majority of rural districts.

Children, as models, are obtainable here by the
score, and scarcely one will refuse to sit, although
peace has to be made with the Board school,
where attendances are sometimes apt to be dis-
tressingly small. The children often begin to
"sit" before they have made even elementary
attempts to walk, and continue to do so until
they go out to work for their daily bread.
Although they are not encouraged as models for
beginners, there is, nevertheless, a good demand
for them in connection with work that is not
purely educational, and, moreover, the rate of
payment for children is only half that demanded
by adult models—which is no small consideration
for many an embryo academician.

In addition to the native models, tramps will
sometimes be graciously pleased to rest on their
way and give a sitting or two in return for a trifle.
These peripatetics, of any one of whom it may be
said that

Misery and mirth are blended in his face,
Much innate vileness and some outward grace,

are delightful subjects to work from, but, amongst
a few other disadvantages, they possess that
of disappearing in the middle of a sitting and
turning up again perhaps some time next year.
Those who favour these parts with their patronage
belong chiefly to that tribe whose motto is "We've
got no work to do, and we wouldn't do it if
we had any"—the tribe which had a typical
representative in an applicant to a contractor for a
job : " I have no more vacancies," replied the
employer of labour, "sufficient hands are already
engaged for the work." "Well, that needn't stand
in the way," urged the unemployed, " 'cos the
little I'd do wouldn't make no difference."

The artists and their ways are a continual source
of wonderment to the villagers. As an explanation
of the existence of the Colony, an idea prevails in
the mind of one of the native wiseacres that the
Bushey school is a kind of picture factory, and
that during the summer months Professor
Herkomer hawks the works of art produced by
his students through the country in a coster-
barrow, bearing such devices as " Try our Noted
Portraits," " Landscapes are Cheap To-day," and
so forth.

This would also satisfactorily explain to the
rural mind the severe " slatings" which are
popularly supposed to be meted out to the
perpetrators of unsalable articles.