DOI Artikel:
Dowie, Ménie Muriel: Wladlislaw's Advent
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21805#0109
By Menie Muriel Dowie 105
coolly to the end, and you had him useless, flurried, monosyllabic
and distraught.
I had early learned this ; so I stood pretty patiently, although
in thin slippers, on our half-made road, a red clay slough by reason
of much carting, and listened to half-intelligible fragments of bad
German, from which I gleaned quite a good deal that I wanted to
know. First of all, it seemed the Studio had another door ; one
we had never seen : you made your way round the back of the
sculptor’s white powdery habitation, and discovered yourself
opposite a little annexe where the artist kept his untidier
properties, and the glass and china which served for any little
refreshment he might be disposed to take in working hours. The
door here had been opened by an untidy, half-dressed French-
woman, with her boots unbuttoned and a good deal of cigarette ash
upon her high-braced bust; she appeared unaware of Wladislaw’s
arrival, for she came to the door toempty something, and he nearlv
received the contents of a small enamelled tin thing in his face.
A moment later, much shaken by the off-hand insolence of her
remarks, he penetrated to the presence of Dufour himself, and
was agreeably soothed by the painter’s reception of him. Of
Dufour’s manner and remarks, or the appearance of his workshop,
I could get no idea. He had a canvas, twelve feet by nine, upon
an easel, and it seems he made a rapid croquis of his picture upon a
smaller upright, and had a few masterly skirmishes with the fusain
for the position of his Christ’s head, begging the model to walk
naturally up and down the Studio, so as to expose unconsciously
various attitudes of face.
Düring these saunterings Wladislaw should have come by some
idea of his surroundings ; but he was continually harassed and
distracted by the movements of the woman in the unbuttoned
boots, and seemed to have observed very little.
U pon
coolly to the end, and you had him useless, flurried, monosyllabic
and distraught.
I had early learned this ; so I stood pretty patiently, although
in thin slippers, on our half-made road, a red clay slough by reason
of much carting, and listened to half-intelligible fragments of bad
German, from which I gleaned quite a good deal that I wanted to
know. First of all, it seemed the Studio had another door ; one
we had never seen : you made your way round the back of the
sculptor’s white powdery habitation, and discovered yourself
opposite a little annexe where the artist kept his untidier
properties, and the glass and china which served for any little
refreshment he might be disposed to take in working hours. The
door here had been opened by an untidy, half-dressed French-
woman, with her boots unbuttoned and a good deal of cigarette ash
upon her high-braced bust; she appeared unaware of Wladislaw’s
arrival, for she came to the door toempty something, and he nearlv
received the contents of a small enamelled tin thing in his face.
A moment later, much shaken by the off-hand insolence of her
remarks, he penetrated to the presence of Dufour himself, and
was agreeably soothed by the painter’s reception of him. Of
Dufour’s manner and remarks, or the appearance of his workshop,
I could get no idea. He had a canvas, twelve feet by nine, upon
an easel, and it seems he made a rapid croquis of his picture upon a
smaller upright, and had a few masterly skirmishes with the fusain
for the position of his Christ’s head, begging the model to walk
naturally up and down the Studio, so as to expose unconsciously
various attitudes of face.
Düring these saunterings Wladislaw should have come by some
idea of his surroundings ; but he was continually harassed and
distracted by the movements of the woman in the unbuttoned
boots, and seemed to have observed very little.
U pon