They Are Almost Slaves To The Outwardly Beautiful, Taken
Captive By The Eye And The Ear, And Only The Long Association Of
Beauty With Tyranny, With Suffering, Want, And Degradation To
Themselves, Could Ever Have Inspired Any Of Them With Even A Momentary
Bitterness Against It.
JOURNAL - (CONTINUED.)
Monday, June 13. Went this morning with H. and Mrs. C. to the studio
of M. Belloc. Found a general assembly of heads, arms, legs, and every
species of nude and other humanity pertaining to a studio; also an
agreeable jumble of old pictures and new, picture frames, canvas,
brushes, boxes, unfinished sketches, easels, palettes, a sofa, some
cushions, a chair or two, bottles, papers, a stove rusty and fireless,
and all things most charmingly innocent of any profane "clarin' up
times" whatsoever.
The first question which M. Belloc proposed, with a genuine French
air, was the question of "_pose_" or position. It was concluded
that as other pictures had taken H. looking at the spectator, this
should take her looking away. M. Belloc remarked, that M. Charpentier
said H. appeared always with the air of an observer - was always
looking around on every thing. Hence M. Belloc would take her "_en
observatrice, mais pas en curieuse_" - with the air of observation,
but not of curiosity.
At it he went. I stood behind and enjoyed. Rapid creative sketching in
chalk and charcoal. Then a chaos of colors and clouds, put on now with
brushes, now with fingers. "God began with chaos," said he, quoting
Prudhon.
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