Studio

“ Here, too, she painted the portrait of her grandmother, studying closely the ever-changing face and sparing her subject as much as possible the tedium of sittings. A studio is the most delightful place in the world to those in sympathy with the artist. Here we have beauty, life, growth, creation, and, where a painter is concerned, the warmth and joy of color!
Those were happy days, yet there were moments when I remembered that canvases and paints are dead things, compared with living human companionship. ”

“ Suddenly, as his gaze rested with a suspicion of wistfulness on this doubly artistic interior, in which the pictures were only pleasant spots of color in a larger harmony, a harmony of rugs and flowers and tapestry and picturesque properties and bric-à-brac, there shot up in his mind an image of an ancient episode. He saw himself, a shy, homely figure, standing in despairing bitterness on the threshold of an elegant studio—though not so elegant nor so commodious as this—the studio of the brilliant cousin whose life had intersected his own so many years ago. ”

“ Through the tall glass roof of the airy studio the sun streamed in rays of dusty gold, dappling the imaginative clay models in their wet wrappings, the busts, fountains, serpents, rock-work, witches, that variegated the shelves, and lent an air of fantasy and poetry, extruding the tedious commonplace of plebeian existence, and harmonizing with the joyous aloofness of the scene in the court-yard its sense of existence in and for itself, by souls attuned to Art and dedicate to loveliness. ”

“ The first instinct of visitors to a Studio is to find some way of avoiding looking at the pictures. A good method towards success in this object is to lean back and peep over all the canvases with their faces to the wall, and examine all the sketch-books, in search of what really interests you so much more than finished work; to wit, the first ideas of the Artist, fresh from his brain—incomplete, of course, but full of an indefinable something. They are himself, you see! But they spoil your new gloves, and perhaps you are going on to Hurlingham. ”

“ Inside, in two studios where no one ever painted and which led to the real working studio, the finished pictures were exhibited on easels covered with antique textures, and callers gazed with wonder at the collection of properties fit for a theater,—suits of armor, tapestries, old standards hanging from the ceiling, show-cases full of ancient knick-knacks, deep couches with canopies of oriental stuffs supported by lances, century old coffers and open secre [Pg 80] taries shining with the pale gold of their rows of drawers. ”

“ The studio was a capacious one, arranged in compromise between Flick’s yearning for splendor and Tootles [22] ’ feeling for the decorative in art. At first glance, it looked like a theatrical storehouse, from which parentage most of its furnishings had found their way, so that one versed in dramatic necrology would have fancied himself on the reef of last season’s plays. The studio was lit by two windows on the street and a great, slanting skylight overhead. ”

“ His imagination, stunned and shocked, clung bitterly to this one point, as if that were the crux of the matter.... That she should not want to live in this studio, this studio whose walls she had kalsomined, whose very floor she had painted! Why, every part of it spelled her! As if he could take her studio, and let her go and live in another! If there was any moving to be done, he would do it. He would get another place. She could live here—she must live here.... ”

“ The room had the customary aspect of a painter's studio; one of those delightful spots that hardly seem to belong to the actual world, but rather to be the outward type of a poet's haunted imagination, where there are glimpses, sketches, and half-developed hints of beings and objects grander and more beautiful than we can anywhere find in reality. ”

“ But remember the distinction I always make between my public studio and my private house. I consider the glorious mission of Art to apply to everybody; so I am proud to open my painting room to any honest man who wants to look at my pictures. But the freedom of my other rooms is only for my own friends. I can’t have strangers brought up stairs: remember that. ”

“ I went out in the forenoon, and took a sitting for my bust in one of a suite of rooms formerly occupied by Canova. It was large, high, and dreary from the want of a carpet, furniture, or anything but clay and plaster. A sculptor's studio has not the picturesque charm of that of a painter, where there is color, warmth, and cheerfulness, and where the artist continually turns towards you the glow of some picture, which is resting against the wall. ”

“ His street-scenes are full of light and movement, and are treated with daintiness, delicacy of touch, charm of color, and grace of style entirely unmixed with any sophistication, pose, or artificiality. The charm comes simply from his own fine nature, which makes it possible for him to discover latent refinement where it would escape a coarser man. We found his studio filled with delightful studies, made in pastel and in gouache, of river views in France and England, soft, gray idyls of dawn and twilight. ”

“ The studio was merely, in lodging-house language, the first floor front; a two-windowed room, with the advantage of north light. On the walls hung a few framed paintings, several unframed and unfinished, water-colour sketches, studies in crayon, photographs, and so on. ”

“ The great studios opening out within the large garden-draped Hampstead houses rich and bright with colour in a golden light, their fur rugs and tea services on silver trays, and velvet coated men, wives with trailing dresses and the people standing about, at once conspicuous and lost, were like Academy pictures. It was all real now, the pictures on the great easels, scraps of the Academy blaze; the studio with the bright light, and marble, and bright clear tiger skins on the floor, the big clean fresh tiger almost filling the canvas ... ”

“ It was, however, the last studio of the four where I went oftenest and lingered longest, and always with increasing pleasure—that of Dwight Benton, formerly of Cincinnati, and who favors the “Commercial” now and then with a delightful letter. Doubtless you have read them. His studio consists of two spacious rooms, most admirably lighted and tastefully fitted up. It is a gallery in itself, with its walls covered with “studies,” and its many easels filled with wonder-works of his never idle brush! Of late years he paints landscapes exclusively, and it may be added “con amore.” ”

“ Our studio is a spacious chamber on a level with the street which it overlooks. The windows occupy more than half of the wall space, are guiltless of glass, and are protected by iron bars. The accessories of our strange calling lend an interest to our domestic arrangements, and form a kind of free entertainment for the vulgar. ”

“ Of course, I understand that I must go through the rudimentary drudgery of my art and study from casts, and learn perspective, and all that; but I can't see what's the difference between working in a stuffy studio over a hand or arm that I know is only a STUDY, and sketching a full or half length in the open air with the wonderful illusion of light and shade and distance—and grouping and combining them all—that one knows and feels makes a picture. ”

“ Meanwhile Miss Aitcheson wandered about, looking as she liked—at faded hangings, and ancient Indian rugs of fabulously fine needlework, and pictures in frames and out of them, and the parrot in his cage, and odd bits of a painter’s property. In this fashion she enjoyed the studio a hundred times more than if she had been called upon at every moment to remark on its contents; and certainly the painter and Mrs Marchmont were doing very well without her. ”

“ Don’t you know that a studio girl always keeps a stray tin of sardines in the cupboard?”
“And a black and emerald cushion on the divan. Curse it, what I’ve had to suffer dodging the lure of the generic studio cushion. But yours is hardly the generic studio, Antonia. You actually use it for the quaint and unusual purpose of painting pictures in it. The girl of nowadays rents a studio to picnic in by moonlight, or because it has such a ducksome musician’s gallery to sleep in, or a parquet floor for fox-trotting, or an acoustic. Have you a studio, Miss Marcus? ”

“ When I first started off from the house this morning, I was full of curious anticipation—I looked upon this invitation to an artist’s studio as a sort of break in what I chose to call the even monotony of my existence,—I fancied I should imbibe new ideas, and be able to understand something of the artistic world of London if I spent the day with a man truly distinguished in his profession. ”

“ From the quiet, subdued, and restful light of the studio, we have stepped out into the gay and palpitating sunlight; and in so doing we have had to meet and conquer many new and fascinating problems, problems whose fundamental color-scheme is the reverse of the one which had for a thousand years engrossed the attention of the older artists. ”

“ As an artist he was quite as free from personal mannerisms or eccentricities. When I first visited his studio on Montague street, Brooklyn, he talked as he worked—the picture was an illustration to one of his magazine papers,—and afterwards turned to his portfolio, quite without the effect of entertaining me, but always with a companionly frankness and simplicity that made him at all times the most attractive of hosts. I remember his house studio on Lincoln Place by but two visits, and I had no greater acquaintance with the little crib at the foot of the Washington lawn. ”

“ His studio comprised his whole establishment; for there was his little bed, with its white drapery, in a corner of the small room, and his dressing-table, with its brushes and combs, while the easel and the few sketches of Italian scenes and figures occupied the foreground. I did not like his pictures very well, but would gladly have bought them all if I could have afforded it, the artist looked so cheerful, patient, and quiet, doubtless amidst huge discouragement. He is probably stubborn of purpose, and is the sort of man who will improve with every year of his life. ”

“ The studio of the painter itself was lofty, the great north window extending the full height of two stories of the building, while the apartment beyond, a library and dining room with steps leading above to the bedrooms, contained all the luxuries that the most exacting bachelor might require.
To arrive at the distinction of being a fashionable portrait painter one must have many qualifications. In the schools one must know how to draw and to paint from the model. In the fashionable studio one must know how to draw and paint—then discover how not to do either. ”

“ An artist’s studio is apt to be, and ought to be, as much a picture as any work of art born in it, but it hardly comes within the scope of this article to describe rooms that are expressions of individual genius and purpose; yet in every house where cultivated persons are found individual aims are found also, and there will be the effort to give to each of these its fit environment. ”

“ LETTER III. TO AN ARTIST WHO WAS FITTING UP A MAGNIFICENT NEW STUDIO. Pleasure of planning a studio—Opinions of an outsider—Saint Bernard—Father Ravignan—Goethe’s study and bed-room—Gustave Doré’s studio—Leslie’s painting-room—Turner’s opinion—Habits of Scott and Dickens—Extremes good—Vulgar mediocrity not so good—Value of beautiful views to literary men—Montaigne—Views from the author’s windows.
Nothing in the life of an artist is more agreeable than the building and furnishing of the studio in which he hopes to produce his most mature and perfect work. ”

“ Let all hasten, then, abandoning promenade, and party, opera, ball, and theatre, to the splendid and luxurious studio of our artist, (Nevsku Perspective, No.—) . It is hung with portraits, the produce of his pencil, worthy a Vandyke or a Titian. The happy connoisseur knows not what to admire most in these exquisite works, their exact resemblance to the original, or the extraordinary brilliancy and freshness of their handling. They must be seen to be even imperfectly appreciated; the artist has truly drawn a prize in the lottery of genius. ”

“ Sometimes the studio and its surroundings were more attractive than the productions it contained and then it required some self-control to keep one’s eye, under the jealous observation of the artist, on the canvases or the statues, instead of on the view from the windows or the beautiful draperies and curios which the wealthiest ones were even then beginning to collect around them. ”

“ As for the painter's studio, it is usually a bare but light apartment, open to the winds, in a corner of which, on a scrap of matting, the artist kneels, sitting on his heels. (It tires an oriental to sit in a chair.) ”

“ L'Art Moderne: "Bien écrite, bien éditée, d'un artistique aspect dans sa robe vert olive, le Studio est sans contredit la plus neuve et la plus originale revue d'art illustrée qu'on puisse signaler ... nulle autre revue d'art ne lui est comparable, ni en Angleterre ni surtout sur le continent." ”

“ No living being could survive the atmosphere of this studio for long and still feel like purchasing. What is the horrid stuff—asafetida?”
Masters grinned evasively. “I know your studio rule,” he answered. “You're not likely to have any buyers here early. The visitors who do come wont mind the smell.” ”

“ The studio was no misnomer for the living-room; for, in addition to his Civil-Service work, George followed art with deep and earnest devotion, and was known and recognised as one of the best amateurs of the day. Men whose names stood very high in the art-world were his friends; and on winter nights the studio would be filled with members of that pleasant Bohemian society, discussing their craft and its members and such cognate subjects. ”