Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 June 1884 — Artists’ Models in New York. [ARTICLE]

Artists’ Models in New York.

Among the Academy models some time since, was the son of a banker in Wall street, who had failed during a financial crisis. Later, the young model obtained a position in a downtown bank, but such was his pride in his physique and his interost in art that he continued to pose in the evening classes. Another model, valued for his flne muscular development, was a blacksmith by trade. Another was a house painter, who, during the winter months, when all his trade are thrown out of employment, supported himself in this fashion. Still another, also noted for liis fine development, was a German athlete. One model, well known in his day at the Academy, was a halfbreed Indian employed as coachman in a wealthy family. In liis leisure hours he posed at the Academy, and became a popular model, but one day his employer discovered his artistic bias, and forced him to desist. He has since returned to the equine sphere he adorned, and resides in an inland city. Another temporary model was the son of a prominent artist in another city. Many studies of Arabs executed in New York during the past few years have had for their model a negro attached to the Academy, whose head and figure offered a perfect type of that race. A prosperous manufacturer of picture frames in an interior town, having failed in business, became a model in New York. * * * A few artists in New York have their models acting also as domestics or studio-retainers. This is a* foreign custom imported by artists who have received their schooling abroad. Under these circumstances, a sort of comradeship arises between the artist and his faithful model, which has its pathetic as well as its grotesque side, since the renumeration of the model is apt to depend upon the successes or failures of the artist. There is a colony of young artists in New York which possesses a retainer known to the world as “Sammy”—a youth of muscular type, with blonde mustache and hair, and a fresh complexion. His face and figure fit him for all spheres of model life. One day, he poses as a stalwart fisherman, in a pea-jacket, a disreputable hat, and high sea-boots. Another week, in a dresssuit borrowed for the occasion, fee figures as a ball-room gallant, with one arm encircling the waist of a bald-pated lay-figure, arrayed in silken robes, likewise borrowed, into whose glass eyes he gazes with an expression of the deepest tenderness. He has even appeared as a bold horseman seated astride a wooden chair, which was placed on a table, tightly clutching two pieces of clothes-line for reins, with his body inclined at the angle necessary to imply a furious galloping on the part of his fiery steed, and his coat-tails spread out and fastened to the wall behind to illustrate the aotion of the wind. In addition to his accomplishments as a model, this young man does everything an artist’s henchman can be expected to do in the line of general usefulness.—The Century.