Jasper County Democrat, Volume 14, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 April 1911 — An Enthusiast [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

An Enthusiast

His Imagination Played Him Strange Tricks

By MARY C. STANHOPE

“They say,” said Mme. Gaulladet, “that Jules Ferrand is to marry Clotilda Demours.” “What!” exclaimed Mme. Toumier. “That ideal artist! Is he going to marry that homely girl?" “Homely! He thinks her beautiful.” “How can he?”

“Don’t you know that Cupid is a little wizard? He can make a homely woman look beautiful to the man who loves her. and vice versa. He can endow a vicious person with every virtue. he can make an outburst of temper appear to be simply a love spat, and the more trouble a man has to get a woman back to a good humor or a woman has to pacify a man. the more violent the reaction, the more impassioned the kisses.” “And after marriage?” “Ah. that is different' The spell has been broken.” Jules Ferrand married Clotllde Demours. During the courtship he painted her portrait He was careful to pat her likeness upon the canvas Just aa she was. Not for the world would he have one feature different from its

original. When at last the portrait was finished and he exhibited it to his friends every one said. “What a speaking likeness!” Bat no one said. “How beautiful!”

The painter stood by while they made their comments, but he was too mnch enraptured in contemplating the features of the woman be loved to notice the omission. As soon as those who saw the picture had passed they remarked in an undertone: “What in-

fatuation! Except for the beautiful dress the picture would make a good scarecrow.”

In Jules’ case the spell was not broken, for his wife died suddenly within a few months after their union. Jules was disconsolate. He kept her portrait where he could see it constantly and continued to endow it with the same imaginary beauty. How long this would have continued no one knows, for Jules was obliged to make his living, and his only way to do that was by his brush. There has always been a market in Christian countries for Madonnas with the infant Jesns, and Jnles Ferrand determined to paint such a picture, taking his wife’s portrait for the Madonna.

His friends would have been glad to persuade him not to make such an attempt, but none of them would venture to displease him or hurt his feelings by telling him that the Madonna was not a homely woman and his Clotilde was very homely. But one of his chums got round the matter by telling him that the Virgin Mary was one of the poor; that her husband was a carpenter, while Jules’ wife was a lady and therefore a very superior person. He advised Jules to go out In the country and look for a model for his Madonna among the rosy cheeked lasses who milk cows and churn butter.

This adroit way of handling the infatuated artist won. Jules gave up his studio temporarily and removed his furniture and pictures to his mother’s house in the environs of Paris. Then be sallied forth to find a model for his picture, and in order that he might paint her in her natural surroundings he took with hiin the implements of his art

Jules hunted a long while before finding the model he needed. He was a true artist and when uninfluenced con’d choose as an artist. His endowment of a homely woman whom he loved had come from an artistic temperament The artist needs a highly developed imagination, and Jules’ imagination was abnormal.

One day he went irjto a springhou.se for « glass or milk. A girl was kneeling on a little platform over the spring

arranging some palls of butter. Hearing some one enter, she looked up. He bad found his modeL

Jules took a studio in the farmhouse, which belonged to the girl’s Dither, and set up his easel. He made a sketch of the girt—her name happened to be that of the Virgin—in a manger, then went on with his picture. He found be needed a model for the babe as much as or more tbaD for the mother. He succeeded in borrowing one, but merely for posing tention to hunt for a model for the babe as be had banted for a model for the Virgin.

Day after day Jnles painted, transferring the maid to the canvas. In doing so she was passing, so to speak, through his brain. She entered it as a Simple country lass and came oat the mother of Christ. To say that Jnles fell in love with her would perhaps not be stating the case cofrectly. He came, rather, to adore her. He was like a chameleon, which takes the color of any object on which it Is placed.

Ferrand was transformed through his imagination. But in this case the process was different from his painting of the picture of Clotilde. In that he was tied down to the reality; in this It was his object to idealize his model. And this Is why an artist needs imagination. Jnles painted for months on the picture, occasionally taking his model to the barn and placing her in the man ger. At last the picture, except the babe, was finished. Jnles was dissatisfied with it. There was not the true maternal expression In the Virgin’s face. He knew that this was because the babe Maria had held was not her own. Another difficulty occurred to him—any babe he might find for a model of the Infant Jesus would not resemble his mother.

~ Jnles was called to Paris on some private affairs and discovered while absent from Maria that she had so far been absorbed into bis being that she could not be dislodged. He returned to her and asked her to marry him.

Maria was not only pleased to secure a husband above her station, but had been captivated by the artist They were married, and Jnles. who now had a wife to support, took her to Paris with him and devoted himself to painting such pictures as he could sell for a small price. A son was born to the couple One day when the boy was about a year old Jules went into his wife’s bedroom and saw her cooing to the child, who lay in her lap kicking up his heels and feeling her chin with his little waxen fingers. This happened to be the position in which he bad placed the figures in his picture of the “Madonna and Child.”

“I have it,” be said exultingly. “Have what?” asked his wife. “Fame, and fame for an artist produces comfort”

“What do you mean?’ Jnles ran off to a closet where he had placed the unfinished picture and brought it to his wife’s room. “No alteration is needed.” he said, “in the pose of the figures. I have but to put in that motherly expression, copy your boy’s features and tho work is finished." He would not permit either the mother or child to move until he had had a sitting from which, either by accident or genius, he caught expressions on both faces that satisfied him exactly. Jules did all hi 9 work on the picture in his wife’s room while she held her babe on her lap and when the little fellow was smiling up at bis mother. Every time he touched It he Improved It till at last one day a friend, looking at It, said to him: “It Is perfect Any touch you give it hereafter will mar It and may spoil It” . Maria took the brush from her husband’s hands and playfully forbade him to touch the picture again. The “Madonna and Child” of Jules Ferrand was hung that year in the French salon and produced a sensation. It was bought by an American Roman Catholic for an altar piece in a church in the United States for $20.000. This sum set up the artist very nicely, and whatever pictures he painted after that brought a good price. One thing surprised Jules. When he took his wife to Paris every one exclaimed, "How beautiful!” Jules had not realized her beauty when he met her, for his heart was full of that Imaginary beauty with which he had endowed his Clotilde. And since it did not occur to him then it did not afterward. He had painted her, idealizing her as the mother of Christ, not as a woman of physical beauty.

When Jules’ mother died be went to his former home to remove what wps valuable and to destroy What he considered worthless. Many of his pictures that had accumulated while he was studying to be a painter he collected and made & bonfire of them. One of them he looked at, thinking he had seen it somewhere before. Taking it to the light, he scrutinized it moro closely. “Ugh,” he exclaimed, “what a homely woman!” He continued to gaze upon it, and presently it dawned npon him that it was the picture he had painted of Clotilde.

He stood j looking on the face of the woman he had loved as one awakened from a dream—a dream that at one time had been supremely happy. The years had dispelled the illusion which be had supposed he was putting on the canvas and had left the reality. He was shocked, not with Clotilde or her picture, but with himself. A wave of melancholy swept over him. Then he wrapped the portrait carefully, took it home with him and laid it reverently in a clo6et_ It has since then never seen the light

"I HAVE IT,” HE SAID EXULTINGLY.