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THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
been greatly helped by Mrs. Whitelaw Reid, who is still continuing her interest in it. There is a reading-room and a piano, French classes and afternoon tea, a good light and fire, all immensely appreciated by many students who cheerfully do without such luxuries in their own rooms that they may have money to pay for their instruction.
The men’s club gives a reception to its membersand their lady friends once a month, and the walls are hung with their latest and best studies and sketches. There is music, and often dancing, and once there was a most interesting fancy dress ball, where the costumes were very artistic and where a picture frame was filled in turn by different sets of characters, making them long to produce them instantly in color. All through the spring, the one idea of the many thousand art students of Paris is the “ Salon ” —what they shall send and whether it will be accepted. The excitement begins toward the end of March, when all the painting in oil, water-color, enamels, porcelains and miniatures must be sent in to the great palace in the Champs d’ Elysee, each artist being allowed to send two works only. The sculptors are allowed until April 3, as their work takes longer than the painting. From that time your soul knows no peace until one of the two things happen—either you receive an envelope containing a slip of green paper which causes your heart to stand still and your spirit to descend into your boots, or else you hear nothing at all for weeks, and are in a condition of nervous excitement, and at last, perhaps two days before the varnishing day, May 1, there comes a knock at your studio door and an angel, in the form of a boy in uniform, appears with a square white envelope and a white slip of paper, saying that you are accepted, upon which you tip the boy magnificently to the amount of three cents (a larger tip would cause him to tell everyone that you had suddenly lost your senses), and can settle to nothing for the rest of the day because you are too happy and you know that the friends at home will be so proud and glad to hear of it.
On varnishing day you have the privilege, as an exhibitor, of taking in two friends —one before 12 o’clock, the other after. The average attendance, if the day is fine, is about forty thousand.
You see all the great artists and the originals of the portraits on the walls, very often walking about together; the costumes are often very beautiful, and the artist who has painted a fine picture is the hero of the hour.
When we arrive at the point that American art is better than anything we can get in Europe, then we shall stay at home to study, just as the French have done. They used to think that an artist’s education could only be completed in Rome. When their own great masters arose they were only too glad to stay at home and study with them. We can all of us help the quick realization of this, if we encourage our boys and girls to cultivate their artistic tastes instead of scoffing at them as impractical and never likely to make them rich.
It is time that the rich man should cease to look upon the artist as a “ poor devil” who can not earn an honest living, and bewail the fact, as I heard a man bewail it, that when he wanted a fine picture of his pet cow, that “ the picture cost as much as the cow.” It is well to think of the answer of Meissonier, the great French painter, in answer to a rich man who said: “ But you want a large sum for the little album sketch, and it only took you five minutes.” “ True,” said Meissonier, “ but it took me forty years to learn howto do it in five minutes.”
An artist’s chief grief is that life is too short for him to accomplish what he wants to do even in his own special line of work, and this is equally true of woman, for talent knows no sex. There is another important consideration, and that is the lack here of studios with -living rooms attached, at moderate rents. An artist comes back here from Paris with very little ready money, for he has his way still to make. He has had there a studio with a fine light and all necessary fittings, which he has been able to hire for three months at a time, at a very moderate rent, say fifty dollars for the three months; for six months, then, at an expense of one hundred dollars, he has kept his studio in town, with his sleeping and living room adjoining, as he wanted to work outdoors in the country the other six months.