“Yes,” he answered.
The first thing Zorn painted in oils he did out of the window of his little stone house on the embankment overlooking the bay and island. I helped him set his palette, and he jokingly called himself my pupil (I had told him what materials to buy), being as peevish as a child when I dared to criticize the fact he had put the moon in the due north.
“But don’t you think it looks well?” he said. This canvas was bought by the French government and now hangs in the Luxembourg.
Zorn was one of those artists who are always showing much originality in the use of their materials and combining this with a sense of humor, which often produces fine results. I went into his back yard one day, and he had a six-foot water color leaning against the house, and was throwing pails of water on it—“bringing it together.” He had a great success at the Grosvenor Gallery with a picture of boats, sails, masts, and the seashore sand, with a fat fish-wife walking toward one. (In those days he thought the only beautiful women were fat ones.) He laid this on a box hedge in the garden when a thunderstorm came up. We all rushed out and it seemed to me ruined.
“Now I can make a fine picture,” he said. He painted out the smudges from the sails and fixed the dirty sky, but in the foreground, in the sands, were large spots of raindrops. These he turned into footprints, and their naturalness has been commented upon more than once.
One of the most exquisite things he ever made, and one of the greatest works of art, considering its size and sentiment, was a little carving of poplar wood about four by six inches in size. A feather bed, in the center of which, as if she had been dropped there, was a tiny naked figure, sitting up, playing with her wedding ring—the most eerie, fairy creature, with not a touch of the salacious.
Zorn never really got over the sin of water color. He was an all around artist, but hung next to Sargent’s his portraits had all the life taken out of them. He did not seem to go beneath the skin except in his etchings, which are perfect, but had a wonderful dexterity and absolute truthfulness combined with an artistic eye that refused to see anything ugly. He once did a portrait of a woman seated on a plush sofa, which looked like the traditional boarding-house affair—thumbed wood, worn, and not pleasant in color. The picture gives you an idea of a beautiful piece of furniture. I said:
“You did not harm the sofa any, did you?”
“Mine is a copy,” he replied. He would not deny the truth, but being a gentleman, did not call names.
It would not be fair to leave St. Ives without mentioning Mr. Knill. It is true, he lived many years before my time, but he left a permanent money legacy and a personality so redolent with humor that he will never be forgotten. He was not serious, even in death, and built his tomb long before his demise—a large crypt and granite sarcophagus with his coat of arms—upon the top of a hill as a landmark for his smuggling fleet to get into harbor. Having completed this, he made his will. He directed that every five years there should be given ten pounds to the oldest widower, ten to the oldest widow, ten to the town fiddler, and ten each to ten young virgins, provided they all joined hands and danced around his tomb (led by the fiddler) to the tune of “Old Hundred.”