She led the way to the dining-room, where her canvases hung in profusion. She specialised in animal life, kittens, puppies, and—timidly—horses. The horses were supernaturally stalwart and spirited, with tremendous chests and heads flung back splendidly, but Miss Waters was conscious of many weak points in them, grave deficiencies. She knew that sweet little kittens were more in her line. Horses were, after all, rather grossly big animals, and she did them only as an exercise in virtuosity.
Rosaleen and Miss Amy had been a trifle disappointed in Miss Waters’ work. They both had a feeling that animals were not truly artistic. Flowers, landscapes, women and children, were what they had expected and desired. Still, a group of six puppies in a row, astoundingly alike and yet each one in a different attitude, compelled their admiration.
“Of course,” said Miss Waters, “this is my real work. The teaching is only a side line. But I do love teaching. It is such a wonderful privilege to help in developing a talent. Some of my pupils are among the foremost artists in the country.”
She needn’t have gone on so recklessly, because her visitors were already in quite the frame of mind she desired. That, however, she couldn’t know.
“Portrait painters, landscape painters, painters of historical and religious subjects.... I’ve taught them all. And I’ve been—well,” she confessed, with a modest smile. “I’ve been very fortunate, I must say. My pupils are among the most celebrated artists in this country. Not always the best known,” she hastened to add. “Their names might not be familiar to you.... But they rank very high.”
All superfluous. For Rosaleen and Miss Amy the fact of her being an artist sufficed. They took it for granted that any artist knew all about art, just as they would have expected any blacksmith to understand all about horseshoeing. Then and there Rosaleen was put into her hands to be developed.
And she had been going faithfully, three days a week, for nearly two years, progressing steadily under the system which Miss Waters had found successful with her pupils in the past. A great deal of drawing in charcoal from casts at first, then watercolours, and then oils. When you began to work with oils, the drudgery was over; accuracy was no longer required, or outlines. The system also included what Miss Waters called “just a bit of the History of Art,” short talks and readings, which contained not a vestige of information about art and some very remarkable history. It was in fact nothing more than a collection of anecdotes about artists. Generally there was a king, who visited the artist in disguise, or came up behind him on tiptoe, and who was struck dumb by the verisimilitude of the painting before him. That was indeed the measure of an artist’s greatness—that a horse tried to eat his painted hay, a bird his fruit, that a man tried to sit upon his picture of a chair, or to smell his flowers. A picture was a picture.
Rosaleen had progressed beyond casts now, and was devoting herself to watercolours. She was learning the Rules of Perspective, and her suspicion was becoming confirmed, that Art was a sort of professional mystery to be learned as one learned law or medicine. She began to feel that she was getting a grasp of the thing.
She was an altogether satisfactory pupil and Miss Waters was proud of her; she was bright, docile, and very industrious.
But what was the matter with her on this morning?