At the end of the four lessons, when Matt’s painting seemed to him to be getting almost as smooth as a wax figure, and as dead, Tarmigan came—a stern, ill-dressed man, prematurely gray—at whose approach Matt’s heart was in his mouth. The famous artist moved leisurely but inevitably towards him, shedding criticism by grunts and phrases and gestures; expressing the ineffable by an upward snap of the fingers, accompanied by a Russian-sounding sibilation; inquiring sarcastically whether one student was drawing the model or the lay-figure, and sneeringly recommending another to move his drawing “if the model moved.” Every now and again he sat down at an easel to get the man’s point of view, and, taking up his brush, suggested tone and color, or, if it was a draughtsman’s easel, borrowed his charcoal, and showed him how to put the head on the shoulders or fit on an extremity. When at length Matt felt the great man’s breath on his neck a cold shiver ran down his spine, the brush clove to his paralyzed hand.
“Ah, a new man!” said the visitor. “Not bad.”
All the blood in Matt’s body seemed to be rushing to his face. His hand began to tremble.
The visitor did not pass on immediately. He said: “Where do you come from? There’s a want of sharpness in the shadows.”
“From America,” breathed Matt.
“I mean from what school?”
“I haven’t been to school since I was a boy.”
“Not been to an art school?” queried the visitor, in surprise. “Nonsense! Impossible! The face is very well, but the rest is not taken far enough. A little too clever! Search! search! Even Velasquez’s early things were—But you must have had a deal of practice.”
“I have painted quite a little,” admitted Matt, “but not rightly, though I did study artistic anatomy out of a book. I’ve painted hundreds of portraits and signs and ceilings.”
The artist was examining the work more minutely. “Don’t you call that practice?” he said, a little triumphant smile flitting across his wintry face. “Hundreds of portraits—why, that means hundreds of models! Why, however did you get all those commissions? It’s more than I can boast of. Try and keep that lower in tone, and don’t use that color at all,” he added, his fingers tattooing kindly on Matt’s shoulder. The class had pricked up its ears, for the artist spoke by habit in a loud tone, so that all might benefit by his criticism of the individual, and his remarks to the new-comer were quite out of the ordinary run.