After leaving Lil’s, I found a little room on Fifteenth Street near Eighth Avenue. It was cheap and fairly comfortable and I soon got settled there. Then I started out to look up some artists whose addresses had been sent to me by the Boston men. Right away I secured several engagements. I found, moreover, that my room was only a couple of blocks from what the artists called “Paresis Row” on Fourteenth Street. Here many artists occupied the upper floors, which had been turned into studios in these buildings, once the pretentious homes of the mighty rich people. On the lower floors various businesses were carried on.
I was sent to a man who had a studio in Paresis Row. He was a friend of Mr. Sands and although he did not use models he said he would try and help me get work. He explained to me his own kind of painting as “old-master potboilers.” Sometimes, he said, he got a rush of orders for “old-masters” and then a number of fellows would get busy working on them. He declared humorously that he ran an “old-master” factory.
As I looked at his work, I felt sure I could do that kind of painting, and I said:
“Mr. Menna, would you let me try it, too?” And I told him about the work I had done for the Count and about my father, and he exclaimed:
“Fine! You’re just the girl I’m looking for.”
So I went to work for Mr. Menna, part of the day. I would paint in most of the start, and he would finish the pictures up; “clean them up and draw them together,” as he would say. We were able this way to turn out many “old-masters.” We worked for the dealers and frame-makers, who, in order to sell a frame, put these hastily made oil paintings in and sent them out as “genuine imported paintings.”
Mr. Menna and I became fast friends. He treated me just like another “fellow” and divided the profits with a generous hand. Besides helping him to paint, I acted as his agent. I would go down town and see the dealers, take orders, and sometimes sell to them the ones we made on speculation.
I found out many things in the “picture business” that I had never dreamed possible, but that is another story.
At times, too, I posed for Mr. Menna. He would take spells when he became disgusted with his “potboilers,” and would say he intended to do some “real stuff.” These spells never lasted long, for he would run short of money, and would start with renewed energy on the “painting business” as he disgustedly called it. He discovered that I was very good at copying, but he discouraged my doing it. He said:
“There’s mighty little money in copying, unless you pass it off as the original, and although the dealers do it, and I paint for them, I’m dashed if I’ll actually sell them myself as original. It’s not honest.”