“A woman! No, sir! I would not have a woman do any work for me,” said the dealer. “I have had all I want to do with women artists. They do much inferior work to the men, take twice as long, and get swelled heads about it. They whine if they don’t make a fortune out of their daubs. No—nothing doing with the women. Now I like Menna’s work. Take them to him. Don’t let any one see them, and I’ll very likely be able to have them copied again, as I think they’ll prove good sellers.”
“All right,” I said, but I made up my mind to do them myself, and I went out with those precious “imported” paintings under my arm.
Mr. Menna was showing some of his “potboilers” to a man when I returned. They were paintings of little ragged boys. The man did not care for them. As he was going out he said:
“I’ll come again some day when you have other pictures. Those little boy pictures are nice, and I like them, but they are not parlor pictures, and my customers want parlor pictures.”
Menna was puffing angrily on a big cigar. I laughed as the man went out, but Menna could not see the humor of it. He got angrier and angrier. He threw down his palette and brush and let out a big original curse. Wish I could print it here.
“I hope you feel better now, Mr. Menna,” I ventured.
“That’s the kind of thing one is up against,” he roared, “and that fool, Bonnat, was in here a while ago and told me he had refused to make some alteration in the portrait he is painting of the wife of that rich Dr. Craig, because the ass said he would not prostitute his art, and a lot of stuff like that. It makes me sick. He also lost a good chance he had to make illustrations for a magazine—best-paying magazine in New York. He had his own damned ideas about the illustrations, and as they were paying for the job they told him how they wanted them smoothed out. Bonnat belongs to the new school of painting, and he actually refused to please them—missed a chance almost any artist would be glad to get. He’s a chump.”
I was getting excited. In a dim way I was beginning to see something else in art than “the picture business.” It reminded me of how poor Wallace, Ellen’s husband, used to talk of literature. I secretly admired this Bonnat for his stand and his courage.
“Is Mr. Bonnat a Frenchman?” I asked.
“No-o.” Menna seemed uncertain of his nationality, but he said after a moment: “He went to college in America. Got his Ph.D. at Harvard, and was offered a professorship out West somewhere, but after studying all those years and wasting time, he turns around and takes up art. Says all he learned about those ’ologies will enable him to paint better. Did you ever hear such rot?”