Another way in which she earned money was by giving lessons in painting and drawing. She also found that she could increase her income by painting portraits on china plates, taking her subjects from photographs. She did these very well, too, being careful to make correct likenesses.
Then Cecilia Beaux began to make crayon portraits from photographs. These attracted attention and she soon received many orders for portraits.
One success followed another, but although Cecilia Beaux received much praise for her work, she was not content with what she had accomplished. She felt that she needed still more training and that to have it she must go to Paris.
Accordingly, Miss Beaux went to Europe and began to broaden her talent by studying with several great French masters. One of them, Robert Fleury, used to summon her before the class to praise her work publicly. So modest was this American girl that she thought he could not be in earnest. Her fellow-students, also, used to discuss her excellent work.
The many friends that she made in Paris begged her to stay in that beautiful city and paint there, but she was too thoroughly American to spend her life in a foreign land. So, after a few years, she returned to her own country.
A great many of Miss Beaux’s best-known pictures are of women and children, but she has painted men with great success, too. In fact, she was chosen to paint portraits of Clemenceau, Admiral Beatty, and other great war leaders. Her portraits of women and children are really little pictures of everyday home life. She has caught the children as they have paused in their play for a moment.
“Ernesta,” one of Miss Beaux’s well-known portraits, hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Among her other important paintings are “The Last Days of Infancy,” “The Dancing Lesson,” “Sita and Sarita,” and “The New England Woman.”
Cecilia Beaux has won medals and prizes at many exhibitions of art. People are glad to pay large sums of money for her pictures, and it is considered an honor to be painted by her. She has steadily achieved success because she has never scorned nor slighted small tasks. She has done them conscientiously and well, making them a preparation for greater things to come.
