Painted Clay by Doris Boake Kerr

Author:Doris Boake Kerr [Kerr, Doris Boake]
Language: eng
Format: epub

6

The Artists’ Studio

Ann’s friends had a long narrow room in a big building in Flinders Street looking over towards the river Yarra. The bottom floors were all merchants’ warehouses, but the top floor was let entirely to artists. The light was good and the rent cheap. Two young artists shared one studio together, and between them they had managed to make a very attractive room of it. An oak table, which someone had presented to them, a few chairs and a cane lounge were the only articles of furniture in the room. The floor was covered by a beautiful Indian rug of scarlet and gold, which they had bought for a trifling sum in a second-hand shop.

Their best work hung on the walls, the rest were bundled unceremoniously into a corner. Some black and white illustrations cut out of the “Bulletin” (principally Norman Lindsay’s) were pinned carelessly about. On the mantelpiece lay a plaster cast of the hand of Marie Antoinette, and the death mask of Napoleon.

Both artists were very young, very much in earnest and very poor. Their poverty did not cause them a second’s uneasiness. “We’re poor but honest,” they consoled themselves laughingly. They worked hard, their whole heart in their work. If they were in funds they dined sumptuously at a restaurant. If not, they dined just as happily at home on tea and bread and butter.

Charlie Donaldson was the more commercial of the two. He had more of the money sense than Walter Trevor, who, as long as he had a paint brush in his hand, would not have bothered about anything else. Charlie looked after their combined finances and expended them to best advantage. After long experience and many heart-breaking failures Charlie had become quite a good house-keeper and an economical shopper. He knew a shop where sausages could be bought one half-penny cheaper than any other shop in town. He knew where he could get eggs “almost fresh” as advertised, and which tasted almost as good as really fresh eggs when fried.

He it was who swept the studio in the morning and made the two small camp beds in the little room where they slept. He was very methodical and had reduced his housework to a fine art. Half an hour sufficed to finish all the work, and even the most careful housewife could not have found fault with the neatness and cleanliness of the place.

He was much more energetic than Walter. He would be working with quick, nervous strokes, while Walter spent most of the morning dreaming over his canvas. But Walter’s dreams were always worth while. Sometimes Charlie would get impatient at his friend’s idleness, but when Walter seized his brush he worked indefatigably, and Charlie could only stand and admire the result. Walter’s pictures had always a touch of genius in them, while Charlie’s were never more than mediocre. Charlie knew this too well, and a feeling of discontent would seize him when he compared Walter’s work with his. He was gradually giving up his attempts in color and turning more and more to black and white work.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.