A STUDIO TRAGEDY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 12001, 25 June 1902, Page 6

A STUDIO TRAGEDY.

A tragic story (says the Birmingham Despatch) attaches to the great picture by Munkacsy now being exhibited in Birmingham. The great painter gave his life for the picture. He worked upon it almost incessantly, eating but little and sleeping less ; he took no exercise, received no visitors, and only left his Parisian mansion in the Rue Villiers once during the whole time. That was to find a model for his Christ. A promising subject was found and dragged into the studio, hut only to be dismissed angrily at the end of a week with a pocketful of francs and the exclamation— " I like bett-er the one I imagined. Go!" And the work of a week was blotted out with a furious stroke. The picture at length was finished and the great artist studied it musingly from his divan. But he had forgotten something. He staggered back to the painting and seized a brush. His strength hardly sufficed for the hasty scrawling of his name beneath the canvas. That last stroke of Munkascy's 011 the great canvas may be seen just below tlie portico. And then Munkascy laughed—a strange laugh from the man who had been so silent for eight monthsand fell prostrate before his picture. Hi? reason was gone. Spinal ! paralysis brought on the fury of a maniac, j and he died on May 1, 1900, without having ever regained a vestige of his once mar- ( velloiii intellect.