"VENUS" COMES BACK.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXVI, Issue 17571, 15 May 1919, Page 5

"VENUS" COMES BACK.

By AN ARTIST'S MODiEL. The lot of the artist's model has n.it been "all roses" during the \var, for very fety painters have worked on subject pictures. There haa been no market for them. Portraits and miniatures of dead heroes, or of those about to leave for the front, were the only pictures in demand. Even the nrt schools closed many o. thei rclasses as the male students were mostly at the front, and women students were doing other work for the "duration.* 1 So "Venus" and her sisterhood were left lamenting to seels other work for the time being, pnw many of us are returning to our old occupation, t "Sitting" and "posing" sounds cany work, but in truth it is very tiring at times, and it is no uncommon thing fm* a model to faint once or twice during a difficult figure-pose. One is very apt 1o come away feeling rather dislocated. But it is an interesting life, and one meets with charming people, and ofte-i with strange experiences. I. recently sat with a skeleton on a stand clo.se boside me. and, as they arc- always strung on wires, a-breeze would make'the poor bones restless \ Once I was sent for by an artist whom I had never seen, but who engaged me upon the recommendation of a fellow Royal Academician. "I shall only •e----cjuire your services f"r two days," he said, "because mv picture is finished all but, the head, which must be Eastern. See" —and he indicated a painting of a lovely cemi-nude woman lying asleep on an Asiatic lounge—"my model has the most perfect figure in London, but whenever I paint her T must have a different head, because her face is badly disfigured through an acident." So for two days I went there, escorted up >n the lift to the studio by a solemn-faced butler and then lay down and went to sleep all the time, merely rising to eat my lunch and tea. Some of the Royal Academicians tell amusing stories about their various sitters. An artist of world-wide fame, for whom 1 was posing as a sultana in a harem, drew my attention to another figure in the picture—a copper-coloured mulatto girl with a mass of glossy ringlets and a fascinating bare back. There was also a tall negro squatting on the floor in the picture, who had apparent?]y fallen in love with the copper-col-oured fan-bearer.

I must state that the models go on different clays, and although many may be in the same painting they probably never meet. The tall negro had gravely importuned the benevolent "11.A." to intercede with the copper-coloured lady on his lx jha!f with a view to the African ennivalont of "walking out." But the littio slave was lii.phl'- indignant, and exclaimed with great disdain, "Do yon think T want to marry that Mack trash?!"