The new North-west. [volume] (Deer Lodge, Mont.) 1869-1897, 1886-04-16
LEARNING TO BE ARTISTS.
A FEW RANDOM SKETCHES TAKEN IN
THE ART STUDENTS LEAGUE.
Something About Models and the Queer
Expressions that Become Second Nature
to Their Faces-The Charm of a Studio
cid Man Business.

It isn't everybody that can join tile Art
Students league. You have to know some
thing-and good deal-of art subjects be-
fore the privilege of working under these in
structors is given you. The league is an off
shoot from the old Academy of Design. Some
of the younger and the more advanced art
lists of the academy broke away from their
cid shool and founded this new league. If you
want to study under good tutelage so as to
make the most of your talent, you join the
league. That is, if the league will have you.
The examination once passed you are put
through regular course of study, rising
every six months to higher things. And all
the while, if you really care for your work,
you are having good time and can wear an
apron as coquettish as the one in the picture
above. Not only that, but you can &c with
out bangs and wear the Oldest hat in your
collection or do lots of queer things, and
everybody will excuse the departure from the
conventional and say how becomingly orig
inal you are in dress and envy your artistic
taste, wishing they could go and do likewise.
So much if you are a woman. If you happen
to be male student you have the privilege
of resting, hemmed in by bevy of nice girls
MoNoToNY OF THE MODELS WORK.
The models do not have quite so much fun.
Their business smacks of trade and is not as
wildly exciting as one might wish. At times
there is even touch of the monotonous about
it. To stand for ten minutes in an Ajax-de-
flying the-hghtning position, then rest for q
moment and then jump back into the Ajax
attitude is not as thrillingly interesting as it
sounds. One queer feature about nearly all
models who have been in the business year
or more is interesting. The expressions of
their faces become as set as an eight-day
clock. Take the interesting young woman
who does the Merry Little Mountain Maid
act for the students She has sat so long for
them and SO often in an Alpine hat, with an
expression of virgin innocence spread over
her countenance like cold cream on the
chapped face of city belle at night, that in
of-duty hours she goes about with her mouth
half open, as if a genuine Swiss yodel was in
the very act of escaping from the parted lips
And when she stops to talk for moment she
stands with her head thrown back and q
startled fear in her big eyes, as if she were q
chamois poised on some jutting crag
away up the mountain, listening to
the hunters horn. 1t is all a trick,
but it is trick done so often that it soon be-
comes real part of the girls personality.
When she gets into prosaic street car she
does it with an air of romantic innocence and
and half frightened country coyness that al
ways secures her a seat, no matter how great
the crowd.
There is the kind of artist that usually de-
votes his entire attention to painting merry
little mountain maids and that sort of an
tique bric-a-brac. He doesn't go about with
sign on his breast like the blind beggar, say
ing, II am an artist, but he might as well do
so, for his dress tells every one of the glad tid
ings his long hair and Van Dyke beard, not
to speak of his clothes and the portfolio he
carries, are so loudly artistic that they fairly
shout the news at you. Even the blind beg
gar could tell by the loud tone that the passer-
by was an old-school artist, with tinge Of
half romantic, half beery Bohemianism in
him. One by one this style Of artist is pass
ing from us and soon the race will be extinct
outside the covers of the summer novel.
AN ANGEL-.YEARNINGn- MAN.
Here dear little model is young, she
knows it. and will probably never recover
from the aff1iction Of extreme youth.
When a darling little creature Of
years, with hair made of spring sunshine spun
into threads of gold, begins to sit for pictures
of angel children, the idea that she is young
becomes part of her nature. just as Lolita
began playing children's parts on the stage
twenty years ago and has never been able
since to quite convince herself that she is out
of her teens SO this little creature will grow
up to grandmotherhood in the firm belief that
her hair is still good match for corn silk and
that if it were not for rheumatism she would
like to get down on her knees and build block
houses on the carpet.
Nearly all young artists like to have
model set for them. She has been in the busi-
ness for five years and has trained her eyes so
that they can express undying devotion, while
she is calmly thinking out the best kind of
trimming to put on her new winter sacque.
She represents learning" just what she is
yearning for no one knows Everybody that
paints her tries to catch this expression and
every one labels it differently. That rara
avis, an artist with a religious turn, will pict-
ure her kneeling in virgin white, and
call his work Faith" another will
have the same eyes staring out
across autumn fields and will write Hopeless
Love- beneath the picture; a third will have
her looking across sailless sea, and when
you read the catalogue his picture will bear
the record, aHe Cometh Not, She said" and
she of the yearning eyes goes on yearniEg at
the rate of rs an hour and learns the trick
from the artist of painting her slippers blue
or pink, to correspond with her dress when
she goes to the French ball.
The model who does the old man business,
and whose picture we all have SO often seen
marked "Lear," or "Winter" or "Grand
father" is the most natural of all. He is old
because he can't help himself, and the lines
that time and care and worrying over artists
have chiselled into his face are genuine
enough. An artist with keen eye caught
him wandering about the streets one night,
and struck by the wrinkled countenance tried
him. He did so well that he became regu-
lar stock artist, and now everybody that
paints knows him as well as they know Ivory
Black or Rose Mather-New York World.