Northern Wisconsin advertiser. [volume] (Wabeno, Wis.) 1898-1925, 1906-02-01
Professional Poseur Once Circus Performer Says the
New Stunt is More Difficult Than the Old

most innumerable. With profile like
that OF Sioux Indian, and long.
black hair of a sort seldom seen out
| side of Buffalo Bill show, he is
everywhere welcomed as he follows
his route from studio to studio, from
school to school, wherever the regula-
ton price of so cents an hour awaits
him.
Other models stick to one city. A
well built man of German extraction
In Boston has been posing steadily for
the local artists and the classes of the
School of the Museum of Fine Arts for
nineteen years. In that time he has
never travelled farther from home than
gagements. He is always busy. Rarely
in the season does he have a spare
forenoon or afternoon, and even in his
evening hours he gives lessons in
physical culture. Yet the hard work
of posing has not worn him out, be-
cause he takes care of himself.
In speaking of his experiences this
model says that the poseur's salvation
consists in reducing his work to a sci
| ence. man must pose better each
month on pain of soon ceasing to get
engagements at ALL
"A fellow gets up before class of
students" he says, 'sat nine o'clock in
the morning and falls into his pose
! That isn't so hard. It's keeping the
| pose a whole week without changing
the character of it that is so difficult
You've got to remember and you've
got to do some thinking. Most models
consider only the end of their weeks
work and the money they will get
then. While they are thinking about
that and specializing how they are
going to spend it they begin to fidget
On the model stand, the body sways
backward and forward in a sort of
rhy thmic way and soon the model has
slumped into something very different
! from what he started with
well, that won't do at all, will it?
None of the artist who teach in that
museum are going to stand for that.
lou see there are perhaps forty or
fifty young men or young women in
the class and every little shift or turn
you make disconcerts somebody. The
beginners. especially, have been used
to drawing from casts, and if you
don't stand pretty still they get per-
picked and puzzled. Then they become
discouraged. The instructor finds
they're not advancing and wonders
what's the matter with them. 1t isn't
their fault of course. It's the fault of
model who isn't interested in what
he is doing.
But the real professionalism
there are only a few of us in this
business-is all the time thinking how
he can carry out the idea expressed in
his pose. Keeping still without be-
coming listless is the hardest thing in
the world to do. l have performed
feats with circuses, taught physical
culture, assisted at demonstrations in
anatomy classes, where / have made
myself at will into living skeleton or
a fat man, and done a lot OF other
things that l am going to put into nv
autobiography when ! write It; but |
tell you, none of the stunts | have
performed is as difficult as that of just
standing perfectly still on the model
block and not moving quarter of an
inch to right or left.
1T isn't the first fifteen minutes
that hurts; it's the occasional prolong-
alton after your regular stopping time.
Ordinarily recess comes after three
quarters of an hour. but sometimes.
when the instructor is criticizing a
large class hold a pose for two