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A Basket of Chi/~s (Twelve years later we returned to France. Tanner had then won the highest honors given to an American,"" and the picture I sent to the Salon on my return was rejected. My twelve years had been mostly devoted to teaching children drawing and painting, so my own growth was retarded.) I painted my first Salon picture in our little room, a com- bination of bed-room, living room, studio, and reception room, and our company was mostly Tanner. He was a very devout Methodist. The wine drinking was a great worry to him. He said to us "when they offer it to you, what are you to do?" We said, "refuse." He was always afraid of hurting somebody's feelings. There were about a dozen who took meals with us and these were nearly all French. And the French are so very demonstra- tive. At each meal when they came to the table, it was a friendly greeting of hand-shaking all around. But my wife and I cut that out, and used instead, a friendly bow. The male boarders would always make a trip to the unmentionable, and then come direct to dinner with their usual greetings. This was before the davs of toilet rooms and linen service. My picture "Preparations for Dinner," was of a young peas- ant girl peeling apples with surroundings of tub, bottles, veg- etables on the table, and a basket of small onions on the floor. I always helped myself to anything I wanted. I had found the onions in the store room, and some days later the girl saw them and threw up her hands: "There they are! I have hunted the house over for them." "Well," I said, 7 am through, you can take them." By the time I had finished the picture the rainy sea- son began, and there were two solid weeks of down-pour, night and day. So we packed up and returned to Paris. 30 "Tanner gradually acquired an international reputation" as "an award- winner on both sides of the Atlantic." He won "honorable mention" in 1896 at the Paris Salon with a work entitled The Rnising of Lawws, now owned by the Frederick Douglas Institute in Washington, D. C., but which was purchased originally by the French government. The following year Tanner earned "the Salon's Gold Medal." Fine, A f ro-Americnn Artist, 69-7 1. 40 |
