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Career, Rommce, and Fmzily \Ve took a little studio, No. 9 Campagne Premiere, Latin Quartier, Paris,"1 and furnished it very modestly with the simple needs of housekeeping and studio requirements. This was Octo- ber. My wife was an expert cook. (At the age of eighteen, she cooked the wedding dinner for her oldest sister.) It was a very convenient quarter for getting in all supplies for the table. There were many little shops near by where food was served cooked or uncooked at a very moderate cost. By the end of my first year in Paris, my dyspepsia was all gone - it was the eat- ing houses of America that had brought it on, and the eating houses of France had cured it. I have never felt it since. It was here in this little studio, my wife painted subjects which I arranged for her during the mornings, and the after- noons she devoted to reading and preparing our evening meal. I attended the Ecole des Beaux Arts daily. Sunday was our day for the galleries, or trips to the country. We were both as happy as two mortals could be. My mornings were spent at the School, and my afternoons at home. The nude of "The Little Girl ancl Pigeon" was painted at this time."' I used a little model about twelve years old. She was a dear little thing. Her mother would sometimes come and talk about the artists her daughter had posed for, I?ougJu]ereau c with the rest. That is their stock in trade. To paint the pigeon I had to buy one, and I built a cage for it out of an old packing 31 This romantic, now very commercial, section of the city was established originally when the ancient Romans selected the Rizle Gmche (Left Bank) as a place for baths, a theatre, an arena, and a temple - the forum. Later, the SOY- bonne, the College de Fmnce, and the Bibliothegue S&t-Generiezle were con- structed on the site where the ancient Roman forum stood. The district thus became the student quarter of Paris. It became the Qzmtier Lntin because Latin was the language used in lectures and frequently in daily conversation as well. By Harwood's time, the Latin Quarter echoed with the cacophony of all the world's languages, as it does today. 32 Lithe Friends, which the artist here calls The Little Girl md Pigeon, was painted in 1891. It is a very able and structurally sound exercise showing a young female nude essentially in the pose of Ingress famed Ln Sowce in the Louvre in Paris, but in this case holding a pigeon instead of the classic vase of the original version. 41 |
