From Seven to Seventy: Memories of a Painter and a YankeeSimmons, Edward
General
From Seven to Seventy: Memories of a Painter and a Yankee
Simmons, Edward
Artists -- Biography
Leslie Stephen was an editor, and used to get his friends to look over
some of the manuscripts submitted to him before he gave his final
opinion. One day his friend, Robert Louis Stevenson, ran in, on his way
to Scotland, to say good-by, and he asked him to take some poems by an
unknown writer along with him and give his criticism of them. R. L. S.
wrote a most enthusiastic letter, saying he was so interested that he
had hunted up the author, in the hospital, and taken along his best
beloved book, _The Viscount de Bragelonne_.
“If he did not like that, I did not want to know him,” he said, “but he
knows it better than I do. Publish his work at once.”
This was the first the world ever heard of the Hospital Sketches of
Henley, who showed his gratitude after Stevenson’s death by coming out
with a statement publicly criticizing him for his debts.
Anders Zorn and his wife, who was the daughter of a wealthy merchant of
Stockholm, came over from Spain to St. Ives. He was known principally as
a watercolorist before this, but had painted portraits of some of the
royal families of Europe, and was patronized by the king of Sweden. Zorn
had a disposition of sweetness and light, and, although he had inherited
a great charm and delicacy from the paternal side of his family, he
cared nothing for society and manners, and thought like a simple
peasant; therefore, like a child.
He was large, fattish, built on a small skeleton—a man who would break
easily—and had the head of all the colorists—that is, a square forehead,
delicate but square jaw, slight aquiline nose, and enormous pale-blue
watery eyes. His drooping yellow mustache was long but not thick, and
his hands were of the softest, most personal and interesting character.
He was a man with a great hypnotic quality who did not talk much, but
dominated without speaking. When he got into a tea fight, he would stand
around a short time, listening, then saying, “Yes, I agree,” saunter
over to the window to the light and, taking a ring off his finger, begin
to carve. He had many of these in all states of completion, and one I
recall as especially clever was of two little girls with feet twisted
and hands holding the jewel.
Zorn loved beautiful women and the human body from an artistic
standpoint. His wife understood him as no other being could, and his
unrestrained, childlike disposition and natural manners were never
misinterpreted by her. In fact, she took care of him as of a most valued
property, and added much to the success of his career as an artist. She
and his mother seemed to be the two great influences in his life. Every
year he sent a lovely sealskin wrap to his mother back in Sweden, and
the dear old woman had chests in her garret full of these coats which
she evidently delighted to take out and show to her less fortunate
friends.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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