well to do were foolish enough to fall into his ethical and aesthetic traps, was he so bad?
There was a pause in the conversation as we finished the coffee. Gertrude, in whose presence lapses of prandial chatter were forbidden, took the opportunity to start the real proceedings. She put her heavily ringed hand on top of Strether’s, long-fingered and thin. “And now, what treat awaits us in the studio, my dear? I have several yawning blank walls since the museum people came to wrest away my gifts, the Gaspards.”
She ably played the coquettish game that she just might buy the painting herself. It was intended to put the victim off his guard and make him feel comfortable, unsuspecting in the company of peers. I wondered if Willard was fooled by our provincial games. Didn’t he sense the glowing red dot on his forehead?
We gathered up our glasses and walked slowly along the path to the separate adobe studio. It was one large room with north-facing windows and a high ceiling. The painting was under a white cotton cover on the easel, encased in the shaft of bright sun from the skylight. Strether seated Gertrude in the one chair, a regal Spanish design with gilded finials, and motioned the two of us to the long window-seat with cushions.
He then pulled off the cover with a flourish. He said nothing as we stared at the small canvas, which was even more austere and plain than I anticipated. There was, as expected, a row of three stars high in the cerulean blue doorway. The background was an expertly applied wash of earthy light terra cotta.
Willard, always polite and well-bred, started with, “How elegant, Donald. It’s most impressive.” He was not showing any of his cards at this time.
Gertrude made a humming sound while she gave her well-practiced expression for viewing serious art. I thought of an old, blonde iguana on a limb, blinking.
It was time to get my part started. “Stars in the doorway, Donald. What can they mean?” Did I sound as if I was reading from a script?
Strether replied in his softest tones, “I never put into words what all can see. The painter should paint and let the image speak for itself, others can do the talking and writing.”
“Quite so. Well, the stars must imply a new day or a change coming in the heavens. A spring apocalypse, perhaps?”
“I couldn’t say.”
So, I jumped into my discourse about the blinding of Orion and the stormy weather that attended him. Clearly, it was Arthur Dove and the Modernists, rather than Matisse or Bonnard, who were the forebears for this painting. The breaking of images into related shapes and planes was the key to this canvas. More down this avenue and it seemed as if I had just got going when I saw Gertrude scowl and Willard force down a yawn. This was not going to be an easy sell.
Strether, however, appeared to be in another world, nodding now and then in enjoyment of my monologue. Both Gertrude and Willard looked glassed over. So I continued, directing my comments to the only one paying attention.
“Your surfaces, Donald, are becoming even more refined, more splendid as your compositions get more spare. The Shaker quality of simple refinement.”
Strether clearly looked pleased. I went on for a few minutes more, then wrapped it all up with, “What do you think, Willard?”
He wore an inscrutably polite expression, revealing nothing. He knew, however, that some sort of reply was expected. “I would buy it in a snap, Donald, as it is a lovely change of direction from the others I have seen in the fine houses all over town. All, I might add, to be coveted.
“But . . . ” he said. Gertrude’s eyes sprung back to life. “I just this morning bought three Mannerist landscapes at the Ludlow Gallery. I had been looking at them since my friend here sent me there last week and I could not decide among them. I wanted them all. So now, all three are being shipped to my new house in Sag Harbor. And that exhausts the art budget for this summer.”
Strether said, “I see.” He and Gertrude looked at me with matching blank expressions. A silence followed, ended only when Gertrude maneuvered herself up from her Spanish throne and thanked Strether profusely for lunch. He accompanied us all down the hill to the car park.
Gertrude between breaths pumped out platitudes about what a town for art Santa Fe was and what a coincidence that Willard chose my small paintings. She would have given me her narrow-eyed look of disapproval if the path had been smoother. It was an awkward end for the occasion, in spite of hugs and goodbyes all around. Strether remained silent as we embraced without warmth and studiously avoided looking at me again. I was sure I would never be included in another lunch at Strether’s.
For the rest of the day I had mixed feelings about how events appeared to tarnish my good name, albeit a conspirator’s good name. I was now indelibly the traitor and the ingrate. Should I have insisted that Willard return my paintings so he could buy Strether’s? Was there something I could have done to set things right? I slept restlessly that night: the sleep of the unjustly blamed, the sleep of the newly unfrocked.
As one door closed, another cracked open ever so slightly. When Gertrude called me the next day, it was apparent that the Strether lunch had wrought a subtle change in the murky currents of Santa Fe art. She had quickly sensed these small but important rearrangements, which now had me recast in a somewhat more elevated position.
“What a bore that Willard fellow was. Mind you, I am relieved you snagged something out of it all. Despite poor Donald. The Ludlow Gallery is fortunate to have you.” She paused a moment to consider the unfolding events. “We must have lunch next week with Ambrosia. She’s back in town for the rest of the summer and needs a project. You, I think.” As the mechanics of art purchasing in polite society shifted ever so slightly, Gertrude was not going to be left stranded alone with Strether on an unpopular peninsula.
The Supine Pueblo Maidens
It should have been a festive day, this St. Valentine’s Day, but instead it was a gloomy, cold one with snow starting at first light and continuing in a steady descent throughout the morning. Magnus Morrison saw only two people go by the window of his Canyon Road gallery for the past three hours. There had been one sale so far this month, a small drawing of Flanders poppies framed in silver gilt. Morrison thought this was going to be a lean year for the painters of Santa Fe and he was glad to have a little saved from the summer months.
For the preceding two hundred years the adobe house that held the Morrison Studio Gallery had been a modest residence, housing a family of woodcutters. When Santa Fe started to grow, they moved away to a mountain village where the rest of their extended family lived and they leased the house to Morrison with the understanding that he tend the apple trees behind the house. He painted happily in the back rooms opening onto the orchard and set up the front room as a gallery for his own work. A generous window allowed passing tourists to peek in and decide if the Morrison product was worth a visit.
In the summer months, tourists often did visit his gallery. He was compelled to hire an assistant to sit the space while he painted new work in the back room. Otherwise he would have no time to paint at all.
She was a Miss Harkness, who lived in a one-room apartment in the hacienda down the street and saw Morrison’s sign in the window. She gave him a persuasive presentation speech on why he would benefit both financially and mentally from her employ. Her qualifications to sell paintings included two years study at the Philadelphia Museum School in the 1930s and a lifelong love for art in general, with emphasis on the Fauves and the Post-Impressionists. She had worked for years in Philadelphia to separate department store customers from their money in Ladies’
