Chapter 1 #4
Her grandmother was strict but kind, and she had recognized Devon’s talent.
She died when Devon was sixteen. She left enough money for Devon to attend the école des Beaux-Arts, the famous art school, where she was classically trained and learned to master her gift.
She married a fellow art student, a sculptor, when she was twenty-two and he was two years older.
They had a son, Axel, a year later. Jean-Louis, her husband, was an orphan as she was.
He worked as a waiter in a bistro to pay for school, and gave up the Beaux-Arts to support the family when Axel was born.
Devon continued her studies and Jean-Louis took care of the baby in the daytime before he went to work at night at the restaurant.
He never complained about the sacrifices he made for them.
They managed to pay for food and the rented room they lived in.
They had no living relatives, only each other and their son.
She barely remembered her parents now, but she remembered Jean-Louis and their son vividly.
They lived on in memory, and in her heart.
Jean-Louis was struck by a bus while riding his bike to work on a rainy night when Axel was three.
Devon was a widow at twenty-six. She taught drawing at a school to support herself and Axel after Jean-Louis died, and managed to eke out a meager living.
She sold drawings at street fairs, quick portraits people liked.
Two years after Jean-Louis died, Axel caught meningitis and was gone in twelve hours.
At twenty-eight, Devon was alone in the world.
It had been fourteen years since then. Axel would have been nineteen now, which was too painful to think of, and she didn’t try.
It took her a year to get back on her feet and be able to function again.
She had made constant sketches of Axel during that year, in order to keep him near her.
She didn’t want to forget his angelic face with all its expressions.
The year was a blur. Now she couldn’t make a decent living in France, couldn’t bear the memories, and being there without Jean-Louis and Axel.
Every park and street was filled with the memories of Axel.
She moved to New York, with the little money she had, found the gallery which still represented her now, and when they saw what she was capable of, they began giving her gallery shows.
She was forty-two years old now, and had been back in New York for fourteen years.
She had finally reached the pinnacle of success, and now could do only the commissions she wanted and refuse the rest. She researched her subjects carefully, and did those she respected.
The results were extraordinary. She didn’t paint people she didn’t like, because it showed in the work.
She saw into their souls, which was part of her gift.
She did magnificent paintings that represented her subjects inside and out.
They were alive on the canvas and looked as though they would speak at any moment.
Her subjects were thrilled with their portraits.
Devon could have done three times as many commissions if she wanted to.
She did eight or ten a year, and wanted to be proud of them.
The sittings were intense and lengthy, some faster than others.
Her years of training, her losses, and years of suffering deepened her skill and mastery of her art.
She painted important men and women at the height of their success, people whom she respected for valid reasons, and that were meaningful to her.
She had painted socialites and important commercial, industrial, political, or artistic figures.
She had painted a president, and declined another.
She had been respected and well known herself for the past seven of the fourteen years in New York.
She channeled her subjects’ inner being with depth and a highly trained eye.
She was never pompous or pretentious, but she was very definite about whom she would paint and whom she wouldn’t, and never changed her mind.
She didn’t dwell on the past or on her losses, but they were part of her now, and colored how she viewed the world.
She wanted to do meaningful work and didn’t want to waste time or paint people she didn’t admire.
She shied away from any real-life involvement with her subjects.
Their connection was brief, ephemeral, and existed only on the canvas.
They invited her to parties, dinners, weekends, and holidays at their homes but she never went.
She lived in her own world. She was no longer a wife or mother, and identified herself only as an artist. She knew the scars she bore intimately, and didn’t hide from them, and she was a purist about her work, and the techniques she had learned.
She was the harshest critic of her work.
Devon was a beautiful woman with red hair and green eyes the color of Imperial jade. She had delicate fine features, and was lithe and graceful. Her grandmother had paid for ballet lessons for her, from her earnings.
Devon spoke very little to her subjects, but listened to everything they said and translated it into her art.
She ran lightly down the stairs to the kitchen to make herself a strong cup of coffee, and then sat in her nightgown, thinking about the portrait she was about to start.
Her subject was a giant of industry who had become an important political figure.
He was a powerful man, but seemed like a person of integrity to her.
She made no apologies for her work or her boundaries and respected them.
She was having a show at the gallery in two days, and had to prepare for it.
She had a lot to do. She had included a series of portraits of children she had done in her spare time.
They were beautiful and touching. She knew none of them.
They were just random subjects that had appealed to her.
There was a portrait of Axel in her bedroom.
She talked to it sometimes. He looked so alive and was smiling in the portrait.
It made her happy, not sad. There was one of Jean-Louis in the living room, which showed his serious, pensive side.
He had been twenty-eight when she painted the portrait shortly before he died.
He looked like a boy to her now, at forty-two.
She showered and put on jeans and a soft pale blue sweater and stood at her easel. She added another coat of the underlayer, and made some notes. The subject was coming to a sitting that afternoon. She could hardly wait to get started, as she smiled and got to work.