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What is the power which manipulates this matter? and what is the structure of the matter itself? How can will plastically mould matter in space? On what framework, so to speak, is the body constructed? What is the nature of the vital drain upon the medium and the sitters? What is the nature of the intelligence animating the materialized figure?
Outside the settle candles gutter, locks of hair wave, young women shiver, and old men sneeze. Inside is Paradise. Not a symptom of a draught disturbs the air; the sitters' backs are as warm as their faces, and songs and old tales are drawn from the occupants by the comfortable heat, like fruit from melon plants in a frame.
In his pictures he draws on the effects of earlier art, and throws his sitters back until they seem to belong to some nondescript mediaeval country, like the Bohemia of the dramatists; and he darkens and shuts out the light of day that this starlight of soul may be more clearly seen, and destroys, as far as he can, all traces of the century they live in, for the mind lives in all the ages, and he would show it as the pilgrim of eternity.
We do not advise either medium or sitters to blindly accept or follow what is given to or through them. Reason should ever reign, but even reason will show that in experimental work it is sometimes advisable to tentatively adopt and follow some course that may not, at first sight, appear quite reasonable." Questioning the Spirits.
He says: "On one occasion in particular, we had a remarkable illustration of the detrimental influence of one or two sitters.
Lely's punishment followed him into his art, for beginning by copying Van Dyck, it is said of Lely that he degenerated in his work till it bore the very 'stamp of the depravity of the age. Lely's sitters were mostly women. Among them was one who deserved a fitter painter, Mistress Anne Killigrew, Dryden's 'Youngest virgin daughter of the skies.
"Hang it, Rickham, with that face watching me I couldn't do another stroke. The plain truth was, I didn't know where to put it I had never known. Only, with my sitters and my public, a showy splash of colour covered up the fact I just threw paint into their faces.... Well, paint was the one medium those dead eyes could see through see straight to the tottering foundations underneath.
Rooke made a delightful host, pulling out one canvas after another and pouring out a stream of amusing little tales concerning the oddities of various sitters. Presently the door opened and the maid ushered in yet another visitor. Nan, standing rather apart by one of the bay windows at the far end of the room, was examining a rough sketch, in black and white.
And pray, would he ever have become a great painter at all if he had stuck to Kendal or Dalton-in-Furness all his life? if he had never been brought in contact with the influences, the money, and the sitters of London? Those were the questions that Phoebe had to answer. 'Would the beautiful Lady This and Lady That ever have come to Kendal to be painted? would he ever have seen Lady Hamilton?
The King and Queen gave him sittings, and neither political animosity nor professional rivalry stood in the way of his advancement. His temper and character were well adapted to his career. Before he left New England he had shown himself a Court painter in a democratic city. He loved the trappings of life, and he loved to put his sitters in a splendid environment.
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