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I met Neel for the first time at the opening of the exhibition,
Women Artists, 1550-1950 in Los Angeles in the winter of 1977. Neel was represented
by T.B. Harlem of 1940, another early masterpiece. Buried in baroque art history,
I was completely unaware of her work. She invited me to visit her in New York
(we live ten minutes apart), which I did soon afterwards, visibly pregnant
with Neil, who was born in May. I was bowled over by Alice (in this more personal
entry, it is appropriate to use her first name) and by her work which she
and Nancy spent a morning showing me and my husband. I am not easily impressed
nor inclined to hero-heroine worship, but Alice seemed to me then and still
a real genius, a person of extraordinary gifts and the most wonderful company.
Neil and I sat for Alice when he was about eight months old and not always
willing to remain motionless for as long as she wanted, even when bribed with
imported rusks. She caught my characteristic head tilt and a good likeness
with phenomenal speed but she had trouble with Neil and scraped down and repainted
part of his face. She thought that he looked like a squirrel and that I seemed
"a very modern mother" (her first to wear pants?). Her son Richard
noted that the pose is traditional, like a fourteenth-century Madonna presenting
the Child. All of the picture except parts of the background and sofa were
done in our presence for Alice paints what she sees but only as she can see
it. Most of my friends do not like the picture, saying that I am better looking
or that the baby does not quite look like Neil, but Alice is never trying
to make a traditional portrait, a pleasant likeness that flatters rather than
reveals. Alice has made me look strong and intelligent, flattery of another
kind perhaps but a most original treatment of the theme of mother and child.
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