Why I Won't Be Going To Lunch Anymore. Douglas Atwill
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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’ Scents and her commanding height made prospective buyers pay attention.
Morrison was immediately convinced of her worth and it was now the third winter of their time together. He had come to a grateful appreciation of her talents for converting his canvases and drawings into ready cash. From May through November she came each afternoon to tend the Morrison Studio Gallery, giving his enterprise an air of quality and distinction. No other studio galleries on the road had a near full-time employee, staff usually consisting of the artist himself or his spouse. If Santa Fe afforded a livelihood for painters, it gave Morrison a better one than most, not ignoring the excellence of his work.
Winters brought commerce to a trickle but not to a complete standstill. In the colder months Morrison often had a few nice sales and he kept Miss Harkness on two afternoons a week just to catch those few. This February day was one of her scheduled days even though good sense said to close until after the storm. Morrison thought it mean-spirited and penurious to deprive her of the opportunity to make her commission because of a natural event, snowfall.
She arrived promptly at one in the afternoon, stooped under the low front door jamb and made the cascade of harness bells hanging on the door come to life.
“Good afternoon, Magnus. What a glorious gale we’re having, a fury from the white heart of the Arctic itself.”
Of an age between old and elderly, Miss Harkness was straight-backed and thin, with a hairdo seldom seen west of the Mississippi in those years, an overstated Marcel of henna red. In this community where personal appearance mattered little to most of the artists, she looked like an exotic crane blown out of her own breeding grounds by global winds. She believed in dressing warmly, for even in summer a chill lurked to diminish her health. Today she was enveloped in great swards of persimmon wool garments and oxford shoes of burgundy leather. Her departure from the Philadelphia department store included a lifetime supply of designer scarves, which she used in stylish variety.
Morrison said, “I thought of calling you to stay in. Not a chance of a sale today, I’m afraid, Miss Harkness, but since you’re here. . . .”
“Nonsense, Magnus, cultured people of means go out in all weather.”
She dusted the snow off her cape, scarf and tam and folded them for the coat cupboard. Adjusting her dress with a few pulls and smoothing her collar, she was ready to take the helm of their little ship.
Morrison was not convinced by her cheerful assessment of the day’s catch. “The only two that struggled by this morning looked unpromising, even though they peered for a long time at my Evening Light on the Sangres scene through the window.”
“I’m sure that an exceptional and moneyed collector or two