"He may not be able to talk with his tongue. But give him his brushes and his whole body talks. No gymnastics: but his whole being aquiver. Silent, but his arms, fingers, head, shoulders make animated dumb show. He is conversing delightedly with himself over his work. He has forgotten time and place. Intense mental concentration, and nervous energy. He squints, grimaces, stoops and looks at his canvas wrong-side up. He sets his teeth, compresses lips, squares his shoulders,--lost in his work. He mixes colors with minute particularity. Sometimes he dabs with a tiny brush, a peek here, a peck there, like a dainty bird. Again he paints in sweeping flourishes, beating a kind of rapturous rhythm with his brush, gesturing with it between strokes, like an orchestral conductor hewing out the rhythms of a symphony.... He pauses; he hangs limp over his palette, considering.... Or he gives a joyous little bounce in his chair as the decision comes. His hands and forearms, strong and supple, talk in every sinew. Fingers mobile, infinitely expressive: they thumb the brush; turn its handle in a ruminating pause; reflect a sudden resolution in the stiffening of tendons....
"And above all this quiet animation and silent dexterity is the regnant, gallant head with dark eyes flashing mastery; the mouth set with purpose; the thick mass of shining black hair breaking into a wave as it falls away from the clear forehead--and all in complete self-forgetfulness, the oblivion of the artist rapt in the joy of creating."
It was quite simple. Here was a soul which dwelt in a prison of shyness. Painting unlocked the door. Out it rushed. Free. It could be itself at last. No fears; no concealments. Liberty!
That was all very well for Fritz, but how about his sitter? About the time the sitter sensed what was going on he felt moved to exclaim:
"Just a moment, Fritz. Don't you think you are getting a trifle familiar?"
I heard one of his painter friends, eyeing a canvas which Fritz had just finished, mutter,
"There is some marvelous subtlety about that mind."
Already his knack of guessing people was damnable. He played no favorites. "I am going to paint what I see or I am not going to paint at all." If what he saw was fatuous, he told it with the disconcerting gusto of a child; if it was sad, he told it (as in that student portrait) so as to produce a burning pressure behind the eyelids; if it was strong and gentle, he told it (as in the portrait of the young farmer) so as to kindle respect and affection. Often all this was unconscious. Again he knew exactly what he was doing and took a wicked relish in it. Of some wealthies whom he was painting he confided with a grin:
