James Lord was the architect of the Appellate Court. There was great trouble because he signed out the triptych to three men when it should have been given to one. He evidently wanted to give everyone a chance, for in the other part of the building he gave one frieze to five men. Our triptych was done by Blashfield, Walker, and myself. We were to do Justice in three forms, and as the work of Blashfield and myself was more nearly alike, we put Walker in the middle. I waited until Blashfield had determined the composition, the color scheme, and even until he had actually painted his background, and then, as far as I could, I followed him. After the canvases were completed and on the wall, I found that my two figures of small boys in the foreground were not in the right place, so I painted them out and moved them up four inches higher. Blashfield went even farther. He took out a woman’s figure with her back turned and changed her completely, because he did not think she agreed with the general composition of the three. These changes were very difficult, as they were done under a different light, in a different place from the original work, and, of necessity (as the building was then in use), without the assistance of models.
A remark of Richard Canfield’s on my panel is worth quoting. I have, in the foreground, a symbolism of a child pushing away the nose of a vulpine animal with his right hand, to protect a rabbit at his left. The great gambler said:
“By George! Simmons, I did not know you had so much intelligence as that. That symbolism of yours is very apt: Crime, Ignorance, and Stupidity. Is that what the Appellate Court stands for?”
At my first interview with Canfield I got a taste of the man I was to deal with. Clarence Luce was the architect who made the gambling house on Forty-fourth Street, next to Delmonico’s, and he came to me with a proposition to decorate it, saying that I was to talk the matter over with Mr. Canfield himself. I, of course, decided he would know nothing of art and it would be rather trying. I was mistaken. A short, fattish, powerful man greeted me and said, only:
“I want your best work. You know what that is and I shall know it when I see it. We’ll talk the money over later.”