The Adventures of Allegra Fullerton by Robert J. Begiebing Page A

studies with Mr. Spooner, through whom I also had begun to meet artists of accomplishment and reputation, men who filled the city’s ranks of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Not only was I beginning to move in circles that I could not have entered on my own, Mr. Spooner and his magnificent talent were having a rather consuming effect upon me. There was something magnetic in his person, in the ardent, exemplary manner, sans peur et sans reproche , in which he had organized his life. His first principle was to exclude from his every day anything that might hinder his work, that might possibly close off those influences that quicken one’s current project.
    There came a moment of infatuation that now seems to signify my state of mind at this time, an infatuation that perhaps contributed to my lack of vigilance despite these presentiments of being observed. The moment came at day’s end after a Thursday in Mr. Spooner’s studio. We had been working—Julian, Gibbon, and I—with Mr. Spooner on a landscape of heroic proportions. The canvas, I recall, was five by eight feet at least. What Spooner hoped to capture was a revelatory moment from a walking tour with Thomas Cole in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Mr. Spooner had put off the attempt for some years. But I saw now the view he was after, or rather the sublime vision. From the top of a mountain—I believe he said it was Chocurura—beyond a westward expanse of mountaintops receding into the distant haze, lay a lake of divine light, levitating just at the horizon like a great pool, a calm afternoon sea, of gold or liquid fire.
    We were finally seated, that afternoon, tired yet excitable from our labors, and discussing the painting when Mr. Spooner brought in his customary bottles of wine, usually a smooth red Bordeaux. The late light of that September afternoon had cast its blush upon the works and tools and furnishings of the huge room. As we sat in convivial conversation, still in our bespattered smocks, Mr. Spooner began to steer us toward a new project he had been contemplating.
    It was to be a portrait of an unnamed woman standing by an open window at midday. Outside the window would be a profusion of sunlit blossoms. She would be just rising from her escritoire, a letter in her hand, perhaps dangling, a freshly opened envelope on the floor. Her face would capture the movement of moods, the very transition, he said, of serenity and poise passing over to discomfort and agitation.
    â€œWhat news?” Mr. Spooner asked. “What news in such a letter?”
    â€œDeath of a loved one?” Julian speculated immediately.
    â€œOr death of Love,” Gibbon offered after a moment.
    Mr. Spooner smiled. “Perhaps,” he said. “Or perhaps not. Part of the difficulty will be discovering what news.” He sipped his wine, then smiled.
    â€œNot to mention the changing moods,” Julian added, with a wave of his arm, “in the very moment of sweeping across her face.”
    â€œAh, to be sure, Julian,” Mr. Spooner said. “Perhaps the heart of the difficulty, after all. But once in England, at Panshanger, I found a self-portrait by Andrea del Sarto which accomplishes just such a moment of transition in a face. He depicted himself standing over a table where he had been writing—and in the very act of looking up from the letter before him, his face full of nobility and melancholy. A moment of marvelous ambiguity and unpretentious self-knowledge. You see, he had been writing to his wife, the enduring object of his foolish desire, the infatuation whose blandishments he was helpless to resist, and against whose betrayals he continually turned a blind and innocent eye.” He paused to frown. “I’ve been thinking about it for some time, you see, and I’ve been putting off the difficulties.”
    â€œYou have a particular woman in mind, father?” Gibbon asked.
    Mr. Spooner did