The Ekphrastic Review
  • The Ekphrastic Review
  • The Ekphrastic Challenges
    • Challenge Archives
  • Ebooks
  • Prizes
  • Book Shelf
    • TERcets Podcast
  • The Ekphrastic Academy
  • Give
  • Submit
  • Contact
  • About/Masthead

Jemmy Paints My Portrait, by June Calender

6/10/2018

0 Comments

 
Picture
Arrangement in Grey and Black 1, by James McNeill Whistler (USA). 1871.
Jemmy Paints My Portrait
(monologue spoken by Anna McNeil Whistler)

I had other things to do. It’s not as if my life was empty. Meeting and managing and persuading patrons of Jemmy’s genius was my full time job. I’m not complaining.  He is my life, all I have left after influenza took his father and his two brothers.

When Jemmy settled in London he needed me to manage his career. I enjoyed it. Enjoyed too his wild and sometimes disreputable friends, flamboyant, brilliant, dressed in their velvet waistcoats and yellow kid gloves. Jemmy followed their fashion and, oh, my, he was beautiful. He had the wild curly hair from the McNeil side of the family. Except for his moustache he looked like a cherub in a rococo painting.

He had an Idea with a capital I. Get rid of all the soft colours and billowy blue skies, the delicate young female flesh–it wasn’t women he was attracted to, after all–forget about the melon breasts and delicate pink nipples. He would paint a symphony of gray and black. No, I didn’t really have time to pose for him. But he was my darling Jemmy so I stood, straight and still and serious in that awful black dress and lace bonnet. It certainly wasn’t my most becoming gown, I only kept it for wakes and funerals. But he wanted black.

My feet hurt, my back hurt, I was a martyr for his art. I couldn’t stop the sighs, even a groan now and then, just to let him know what a burden and imposition it was to pose like a corpse in rigor mortise standing instead of lying in the comfort of a pillowed casket. Finally he went into the dining room and came back with a straight-backed chair.  “All right, you can sit and be comfortable if you’ll stop the dramatics,” he said.

“A footstool would be a help,” I said.  
   
“Oh, a footstool, too? I’ll get one. But no pillows. This is serious painting.”

“I know,” I said, “Gray and deep shadowless black. And white–my lace bonnet.”

So I sat and he painted. I turned my head away. Nothing is more boring than watching a painter dab and squint and chew his lips and wrinkle his brow, pick his nose. I closed my eyes to settle into my own thoughts, the gray and white and black of the Russian winter when I buried his father and his brothers and took this one beloved child back to Lowell, Massachusetts to make a life for us. My life a symphony in gray and black … and Jemmy’s sparkling blue eyes and his sweet smile and kiss on the forehead when he said, “Thank you, Mother. This painting will make us both famous.”

“God forbid,” I said. “I don’t want the world thinking that’s what I looked like.”

June Calender

June Calender retired to Cape Cod after a 25+ year career in NYC as an off-off-Broadway playwright.  Now she writes poetry, fiction, essays, and creative nonfiction.  She teaches writing skills at the Academy for Lifelong Learning at Cape Cod Community College and edits their annual anthology. 
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    The Ekphrastic Review
    Picture
    Current Prompt
    COOKIES/PRIVACY

    This website uses marketing and tracking technologies. Opting out of this will opt you out of all cookies, except for those needed to run the website. Note that some products may not work as well without tracking cookies.

    Opt Out of Cookies
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Join us: Facebook and Bluesky
    @ekphrasticreview.



    ​
    ​Archives
    ​

    May 2025
    April 2025
    March 2025
    February 2025
    January 2025
    December 2024
    November 2024
    October 2024
    September 2024
    August 2024
    July 2024
    June 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015

    Lorette C. Luzajic [email protected] 

  • The Ekphrastic Review
  • The Ekphrastic Challenges
    • Challenge Archives
  • Ebooks
  • Prizes
  • Book Shelf
    • TERcets Podcast
  • The Ekphrastic Academy
  • Give
  • Submit
  • Contact
  • About/Masthead