Read Online Guide to Animal Behaviour by Douglas Glover - Free Book Online
Authors: Douglas Glover
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there upwards of eight years.) In my spare time, I taught him the rudiments of figures, composition, Christian and heroic symbolism, etc.
Shortly thereafter he was expelled from the seminary and sentenced to the stocks for making a series of sketches of an Ursuline nun named Thérèse de la Sainte-Assomption being ravished by the Flemish Bastard, a noted Iroquois chieftain. Boisvert rendered the sketches on birch bark scrolls which he sold at five sous apiece to his classmates.
Though my role in this affair was concealed from the general public by the good offices of the bishop, I was enjoined to refrain from practising my art and given a severe penance which consisted of two hundred Hail Marys to be said while standing up to my thighs in an ox midden.
His Grace further ordered me to cease bathing, which occasioned much surreptitious delight amongst my remaining students.
Martyre des Pères Jésuites chez les Hurons
Notwithstanding the bishopâs command (he no longer spoke to me, or recognized me in public, though I would see him nearly every day in the street), I soon received my first major commission. This came from the Hôtel-Dieu Sisters who, by the vagaries of gossip, received the impression I was the artist responsible for young Boisvertâs Ursuline scrolls.
The sisters wanted a large, suitably inspirational canvas for the chapel wall, depicting the deaths of the Jesuit brothers at the hands of the savages.
I set to work immediately on a piece of sail cloth, mixing my own paints as best I could and using the back room of Jean Boisdonâs establishment as a studio.
A Huguenot hog gelder named René Petit had taken up residence in the back room while he plied his trade in the farms roundabout. A muscular fellow, with a Roman nose and cruel eyes, he modeled for me as an Indian brave.
Jean Boisdonâs chambermaid, Paulette, stripped to the waist, with her skirts tucked up between her legs, did nicely for Indian maidens in the background.
For the martyrs, I painted myself as Brebeuf, using a small hand-mirror Boisdon kept by the bathtub. Boisdon posed as Lalement, showing, after consuming half a flagon of arak I was forced to purchase for the company, a remarkable talent for rolling his eyes and heaving out his chest in a counterfeit of agony.
Later he told me arak gave him gas.
Thrown constantly together in their work with me, René and Paulette conceived a sudden, immoderate passion for one another, which ended in Paulette becoming pregnant and demanding to be married. With the painting only half-done, René ran away to live with the savages.
Meanwhile, the studio was still in use as a bathroom, so that customers were always coming in to use the tub whether I was painting or not. (Boisdon charged ten sous for clean hot water, eight for moderately warm water used only once, and so on.)
Word got abroad about my work-in-progress, and I soon became a source of entertainment for the local drunks and bawds and trappers come to town to sell beaver hides.
The latter were often thunderously abusive, roaring with laughter at my woodland settings, my savages and the horrific poses of my martyrs â thus several well-meaning inaccuracies were avoided, including classical Grecian elements (amphorae, Macedonian lances and leg armour, a lyre, Ionic columns in front of the longhouses, etc.) which I had unwittingly imported into my representation of native life.
It was in this way that several of Québecâs least respectable citizens made their way into my painting of the holy martyrs.
And, though I believe they enhanced the liveliness of the scene, the result was that the Hôtel-Dieu Sisters recognized two prostitutes, the Huguenot hog gelder, and a man under sentence of death for killing his wife and running away to the forest to trade in beaver hides. This man, who modeled for the wise, old sachem in the top right-hand corner, was arrested, tried, hung, cut down before he died
Shortly thereafter he was expelled from the seminary and sentenced to the stocks for making a series of sketches of an Ursuline nun named Thérèse de la Sainte-Assomption being ravished by the Flemish Bastard, a noted Iroquois chieftain. Boisvert rendered the sketches on birch bark scrolls which he sold at five sous apiece to his classmates.
Though my role in this affair was concealed from the general public by the good offices of the bishop, I was enjoined to refrain from practising my art and given a severe penance which consisted of two hundred Hail Marys to be said while standing up to my thighs in an ox midden.
His Grace further ordered me to cease bathing, which occasioned much surreptitious delight amongst my remaining students.
Martyre des Pères Jésuites chez les Hurons
Notwithstanding the bishopâs command (he no longer spoke to me, or recognized me in public, though I would see him nearly every day in the street), I soon received my first major commission. This came from the Hôtel-Dieu Sisters who, by the vagaries of gossip, received the impression I was the artist responsible for young Boisvertâs Ursuline scrolls.
The sisters wanted a large, suitably inspirational canvas for the chapel wall, depicting the deaths of the Jesuit brothers at the hands of the savages.
I set to work immediately on a piece of sail cloth, mixing my own paints as best I could and using the back room of Jean Boisdonâs establishment as a studio.
A Huguenot hog gelder named René Petit had taken up residence in the back room while he plied his trade in the farms roundabout. A muscular fellow, with a Roman nose and cruel eyes, he modeled for me as an Indian brave.
Jean Boisdonâs chambermaid, Paulette, stripped to the waist, with her skirts tucked up between her legs, did nicely for Indian maidens in the background.
For the martyrs, I painted myself as Brebeuf, using a small hand-mirror Boisdon kept by the bathtub. Boisdon posed as Lalement, showing, after consuming half a flagon of arak I was forced to purchase for the company, a remarkable talent for rolling his eyes and heaving out his chest in a counterfeit of agony.
Later he told me arak gave him gas.
Thrown constantly together in their work with me, René and Paulette conceived a sudden, immoderate passion for one another, which ended in Paulette becoming pregnant and demanding to be married. With the painting only half-done, René ran away to live with the savages.
Meanwhile, the studio was still in use as a bathroom, so that customers were always coming in to use the tub whether I was painting or not. (Boisdon charged ten sous for clean hot water, eight for moderately warm water used only once, and so on.)
Word got abroad about my work-in-progress, and I soon became a source of entertainment for the local drunks and bawds and trappers come to town to sell beaver hides.
The latter were often thunderously abusive, roaring with laughter at my woodland settings, my savages and the horrific poses of my martyrs â thus several well-meaning inaccuracies were avoided, including classical Grecian elements (amphorae, Macedonian lances and leg armour, a lyre, Ionic columns in front of the longhouses, etc.) which I had unwittingly imported into my representation of native life.
It was in this way that several of Québecâs least respectable citizens made their way into my painting of the holy martyrs.
And, though I believe they enhanced the liveliness of the scene, the result was that the Hôtel-Dieu Sisters recognized two prostitutes, the Huguenot hog gelder, and a man under sentence of death for killing his wife and running away to the forest to trade in beaver hides. This man, who modeled for the wise, old sachem in the top right-hand corner, was arrested, tried, hung, cut down before he died
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