Jervis McEntee Diaries

Tuesday January 18, 1881

Jervis McEntee Diary Entry, January 18, 1881, from the Jervis McEntee papers, 1850-1905, in the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution

Tuesday, Jan 18, 1881 Have worked all day on my picture 30x36 which I began before I went home. I awoke with a strong disinclination to go to work and a feeling that I was not sufficiently interested in my subject but I have done a great deal and forwarded my picture. A young girl called who had sent a drawing to the Academy. She was from Chicago and her name is Bessie Ford. There is no vacancy in the schools and so she must wait. She was very modest and not at all discouraged, but I thought how weary to wait in a great city in this way, for she told me she had to make her own living and did by painting little pictures. I was interested in her and told her I would try to facilitate her entrance to the schools. She is to come tomorrow. A Mr. Kurtz called to see about publishing an illustrated catalogue of the Academy and Sheldon of the Evening Post came in and we talked of the neglect of the American Artists. He had seen a picture of mine "Over the hills and far Away" in a collection to be sold and had spoke complimentarily of it in the Post. It is a picture I sold to Wickes two years ago out of the Academy for half my price and he professed to think a great deal of it. He has evidently traded with Schaus for foreign pictures and he has sent it to auction. So it goes. They begin by buying our pictures and then despise us. It will be different some day. The drawing class met at Marys this evening and so she came over and spent the evening with me at my studio. Wrote a note to Sade, to Weir, sent check for interest to Sam Coykendall and to Winter for his bill.