The Amouretta Landscape by Adeline Adams
Maurice Price, a successful New York portrait and mural painter, arrives at the New Hampshire country studio of his friend James Anthony, lent to him for a rest cure after a bout of influenza, and realizes he has not painted a landscape from nature in ten years. Searching Anthony's supplies for materials, he selects a mahogany panel already painted on one side: a caricature portrait made three years earlier, during a benefit "Faker Show" for the French wounded, by Anthony's late studio-boy Pietro, using Anthony's model Amouretta McGowan (real name Anna McGowan) as subject and mimicking Maurice's own famous pearl-painting technique, earning Maurice the old nickname "the Price-of-Great-Pearls." Both Pietro and Amouretta have since died, Pietro in the influenza epidemic and Amouretta of a chill caught while posing as "Innocence" in a vaudeville tableau shortly before her planned wedding to the wealthy collector William Saltonstall. Unable to bring himself to paint over Pietro's tribute to Amouretta, Maurice paints his landscape of Mount Ascutney and the New Hampshire hills on the panel's blank reverse side, working with a sense of communion with departed friends, including war casualties Charlie Anthony and young sculptor Harry, as well as Pietro and Amouretta. The finished landscape is later hailed by critics as Price's masterpiece. Maurice sends it, framed by a Frenchman skilled in the old gilding methods, to the small gallery of his cousin Hal Wrayne, the Court of New Departures, while sending his other new work to the dealer Farintosh. Hal's German assistant, the famulus, unpacking the panel, mistakenly mounts and displays the Amouretta side instead of the landscape. William Saltonstall, seeing what he believes is a lurid exhibition of Amouretta's image, is outraged and demands Hal withdraw and conceal the picture, prompting a telegram summoning Maurice back to the city. Returning by train, Maurice meets Saltonstall at his club, where the confusion is resolved: Saltonstall, having discovered the frame-maker's mark, had turned the panel over and seen the landscape underneath, and it moved him deeply. The two men discuss the deaths of Pietro and Amouretta and Maurice's inability to destroy either side of the panel; Maurice explains that a different, cherished small portrait of Amouretta — intended as a wedding gift for her and Saltonstall, never sold, and mislaid during his illness — still belongs to Saltonstall, who did not know of its existence. The two set off together to the Court of New Departures to sort matters out with Hal.
By Adeline Adams · First published 1922 · Genre: Literary Fiction, Historical Fiction, Psychological Fiction · 4 chapters · 10,692 words
First lines
If you search from Greenwich Village to Lawrence Park, and then from Turtle Bay to Chelsea, you will not find in all New York a painter less spoiled by fame than Maurice Price. It was in his nature to know from the very first that the luckier you are, the kinder you can be. I do not regard it as a limitation that in what he does and in what he wears he scarcely satisfies the romantic ideal about artists and their ways. There is nothing wild in his attire, and he does not live more dangerously than other citizens must. Still, there is something about his type of good looks that sets him apart and gives him away. Those who see him for the first time, in profile, whether at the Follies or at a funeral of an Academician, sometimes think that if they knew the man, they would esteem him more than they would love him. That is because they have not yet met him in front view, and discovered the eager friendliness in his gray eyes, the sensitive, listening expression of his whole face; the look that says, "Tell me your joke in life, and I'll tell mine. " His merry young wife had once declared that there were only two things that saved his head from an intolerable Greek goddishness. Maurice's curiosity was roused, but the girl had kept him guessing until the end of the week, when she explained that one of the things was his right ear, the other, his left; both of them stuck out more than the classic law allowed; just as well, too; since, for her part, she had preferred to marry a man, not an archangel or a Greek coin. The man smiled, and kept on painting.
What this Textopian page supports
The Amouretta Landscape is listed on Textopian as a short story by Adeline Adams, dated 1922 CE.
This source record anchors work identity, reading entry points, and catalog context for checking claims about the work.
- Work type: Short story
- Author: Adeline Adams
- Date: 1922 CE
- Language: English
- Genres: Literary Fiction, Historical Fiction, Psychological Fiction, Artist/Art Fiction, Romance
- Length: 10,692 words
- Structure: 4 chapters, 82 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Standard (8th-9th Grade)
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- Work identity for The Amouretta Landscape by Adeline Adams
- Canonical title URL and first readable passage URL
- Genre and topic classification from the Textopian catalog
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Genres
- Literary Fiction — The work is fundamentally character-driven narrative exploration of an artist's psychology and philosophical struggles, employing reflective prose and emotional depth to examine themes of artistic creation, memory, and human connection rather than plot-driven entertainment.
- Historical Fiction — Set in post-World War I America with specific historical references to 1920s New York art galleries, named artists of the era (Sargent, Whistler, Corot), and the broader cultural context of artistic practice during this period, including allusions to wartime losses and military service.
- Psychological Fiction — The narrative emphasizes introspective exploration of Maurice Price's inner life, artistic conflicts, emotional responses to loss, and the workings of his consciousness through extensive interior monologue and character revelation rather than external action.
- Artist/Art Fiction — The central narrative concerns itself with painting practice, artistic philosophy, the relationship between commerce and artistic integrity, and detailed depictions of an artist's creative process and relationship to his medium and subject matter.
Tags
landscape painting · portraiture · New Hampshire · New York · grief · post-World War I · mistaken identity · artistic legacy · memorial · spirituality · creative process · romantic love