Julius LeBlanc Stewart, American
It Was Alexandra’s First Modeling Gig and She Faced Quite the Dilemma: Was the Move Here To Mention the Fire Ants, or Just Focus on Her Yoga Breathing For Three Hours?, 1899
Oil on canvas
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Instead of "the teaching artist", I meant to say "this artist".
Info, or links that point to more info, about the teaching artist can be found here, here, here, here, here (can be read in full for free on Fridays), here, here, and here, perhaps in addition to what's in his Wikipedia page.
/// Known in English as “The Laughing Maid,”
she sat smiling (and bare) in a glade.
Is she just scatter-brained,
or has no one explained:
Don’t squat nude in the grass with legs splayed.
/// It would seem she has nothing to wear
but some red flowers stuck in her hair.
She is pretty and pert,
but can’t weave a grass skirt
so she’s stuck; folks may see her and stare.
/// She had come to the glade in a dress
and her underthings, nevertheless,
she proceeded to lose
all her clothes and her shoes
when they fell in the stream, yet… no stress!
/// She sits calmly here, not far from home,
very patiently waiting for gloam.
When the darkness descends,
her entrapment here ends.
Until then, she chants mantrically, “Om.”
/// “Don’t get up, there is no need to stir, Miss.
I am coming to you with a thermos
with warm water, and soap,
and a washcloth. I hope
to scrub grass stains off your epidermis.”
/// He had sworn, “Nothing lewd will occur, Miss.”
And to prove it he’d said “epidermis”
instead of “your flesh,”
which might have seemed fresh.
(But there’s booze in the dude’s other thermos.)