Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 2.djvu/208

192 presence, in the middle of the room, of a large, rudely fashioned easel, upon which stood an unframed oil painting. There seemed to me something strangely incongruous in this association of art with penal servitude, this blending of luxury with extreme destitution, and as I returned Miss Armfeldt's greeting I could not help looking inquiringly at the picture and then at her, as if to ask, "How did you ever happen to bring an oil-painting to the mines of Kará?" She understood my unspoken query, and, turning the easel half around so that I could see the picture, said: "I have been trying to make a portrait of my mother. She thinks that she must go back to Russia this year on account of her other children. Of course I shall never see her again, — she is too old and feeble to make another journey to Eastern Siberia, — and I want something to recall her face to me when she has gone out of my life. I know that it is a bad portrait, and I am almost ashamed to show it to you; but I wish to ask your help. I have only a few colors, I cannot get any more, and perhaps Mr. Frost may be able to suggest some way of using my scanty materials to better advantage."

I looked at the wretched, almost ghastly, portrait in silence, but with a heart full of the deepest sympathy and pity. It bore a recognizable resemblance to the original, and showed some signs of artistic talent and training; but the canvas was of the coarsest and most unsuitable quality; the colors were raw and crude; and it was apparent, at a glance, that the artist had vainly struggled with insuperable difficulties growing out of a scanty and defective equipment. With the few tubes of raw color at her command she had found it impossible to imitate the delicate tints of living flesh, and the result of her loving labor was a portrait that Mr. Frost evidently regarded with despair, and that seemed to me to be little more than a ghastly caricature. It was pitiful to see how hard the daughter had tried, with wholly inadequate means of execution, to make for herself a likeness of the mother whom she was so