io! i'm Sam, and untold aeons ago i wrote and illustrated for roleplaying games from White Wolf and HDI, and even got some stuff into Dark Horse Presents. Currently i am working on a project entitled The Pickman Portfolio, derived from the short story "Pickman's Model" by H. P. Lovecraft, which will serve to reaffirm the place of Richard Upton Pickman as one Boston's - if not the nation's - or the world's -- great painters of the Realist school. All of Pickman's surviving work will be presented, including sketches and studies for his best-known titles, his influences examined, his relationships with such notable contemporaries as his cousin the poet Edward Pickman Derby, the poet Justin Geoffrey, and the artist Henry Anthony Wilcox of Providence, R. I., elucidated. The introduction, by J. Eliot Thurber of The Pickman Conservative, places Pickman within a detailed history of the Boston Art Club; here is an excerpt:
Toward the end of her richly interesting life, the renowned art collector, philanthropist and patron of the arts, Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840-1924, figure XX; a.k.a. “Isabella of Boston,” “Donna Isabella,” “Belle” and “Mrs. Jack,” after her husband John Lowell “Jack” Gardner, grandson of distinguished Salem shipowner Joseph Peabody), felt it necessary to instruct young ladies involving themselves in the art scene about handling themselves with regard to the all-male society of the Boston Art Club. Already notorious for her eccentric style – she is reported to have incited a riot in 1912 when she arrived at a very formal Boston Symphony concert sporting a white headband emblazoned with the motto “Oh, you Red Sox” – Donna Isabella had long been considered the grand dama of the Bostonian cultural scene. Convening in her palatial home gallery at Fenway Court, she warned her naïve listeners of the social ensnarements employed by unscrupulous men, and of the depredations that they might exert upon any inexperienced young women that may wander into their traps. The textile magnate Bosworth emerges from these conversations as an object of particular concern; purporting to be an amateur artist himself, he would invite innocent young ladies to “appreciate his etchings,” then, having lured them to his private room, would force himself upon them in a most callous and brutish fashion. When the course of the conversation turned to the subject of Pickman, however, even the voluble and outspoken Isabella of Boston became reticent to speak. “Under no circumstances must you ever agree to look at that man’s etchings,” she said at last. “But, why, Belle? What will he do?” rejoined her youthful audience. With an inward shudder, Donna Isabella replied, “My dear, he will show you his etchings.”
A brochure containing the studies for Pickman's major works may be found available for purchase at http://stores.lulu.com/saminabinet along with such other treasures as illustrated excerpts from the journals of Abdus-Samad Ibn Ruwiyat ad-Din and The One Thousand Swinging Nights (And Another Night On The Side), which is the Arabian Nights retold in the HipSemantic style of Lord Buckley.
(An unexpurgated version of the Pickman Portfolio brochure is also currently available; the url where it can be ordered will be provided upon request to mature patrons of the Arts showing proof of majority.)
