"De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period" is a short story that is part of the Nine Stories collection by J. D. Salinger. It was published in 1952.
It is the story of a talented young man who moves to Montreal to become an instructor for a correspondence art academy. He had recently moved to New York with his stepfather because his mother had died. There he learns of the art academy Les Amis Des Vieux Maîtres and decides to apply as a staff instructor. To do so, he feels compelled to embellish his credentials with extravagant accomplishments and a chummy relationship with Picasso. While sneering at the childish attempts of his talentless mail-order pupils, he falls in love with the artistic beauty of a religious painting submitted to him by his sole pupil of promise: an ageless, faceless nun. De Daumier-Smith has an epiphany that reveals the nature of beauty, allowing him to reinvent himself and transform his life.
Read more about De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period: History
Famous quotes containing the words blue and/or period:
“Sometimes we see a cloud that’s dragonish,
A vapor sometimes like a bear or lion,
A towered citadel, a pendant rock,
A forked mountain, or blue promontory
With trees upon ‘t that nod unto the world
And mock our eyes with air. Thou hast seen these signs;
They are black vesper’s pageants.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“There is a period in the history of the individual, as of the race, when the hunters are the “best men,” as the Algonquins called them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)