"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:
“When the inhabitants of some sequestered island first descry the “big canoe” of the European rolling through the blue waters towards their shores, they rush down to the beach in crowds, and with open arms stand ready to embrace the strangers. Fatal embrace! They fold to their bosoms the vipers whose sting is destined to poison all their joys; and the instinctive feeling of love within their breasts is soon converted into the bitterest hate.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“Remember how often you have postponed minding your interest, and let slip those opportunities the gods have given you. It is now high time to consider what sort of world you are part of, and from what kind of governor of it you are descended; that you have a set period assigned you to act in, and unless you improve it to brighten and compose your thoughts, it will quickly run off with you, and be lost beyond recovery.”
—Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121–180)