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Copy of letter from George de Forest Brush to his daughter Nancy

19 W. 31st
Sunday Oct. 22, 1905

Darling Nancy:
I received your book cover yesterday and I was so delighted with its success. It is splendid. You don't know what an effect it makes in my studio. There are only two things that keep it from being a complete successful work of art. The first is important, the drawing of the figures. This is just weak enough to keep it from being taken for the work of some mature artist, so that you went to go in for the study of the nude. I want you and dear Gerome with me at once that you may lose no time in developing your talents. Your book cover is such a remarkable effort and gives me such pleasure that I do not feel like criticising it, knowing that in your own good time you will make all things right by your own genius, but that it only one feeling;the other side is that you must learn now all you can and the way to learn is to do your cover over again, correcting what you have failed in. The feet of your boy are too much like the sketch on the next sheet.
(drawings)
I enclose a sketch that is rather academic and not to follow but to remind you when you do your figures do them first nude and make sure of the movement. I think that you would find plenty of ideas in the big red books. Your lady also looks as though she was standing. Her shoulders, head, and breast are good but from there down there is a dim (drawing) red line that runs straight down to her feet. That gives the idea that her stomach is drawn in. The framework of the whole