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In The Bachelor Portraits, by author James Irwin Kruger, Theodora (Teddy) Cullen's one true love was forged in the fires that ravaged San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake.
Teddy was a woman of the twentieth century, however, convinced that her destiny was to help change the world. She wanted her rich husband, Barron Bachelor, to indulge her dream of women's social emancipation, and her childhood hero, the impoverished artist Tom Quinn, to satisfy her passion for life. Yet when her loveless marriage explodes amid accusations of drug addiction, adultery, fraud, and even murder, it ignites a fiery romance that Tom chronicles in a series of erotic portraits of the beautiful Teddy Bachelor. These paintings were to change all three lives, but not before this star-crossed romance plays itself out against some of the century's most dramatic times.
Only the labor war that bloodied the San Francisco waterfront in the 1930s could bring an end to what the city's newspapers called "The Love Story of the Century." Or, like great art, was it destined to live forever?
In its isolation the hacienda was an island of peace and quiet. Tom went to work immediately with renewed enthusiasm, concentrating first on completing his first nude, based on the sketch he made of Teddy lying in the sunlight amid a jumble of sheets. He captured not only the graceful flow of her body but also the earthy simplicity of his North Beach apartment against an atmosphere suffused with the eerie light of the early morning sun as it spilled through the window. Teddy was embarrassed by the intimacy of the work, the air of total abandon projected by its subject.
"Do I really look like that in the morning?"
"You are beautiful in the morning. That's why I painted you."
"You could call it 'A Bad Night at the Bordello.'"
"Nonsense. It was a fleeting moment of extraordinary beauty. I'll never forget how you looked that morning. I'll never again be able to look at you without being stirred to the very depths of my soul."
"But this must be ours, Tom, only ours. Promise me that. No one else must ever see it."
"I promise, if it really embarrasses you. I'll bring it back to North Beach and hide it away where no one else ever fill find it. I'll try to make the others more discreet."
"You mean you plan to do others?"
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"As long as you'll stay and pose for me. I want to do hundreds of them. I want to capture every facet of your being, every nuance of your beauty. I'll make your portrait a celebration of our love, because no man could ever love a woman so much, no other woman could be so beautiful."
"It's wonderful of you to say so, Tom. But next time let me brush my hair first," she said with a smile.
That was enough to inspire his next portrait of her as she sat nude in front of her bedroom mirror at the hacienda drawing a brush through her long, golden hair. Others followed. On overcast days he posed her on a stool in the broad window at catch every glimmer of available light, while she watched nervously over her shoulder lest someone drive suddenly up the road and see her there. When the days were warm and sunny he led her into a nearby meadow where she sat in a field of grass as monarch butterflies fluttered around her. Often they'd climb to the summit, seeking a likely setting among the redwoods. There she might recline upon a bed of moss as sunlight through the woodland canopy dappled her velvet skin with shadow. Or she might wade in a shimmering pool among the lily pads or play provocatively beneath a small waterfall, her usually bright hair matted darkly against her wet and sparkling skin. Beyond the trees in the high granite reaches of the mountains she stretched languorously across a smooth boulder in full sunlight, a Diana fatigued by the hunt. Even at night he painted her. Once he posed her with her chin resting upon her knees while she stared in childlike wonder at the flames in the fireplace, and again as she stood goddess-like in the window, gazing longingly at the full moon, the folds of the drapery only half concealing her classic figure.
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Teddy tried to look upon the portraits with detachment, appraising them with a studied objectivity. She tried not to see Teddy Bachelor, but an anonymous model. It was artistry that was important, she convinced herself. But in her heart she knew that more than art, these paintings were the private diary of their life together, each portrait celebrated with a feast of love. Tom could not look upon her hour after hour without being overwhelmed by desire. And she responded in kind, seeing in each painting the depth of his love for her. In their walks through the woods they delighted in counting the places where they had made love, while at the same time searching our sites as a backdrop for a new work.
"That would be beautiful in the early evening, don't you think?" she'd ask. "We must come here tomorrow at sunset." And before she could look around he had taken her in his arms, and sunset had become now, art had become life, and life had become love. They were living an idyll such as few had ever experienced, and with all their hearts they believed it would never end, that no storm ever could lay waste their Eden.
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