Word: eilshemius
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Louis Michel Eilshemius, scrag-bearded, self-styled Mahatma, Supreme Parnassian and Grand Transcendent Eagle of Art, spent half a century painting in obscurity, writing letters of self-praise to editors, growing poorer, bitterer, more desperate. In 1932, when he was 68, fame and recognition came to the old man. Two Manhattan galleries held exhibitions of his paintings, the Metropolitan Museum bought one. Last week, from the musty, gaslighted Victorian brownstone house his father left him (on which he was unable to pay the mounting taxes), Eilshemius was taken to Bellevue Hospital, placed in the psychopathic ward...
...them he was the world's greatest artist, passed out handbills describing himself as "Mesmerist-Prophet and Mystic, Humorist Galore, Ex All Round Athletic Sportsman (to 1889), Scientist supreme: all ologies, Ex Fancy amateur Dancer. . . ." He wrote crank letters to the newspapers. His letterhead: "Mahatma Dr. Louis M. Eilshemius, M.A. etc., Mightiest Mind and Wonder of the Worlds, Supreme Parnassian and Grand Transcendant Eagle of Art." His paintings, on the rare occasions he could get them shown, brought horse laughs from critics and public alike...
Last week Louis Eilshemius was again hailed as "the greatest living master"-this time by somebody else.* In three of Manhattan's swank 57th Street galleries- Kleemann, Boyer, Valentine, he was being given simultaneous one-man shows. Another Eilshemius exhibition was touring the Pacific Coast; a fifth was about to be sent through the Middle West. In seven short years the Mahatma has turned from a crank to a cult. Manhattan's sedate Metropolitan Museum has three of his canvases, and he is represented in virtually every important public and private art collection...
...screen of self-publicity, discover that his naive, whimsical paintings were worthy of serious attention. For a song, dealers then snapped up his lush romantic landscapes, his pictures of Samoa, his moonlit fantasies, his strange nude "nymphs" bathing in improbable streams. These have since sold at high prices, while Eilshemius went in want. Last week his three Manhattan dealers agreed to cut him in on a percentage of future sales...
...been many a day since the Mahatma has gone to an exhibition. At 75, he is a cripple confined to his second-story bedroom in a gloomy, gaslit brownstone house on 57th Street. Eilshemius persists in sitting with his back to the window, his face turned away from the light. He shrills at visitors: "It's too late to enjoy my fame. I got bad legs...