i I1' How the Mad Jealousy of a New York Artist3sWife Slashed His /■ _ « ____ Masterpieces Into Ribbons, * / Sent Him to a Prison Cell and Nearly Cost Her An artist’s model whose face and figure have been the inspirations for many celebrated paintings ’odolph fitiden, the painter who ha* learned how hope ies* it wn to u*e any other woman than hi* wife for a \ model I An innocent and appealing pose, but one that might add fuel to the flames of jealousy in an artist’s wife Mm. Suzanne Suden, die latest surprising example of the desperate lengths to which a wife can be drhren by jealousy of the models her artist husband paints IF YOU had had your ear to the key hole of a certain artist’s studio in New York’s picturesque Greenwich Village one night not long ago you would have heard thq sound of great tearing sobs, the sound of a woman crying as if her heart was about to break. And a little later, if you had looked Into the dim candle-lit room, with paint ings hanging everywhere of Bohemian life and bobbed-haired, scantily clad girls, you would have witnessed as dramatic a scene as perhaps even this region of many stirring dramas ever saw. The heart of the sobbing woman in tha studio was really breaking that night, aa the events that followed quickly have yrith the re action came the realiza tion of the grief and anger her husband would feel when he came home and found all his prized masterpieces hopelessly ruined. Never, she thought, could she face him—better to kill herself and escape the whole thing for good! So she groped her way into the next room and hastily opened a box of poison tablets, swallowing them before she could have time to think any more about whether she really wanted to die or not. Rudolph came home in time to hear her screams of agony as the poison began its deadly work. He gave her an anfT dote, called an ambulance and poor little jealous Suxanne was rushed to the hoe pita!. where the doctors said that she had a chance to live. But even when she recovered and came home agaiTvthe question of models came up and Suzanne continued to be jealous of Rudolph's painting them. She also continued to threaten suicide, and every time she heard at the studio door t\ie voice of one of the Village beauties who posed for Rudolph she declared she would take another dose of the poison tablets. There were bitter quarrels, for Ru dolph declared his wife had no reason for her jealousy and thought it cruel and wicked of her to interfere with his artistic ambitions. One night she had him arrested for cruelty to her. Rudolph Suden had once been quite contented to paint only his pretty little French wife. In those days everything was perfectly delightful in the little Vil lage studio. But there was trouble un ending when he announced that his wife's charms were no longer enough to inspire fresh work of art and that he must find himself a model of quite a dif ferent type of -beauty. The romance of Rudolph and Suzanne began overseas, when he lay wounded in an American base hospital. She was * • 1 / then the prettiest of French Red Cross nurses, utterly charming in her big white headdress and with her big brown eyes and soft mouse-colored hair. The very first thing Rudolph dldVhen he became convalescent in the army hos pital was to pull out his palette and brushes and begin the first of innumera ble pictures of her. At that time he forgot all about his models at home in Greenwich Village, and he decided found the prettiest subject i _ Whenever Suzanne wasn’t busy with her hospital "duties he painted her, and he went on painting her until he went back to the trenches. Then they wefe married and Suzanne came back with her Rudolph to Green wich Village and continued to pose for him and he continued to be contented with his one model for a long time. When the sad day came when Rudolph felt the need of a new kind of inspira tion Suzanne didn’t say much, but she thought a great deal. In fact, she brood ed and brooded until the little green monster had a very firm hold on her poor little heart and she lost all her one-time vivacity and merry waye. She would lie in the next room at night and listen with jealous fury to the laughing voice of the model Rudolph had chosen for the evening. As time went on she became more and more assured that the lure of these other models was keeping Rudolph away from her, hold ing him in the studio until unearthly hours of the night, making him forget all about his wife. There was one model whom she hated most of ail. This one was younger than herself, with burnished red-gold hair— quite different from Suzanne’s, which , is not at all red or golden. Rudolph couldn’t resist the inspiration of that hair; he admitted it himself, and he was all wrapped up in his earnest effort to transfer tq his canvases something of its fascinating beauty. And so it went on for months and months. Suzanne, who had once mixed gayly jn the studio parties, became more and more morose. At the same time her very tall and handsome Rudolph, with hie artistically long, blond hair, became more and more popular in the various pictur esque haunts of the artist folk who live in this imitation of the Paris Latin Quarter. Poor little Suzanne reached the dra matic climax of her jealousy on the night that brought her more dead than alive into the suicide ward in one of the big city hospitals. On that night, she says, she worked herself up into believing that Rudolph had gone to one of the Greenwich Vil lage parties with the red-headed model, a thing he had never done before, to her knowledge. As she sat alone in the can dle-lit studio she was tortured beyond reason by the white flesh and annoyingly triumphant smile on the face of the painting of that same red-headed girl. Sobbing bitterly, she threw herself across the divan in despair and tried to shut the hated face from view. But It haunted her, and in spite of herself she looked up at it once more. “There she was—that horrid little creature, who wouldn't leave Rudolph alone and who was now being admired and studied as she once was! And where was Rudolph now? Out with her' in one of the Village tearooms, laughing about poor Suzanne, who was becoming such a wreck? Or was he searching for still more of these hatefjjT inspirations? Oh, if she only could destroy that horrid, ag gravating smile—and, why not?” §he enjoyed the job while she was doing it—every rip of the canvas, as she explained later, gave her a satisfaction past description, the satisfaction of de stroying at least in effigy that which she considered had deprived her of her handsome artist husband’s love and ad miration. “But when I had finished slashing the canvases my rage also was over,” she explained later in the hospital. “I didn’t take the poison out of jealousy, but I did spoil the pictures because I hated that girl so. *1 tried to kill myself because I was afraid to face Rudolph after ruin ing his hard work of so many months.” When she came to her senses in the hospital Suzanne talked incessantly of the models who had lured her Rudolph away from her, and particularly of one with fiery red hair. It was the same when she came home again. She was not satisfied with her husband’s declara tion to paint hereafter no one but her, and at last she had him put in a prison cell, where she thought the “women who wouldn’t leave him alone” couldn't find him. What was the right thing for Rudolph Suden to nave done when confronted by his wife’s insane, unreasoning jealousy? Should he have yielded to it and sacri ficed his artistic ambitions by giving up the models in whom his brush found such happy inspiration? That is a difficult question and one with which, doubtless, almost every mar ried artist is at some time or other brought face to face. The artist’s at tempt to answer it is seldom attended by such spectacularly unhappy results as in the case of the Sudens, but it is, nevertheless, a stumbling block to the happiness of countless artists and their wives. Many years ago a French wtiter said that there was only one way for a painter or sculptor to find peace and happiness in marriage and at the same time achieve success in his profession: by using for his model only his wife. A large number of famous Artists have done this very thing, but none of them has ever explained whether he chose this course because he thought it the only way out of his dilemma or be cause he was really convinced that he could never hope to find any more satis factory inspiration than his wife’s charms supplied. Since Sir John Lavery, the great Eng lish artist, married a beautiful Chicago woman he has painted no one but her. Every woman he puts on his much ad mired canvases is an idealization of his wife’s charming face and figure. With Charles Dana Gibson, the dis tinguished American artist, it has been much the same. The Gibson girl he mfcde famous is a faithful portrait of the Vir ginia beauty he married mafiy years ago and with whom he is living happily to this day. But although for an artist to use only his wife for his model jnay be a good way to insure domestic happiness, art critics do net think it a plan that is at all conducive to the best work of which a man is capable. No one woman, they say, can be charmfhg enough to supply all the inspiration needed by the painter or sculptor of genius. It is felt that the greater the variety of models from which he has to choose the better results he will achieve. Beautiful as Lady Lavery is, the pub lic is getting rather “fed up” with the innumerable portraits of her which crowd the art galleries and stores and the homes of fashionable society people. And many of the critics are convinced that Sir John’s genius would achieve far greater things if he would not persist in limiting himself to this one model. But perhaps Sir John Lavery would rather sacrifice a large measure of fame than risk marring his happiness with the wife to whom he is so devoted. Certainly there seems no present likelihood of his giving Lady Lavery the least possible cause for such jealousy as that which tor tured poor Suzanne Suden so that her friends fear she may lose her mind.