The Guild News, April 1941, pages 13-14
Jeanne Duplaix Wouldn't Quit -- Her Address: 460 Park Avenue [New York, NY]
Her life was "dull and commonplace until the first bout with tuberculosis." Then she studied costume design. That was in Baltimore.
A relapse brought her to Saranac Lake, "where I met Jonas Lie and had my first lesson in serious drawing and painting." One year later she returned to Baltimore "to study drawing and painting and get a divorce."
Then came Paris, and the life of an art student. There, "In the Spring, I fell head over heels in love with an intelligent and charming young Frenchman, and married him." They bought a farm on the Cote d'Azur, and raised bees. Another relapse. the business failed. Broke and sick, she and her husband left for America.
Two years of Baltimore, New York and Philadelphia, with a short period of work in the Pennsylvania Museum. Again a relapse.
"Three really good years in Saranac Lake, with the best doctor in the world, Lawrason Brown, giving me help and friendship, as well as medical care."
Then the problem:
To stay on, and probably never leave?
To build a new life?
The prospects:
"A pneumothorax case, no money, no training, no job, and forty-one years old."
She went to New York.
The woman who made that decision is Mrs. Jeanne Duplaix. She does not regret it, for this is a "success story." Mrs. Duplaix today is director of the 460 Park Avenue Gallery.
She took over at a time when even the leaders in this highly competitive business were starving. Her own gallery was bare of pictures. She describes what happened as follows:
"With hard work and some luck we arranged a series of exhibitions of contemporary Americans. One of these exhibitions was a large portrait show, fifty portraits by fifty living painters. It was a great success, and out of the unusual interest shown in that exhibition was born the idea of the Portrait Painters' Clearing House."
Mrs. Duplaix talked to portrait painters, obtained their enthusiastic support, and established the Clearing House in 1940. Briefly, the idea behind the venture is this: The work of established painters in the various price ranges is shown. If you have $50 in your pocket, you can walk in, see a sample of that sort of work, select your artist, and have your portrait painted. If you have $500 or $5,000 you can do the same thing. In other words, much of the mystery and buncomb surrounding the transaction have been swept aside , and artist and patron have been brought closer together, with mutual advantage.
This February the second exhibition of the sort, this time for the benefit of British War Relief, was staged. The first painter to obtain a commission was Mrs. D. Blair Jones, of Saranac Lake, known professionally as Amy Jones. The sale was made the first morning as Mrs. Jones' picture was being hung.
This quick sale pleased Mrs. Duplaix as much as it pleased Mrs. Jones, for she has kept up her Saranac Lake friendships. She says her own success was made possible by Saranac Lake friends. Her success, incidentally, sounds very easy, but it has been marked by drama and struggle all along the way.
The drama began back in 1923, when she was sharing a house on the Severn River with Mr. and Mrs. Jesse Peek, also of Baltimore. Mr. Peek had a hemorrhage on the golf course, and came to Saranac Lake. Three months later, Mrs. Duplaix had a relapse, and came to rejoin Mr. and Mrs. Peek, who had an apartment on Bloomingdale Avenue. That summer they moved to Colby Pond, and then she met Jonas Lie.
Mrs. Duplaix describes the Paris incident, in 1926, as follows: "Paris, of course, was lovely. I went there with Clair de Lisle, who later married Willard Huntington Wright, better known as S. S. Van Dine. We were both art students, and it was great fun. We landed in France in a blizzard, sat up all night in an unheated train and, as all art students do, went to a
She Introduces Artists and Patrons [subtitle on following page]
little, cheap hotel on the left bank where, unfortunately, there was no "chauffauge central." The next day I came down with bronchitis and took to my bed.
"Claire went out to look over the art schools, and picked Andre L'Hote as the most promising. there she met Helen Worden, who is now a feature writer on the New York World-Telegram. She was just another art student then, with an unusual amount of ambition and a very warm heart. I spoke no French and Claire very little. Helen took us under her wing, moved us into her hotel which, thank Heaven, was heated, and introduced us to her friends."
Just this month, the three women lunched together in the Ritz Towers, in New York, where Miss Worden now lives, but that is getting ahead of the story. Back in Paris:
"My new husband wanted to paint. We thought it would be wise to leave Paris, which was rather expensive, and move down to the Cote d'Azur. With only a little money, and even less common sense, we decided to buy a thirty-acre farm with a twenty-room house, stable for twelve cows, etc., back in the mountains, thirty miles from Grasse, over one-way hairpin mountain roads.
"It was wonderful. we raised bees, painted, and bought a gramophone. Evenings we listened to Bach, and Mozart. Then I had a serious relapse, and took to bed for a year or more. the bees got a very contagious disease of the larvae and died off. So at the end of three fascinating years on the farm we were broke, and left for America.
Then after two years in cities, came the "three really good years in Saranac Lake." There were :sketch evenings" with Amy Jones, Stephen Phillips, now with the Saranac Laboratory; and Harry Brown, now with the Hollywood shop.
After that, the important decision to make. Once in New York, Mrs. Duplaix's first "break" came from a Saranac Lake friend, Fillmore Hyde [sic] whose wife had been one of Dr. J. Woods Price's patients. Mr. Hyde gave her a job on a magazine called Revue. In six months it folded up. Mr. Hyde went to edit Cue, and Mrs. Duplaix did publicity.
Then Mr. Hyde sent for her, and soon she was selling advertising space in Cue to art galleries.
That was a tough job, and Mrs. Duplaix says she had sense enough to quit. Mrs. Cornelius J. Sullivan, who had 460 Park Avenue, took her in. Soon Mrs. Sullivan died, and the firm of Lois Shaw, Inc., which had taken over the gallery, decided to carry on. Mrs. Duplaix was made gallery director.
It has been interesting work, enlivened by visits from Saranac Lake friends, including Paul Sample and Harry Brown. Mrs. Duplaix admits there have been lucky breaks, including a display in Life Magazine. Mrs. Jones shared that, for her portrait, "Sis," was reproduced.
Mrs. Duplaix likes it.
"Running a gallery is hard work. There are difficult moments, usually with temperamental artists, but never any dull ones. You never know who will come out of the lift, and it is often someone very entertaining. We have strange assortments of visitors: John Marquand, Cole Porter, Mrs. Wendell Willkie, Howard Chandler Christy, Mrs. Vincent Astor, Miss Anne Morgan, the John Nicholas Browns . . . Often we do not know we have been talking to a celebrity until he has left.
"I have been very lucky. So many things have helped me. The magazine job -- learning to meet a deadline, a rare thing in the art world -- the publicity job. Then the opportunity to do this.
"I think we have a chance to make our mark. But this is only the beginning."
That last paragraph is very revealing.
Adirondack Daily Enterprise, September 28, 1953
THE GUILD OPENS
The Saranac Lake Rehabilitation Guild opens its Fall term today. It has become one of the most important activities in Saranac Lake, or in the Adirondacks, for that matter.
The Guild is in many ways like a university, with a corps of competent instructors teaching more than 60 subjects. Its primary objective is to1 help restore to productive life, people who have been disabled by disease or accident.
The technical training, the therapy, counseling and other services, make it possible for many Guild students to get jobs which they might otherwise have difficulty in obtaining.
Fortunately for Our Town, not only are disabled people able to take courses, but anyone can take them. As a result, more and more townspeople are enrolling in business, arts and crafts, or other courses.
The Guild is the outgrowth of a campfire discussion in 1935 between William F. Stearns, present executive director, the late Morris Croll, professor emeritus from Princeton, and Mrs. Jeanne Duplaix. It opened for business in January 1936 in a beaver-board partitioned office in the Red Cross room at Town Hall.
Today it employs more than forty people, has a net worth of more than $40,000, exclusive of the Prescott House, which is valued at $1 on the books but has an appraised replacement value of $180,000, and is becoming nationally famous for the results achieved by its educational and therapeutic programs.
In fact a number of large insurance companies and corporations are sending people to the Guild for rehabilitation.
We all can be justly proud of the Guild, and we wish it continued success and growth.
