Short Fiction · Chapter
Masters of Arts explained
Billy Keogh and Carry White scheme to paint a portrait of the president of a Latin American country for $10,000, with White struggling between his artistic ideals and the commercial nature of the work.
What happens
Billy Keogh and Carry White scheme to paint a portrait of the president of a Latin American country for $10,000, with White struggling between his artistic ideals and the commercial nature of the work. After completing the garish painting, White tears up the payment check and destroys the canvas in a fit of artistic conscience. Meanwhile, political unrest erupts in Coralio over rumors of the president selling out to England, but order is restored when the president and the English agent deny any deal.
Themes in this chapter
Ambition and Failure
White's ambition to create transcendent art clashes with the commercial scheme, leading to the destruction of both the painting and the payment.
Deception and Appearance vs. Reality
The portrait is a grotesque caricature disguised as a heroic painting, and the political crisis is based on false rumors of a sellout.
Humor and Irony
Keogh's pragmatic business talk contrasts with White's artistic anguish, and the mob's fury is ironically directed at an innocent English tourist.
Characters to notice
- Billy Keogh
Schemer and business partner who pushes White to complete the portrait for profit, but later shows a change of heart when he tears up a photograph rather than use it to blackmail the president.
- Señor White
An artist torn between his high ideals of Art and the commercial necessity of painting a ridiculous portrait; he ultimately destroys the painting and the payment check.
Key passages
“I wanted to paint a picture some day that people would stand before and forget that it was made of paint. I wanted it to creep into them like a bar of music and mushroom there like a soft bullet.”
White dreams of creating art that moves viewers so deeply they forget it's just paint, like music that takes root in the soul.
White expresses his lofty artistic ideals, contrasting with the commercial portrait he is forced to paint.
“I tore it into little pieces and threw them on the floor. A workman was repainting the pillars inside the patio. A bucket of his paint happened to be convenient. I picked up his brush and slapped a quart of blue paint all over that ten-thousand-dollar nightmare.”
White destroys the check and then covers the painting with blue paint, rejecting the money and the work in a fit of artistic conscience.
Climactic moment where White chooses artistic integrity over financial gain.
“I've been in some funny deals, Carry, but I've always managed to scramble fair, and match my brains and capital against the other fellow's. But when it comes to—well, when you've got the other fellow cinched, and the screws on him, and he's got to put up—why, it don't strike me as being a man's game.”
Keogh reflects that using a compromising photograph to force payment feels unethical, so he returns the photo and refuses the money.
Keogh shows a moral turn, rejecting a dishonest advantage despite his earlier focus on profit.