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William James Glackens American, 1870-1938 Behold Portate! (Illustration for "The Portate Ultimatum"), circa 1899 Gouache and mixed media on paper 5 1/2 x 7 3/4 inches Provenance: Kraushaar Galleries, New York Literature: Arthur Colton, "The Portate Ultimatum," Scribner's Magazine 26 (December 1899), 713 illus. Glackens created this gouache as the first and most important illustration for a fictional piece in Scribner's Magazine, published in December of 1899. The story is told from the point of view of an engineer sent by the Union Electric Company to provide electricity to an imaginary South American city named Portate, proudly proclaimed "a city of pleasure, a second Paris." When the mayor and its governing officials refuse to pay their electric bill, the engineer waits patiently until a festival night when the city is to be lit up. Just after the mayor has proclaimed, "Behold Portate," the engineer cut off the electricity, plunging the city in darkness. This act is later attributed thought to be the work of ghosts. In this image, Glackens captured the penultimate moment of the story, when the mayor is overlooking his city, aglow in electric light, just before it is cast into darkness. Glackens chose to depict the mayor from the back, capturing the artificial light with a sketchy use of white gouache against a darker ground. A spectator seated at the right seems blithely unaware of what is about to happen. This narrative detail demonstrates Glackens's interest as much in the periphery of a scene as in its main event. C The Spanierman Gallery, LLC