The artist Matisse had a young and beautiful assistant,
Lydia Delectorskaya.
She was hired to help him when his wife got sick to
run his art studio and be a nurse to his wife.
Lydia respected and admired Matisse because unlike other
artists, he never tried to seduce her after she became his model.
But Matisse’s wife Amelie grew jealous of Lydia, not because
she thought she was sleeping with Matisse.
She was jealous of how Lydia was doing all the things she
used to do for Matisse running his art studio.
She told Matisse it was her or Lydia, and Matisse told Lydia
she had to leave.
Distraught and feeling like she had lost her purpose in life,
Lydia tried to commit suicide by shooting herself in the chest.
Miraculously, she lived. The bullet hit a bone in her chest,
which saved her from dying.
Not long after that, Amelie left Matisse, and he asked Lydia
to come back and work for him again.
Though Matisse and Lydia never became lovers, she worked
for him till the day he died, running everything for him.
After he died, she wrote two favorable books about her
experiences with him and his work:
Against the Winds and Storms (1996) Apparent Ease (1998),
and she spent the rest of her life working on his heritage.
Bob Boyd