"Song for a Guitar" by Alberto Vargas
Today, I am feeling very romantic and no other story in Art of the Pin-Up Girl, makes me swoon more than the love story between Anna Mae Clift and Alberto Vargas. You see, they were quite an unlikely pair, really. He was an immigrant from Peru and she a good Southern belle living a showgirl's life, but the moment he passed her on the street outside the stage door of The Greenwich Follies shortly after his arrival in New York, he knew he had to paint her. I suspect, too, that he instantly loved her.
She was beautiful - a perfect muse for a painter and Vargas clearly captured that beauty as well as her ethereal grace to share with the world. And the world - to this day - has loved her. I've posted a collection of just some of Anna Mae's portraits on the Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/artofpinup/anna-mae-clift-mrs-alberto-vargas-how-i-love-you-s/ You can see that gorgeous face and figure in so many of his paintings. In fact, he said that there was a little bit of her in every Vargas girl. (I know ... "swoon")
In Art of the Pin-Up Girl, we visit the artist's studio one particular night - at an ungodly hour of the morning - when Anna Mae arrives, quite tipsy and unannounced. She makes a few unladylike passes at the shy artist - who had still never even called her by her first name, but since he already loved her, resistance was futile. Trying to be a gentleman, he asks her to allow him to paint her - a distraction from the heat between them. As she lounges on the chaise, as the subject for a painting that will eventually become "Song for a Guitar", she picks up the instrument and serenades him with a love song. It is a simple little song, that I imagine she makes up as she goes along, called "How I Love You So".
Since I'm feeling so romantic, today I share this song with you on the SoundCloud. http://soundcloud.com/heather-storm/how-i-love-you-so
To me it represents the beginning of a life-long love story. You see, Anna Mae and Alberto were married and lived what I like to call "an artist's life", through better and worse, happily ever after. And when Anna Mae died, Alberto Vargas, one of the greatest pin-up artists in history, ceased to paint. He too passed away not long after she did, some say from a broken heart.
Thank you for supporting our project and sharing with your friends, as we seek to keep love alive and find that there are so many reasons to swoon over Art of the Pin-Up Girl. XOXO
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