I pull in front of the Santa Ana courthouse and tell my wife, “Hurry up and pay the taxes. I’ve got to get back to the studio.”

“Don’t you think the world can wait another day for your next painting?”

“Maybe, but the bill collector won’t.”

“Relax, Joseph,” Edna says, leaning to kiss my cheek before she steps from the car, and I release my grip on the steering wheel and exhale. I know I’m intense but not bad enough to justify some art critics and gallery owners who say, “Kleitsch is the most disagreeable of men.”

Plenty of people in our Laguna Beach art community feel otherwise. I may be impatient and even at times brusque but art lovers here don’t hesitate to seek my painterly advice.

“Please step into my studio and I’ll demonstrate any technique you need,” I tell them. “I was a sign painter at age seven in my native Hungary, you know, and people in my village helped me get a scholarship and study in Budapest and Munich and Paris. As a teenager I earned good commissions painting portraits of Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria and many other prominent people who demanded I work fast and well.”

“With such success in Europe, why ever did you come to the United States?” asks a California lady who enjoys painting and collecting art.

“I sensed great opportunity in America and announced my ambition, but fellow painters in Paris said, ‘You’re not serious about leaving this great city for Cincinnati, wherever the hell that is.’”

“I’m quite serious,” I say, and at age twenty in 1902, a skillful but not wealthy artist, I hustle to survive painting advertising illustrations and commissioned portraits in Cincinnati. I also marry Emma, my first wife, and in two years we move to Kansas City and Denver and a few years later we’re living in Mexico when I paint not a pretty portrait to satisfy a wealthy client but The Blind and Beggar, a wrinkled old man who holds his violin as he sits on a city street. Next to him stands a lad no more than ten, extending an upturned hat probably still empty for the day.

“Joseph, we don’t want to end up like that beggar, do we?” Emma says.

“I suppose I’ll have to paint wealthy people in ways that flatter them.”

Once I agree to do so, commissions roll in and in 1912 I portray President Francisco Madero. He’s delighted and recommends me to others, and wealthy Mexicans praise me for presenting them as distinguished.

I’m again restless, however, and need to move on, this time to Chicago, a vast and lively city. Not long after arriving, President Madero is assassinated back in Mexico City. And more painfully, Emma dies. I’m distraught and lonely until I meet and marry Edna and begin teaching at the Art Institute of Chicago where students and professors tell friends, “Hire this fellow, Kleitsch. He’ll paint a hell of a portrait.”

A man carrying a violin case rushes into my studio in 1917 and says, “Good afternoon, Mr. Kleitsch. I’m Isodor Berger.”

“Please call me Joseph, or I’ll call you Mr. Hamburger.”

He looks stunned, and I conclude he’s even more serious than I.

“What is your profession, Isodor?”

“I’m the concertmaster of the Chicago Philharmonic.”

“I assume that’s your instrument.”

“It is,” he says.

“And the Philharmonic wants to commission a portrait of its distinguished concertmaster.”

He shakes his head. “That wouldn’t occur to them. I’d like to commission a portrait of myself playing the violin. For posterity…”

We quickly agree on a fair price, and I say, “Please take out your violin and I’ll do some preliminary sketches.”

Isodor Berger is an excellent subject, featuring an intense and intelligent face, strong hands and long coordinated fingers caressing bow and violin, and a stylish suit and tie. Work proceeds apace and in a fortnight I present him with The Violinist.   

I’m even more enthused about my next commission as a gentleman introduces me to his beautiful young wife and says, “I’d like something different. Use some of those modern techniques like the expressionists.”

“Certainly not,” I say. “I won’t ruin the loveliness of a lady by distorting her face and figure. I’ll present something unusual in the classical way I’ve been trained.”

“I hope you’ll let me watch you work,” he says.

“Out of the question. I must have a quiet union with my subject. Your presence would interrupt that. But don’t worry, sir, I always behave in a gentlemanly way, especially when I portray ladies.”

“I won’t allow my wife to be painted in the nude,” he says.

“No, we wouldn’t want that,” says the young lady.

I dig a clenched fist into each hip and pause before saying, “I’ll paint her in the same elegant blue and soft-flowered dress she’s wearing today.”

I suppose I could have painted her more rapidly but moved with caution, wanting all details of form and mood to be perfect.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to look at you?” she asks at least once a day for three weeks.

“You may look at me when I’m not painting, otherwise stay in right profile and gaze into the canvas.”

“What’s supposed to be on that canvas?”

“Why, it’s you, of course. You’re on the canvas.”

I don’t admit I envision her nude and entwined with me in an unseen world. Still, I worry she concludes something like that when I summon her to the easel and she beholds herself sitting on a chair and gazing into passion. Alas, I must lose this subject along with my portrait of her, and I’m going to think of her a long time and that’s why I title this work Problematicus.

“It’s time for us to leave Chicago,” I tell Edna.

“But Joseph, you’re one of the best portrait painters in the Midwest and a respected teacher at the Art Institute of Chicago.”

“I’m tired of the winters here. And I’m weary of painting so many figures and portraits. They seem more difficult every year. I want a fresh place with warm but not hot summers and cool but not cold winters. I yearn for the light that glows in Laguna Beach. We need a place to live forever.”

“When you want to be, you’re the most romantic man I’ve ever met.”

In Laguna Beach I find a new palette offering the colors of oceans and waves and trees and hills and lovely light brown earth. These new subjects invigorate me and are technically less demanding and I finish paintings more rapidly and love the respect my work often receives here and know this will always be home and if I return to Paris or Munich or Chicago it will be temporary.

I’m happy in front of the Santa Ana courthouse. While Edna’s paying taxes I daydream about the way things have worked out and feel so peaceful I ignore a sudden jolt in my chest. Edna probably returns in about fifteen minutes and sees me slumped onto my right shoulder in the passenger’s seat and starts screaming, “Joseph, for god’s sake. Wake up. Please wake up. This can’t be.”

She turns to people on the sidewalk and shouts, “Someone call a doctor. My husband’s only forty-nine. This can’t be happening.”

Notes: “Joseph Kleitsch at the Easel” will appear in my second collection about painters projected to be published in the summer of 2026.

Paintings by Joseph Kleitsch –

Problematicus – 1917

The Violinist – 1918

Notes: “Joseph Kleitsch at the Easel” will appear in my second collection about painters projected to be published in the summer of 2026.

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