"De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period" is a short story that is part of the Nine Stories collection by J. D. Salinger. It was published in 1952.[1]
It is the story of a talented young man who moves to Montreal to become an instructor for a correspondence art academy. He had recently moved to New York with his stepfather because his mother had died. There he learns of the art academy Les Amis Des Vieux Maîtres and decides to apply as a staff instructor. To do so, he feels compelled to embellish his credentials with extravagant accomplishments and an overly-chummy relationship with Picasso. While sneering at the childish attempts of his talentless mail-order pupils, he falls in love with the artistic beauty of a religious painting submitted to him by his sole pupil of promise: an ageless, faceless nun. De Daumier-Smith has an epiphany that reveals the nature of beauty, allowing him to reinvent himself and transform his life.
The story was rejected by the The New Yorker after at least one editor determined the piece was both "too dark and too weird."[2] At the time, although Salinger had published in the magazine previously, the piece was still not considered for publication beyond the first round of meetings among editors. Thus, the piece was submitted to the World Review and accepted.[3] Salinger considered the story a significant piece in his canon, and thus later decided to include it in his short story collection.[4]