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F. Bruneti?re

The Unknown Masterpiece

TO A LORD:

GILLETTE

There exists in all human sentiments a primitive flower, engendered by a noble enthusiasm which grows constantly weaker and weaker, until happiness ceases to be more than a memory and glory more than a lie. Among these transitory sentiments, nothing bears so close a resemblance to love as the youthful passion of an artist just beginning to experience the delicious torture of his destiny of renown and of misfortune, a passion full of audacity and shyness, of vague beliefs and of certain discouragement. The youthful genius, with empty pockets, whose heart has not throbbed upon appearing before a master, will always lack one chord in his heart, some indefinable touch of the brush, some feeling in his work, some shade of poetical expression. If some boasters, puffed out with conceit, believe too early in the future, they are considered people of intellect by fools alone. In this regard, the young stranger seemed to possess real merit, if talent is to be measured by that early timidity, that indescribable modesty which people destined to glory gradually lose in the exercise of their art, as pretty women lose theirs in the manoeuvring of coquetry. The habitude of triumph lessens doubt, and modesty perhaps is a form of doubt.

"Good morning, master."

"I like your saint," the old man said to Porbus, "and I would give you ten golden crowns above the price that the queen is to pay; but meddle in her preserves! the deuce!"

"You think it is well done, do you?"

"Hum!" said the old man, "well done? Yes and no. Your saint is not badly put together, but she is not alive. You fellows think that you have done everything when you have drawn a figure correctly and put everything in its place according to the laws of anatomy. You colour this feature with a flesh-tint prepared beforehand on your palette, taking care to keep one side darker than the other; and because you glance from time to time at a nude woman standing on a table, you think that you have copied nature, you imagine that you are painters, and that you have discovered God's secret! Bah! To be a great poet, it is not enough to know syntax, and to avoid errors in grammar.

"Look at your saint, Porbus. At first glance she seems admirable; but at the second, one sees that she is glued to the canvas, and that it is impossible to walk about her body. She is a silhouette with but a single face, a figure cut out of canvas, an image that can neither turn nor change its position. I am not conscious of the air between that arm and the background of the picture; space and depth are lacking. However, everything is right so far as perspective is concerned, and the gradation of light and shade is scrupulously observed; but, despite such praise-worthy efforts, I am unable to believe that that beautiful body is animated with the warm breath of life. It seems to me that, if I should put my hand upon that firm, round breast, I should find it as cold as marble. No, my friend, the blood does not flow beneath that ivory skin; life does not swell with its purple dew the veins and fibres which intertwine like network beneath the transparent, amber-hued temples and breast. This place throbs with life, but that other place is motionless; life and death contend in every detail; here it is a woman, there a statue, and there a corpse. Your creation is incomplete. You have been able to breathe only a portion of your soul into your cherished work. The torch of Prometheus has gone out more than once in your hands, and many parts of your picture have not been touched by the celestial flame."

"But why, my dear master?" Porbus respectfully asked the old man, while the young man had difficulty in repressing a savage desire to strike him.

"Ah! it is this way," replied the little old man. "You have wavered irresolutely between the two systems, between drawing and colour, between the phlegmatic minuteness, the stiff precision of the old German masters, and the dazzling ardour and happy plenitude of the Italian painters. You have tried to imitate at the same time Hans Holbein and Titian, Albert D?rer and Paul Veronese. Assuredly that was a noble ambition! But what has happened? You have achieved neither the severe charm of precision, nor the deceitful magic of the chiaroscuro. In this spot, like melted bronze which bursts its too fragile mould, the rich, light colouring of Titian brings out too prominently the meagre outlines of Albert D?rer in which you moulded it. Elsewhere, the features have resisted and held in check the superb polish of the Venetian palette. Your face is neither perfectly drawn nor perfectly painted, and bears everywhere the traces of that unfortunate indecision. If you did not feel strong enough to melt together in the flame of your genius the two rival systems, you should have chosen frankly one or the other, in order to obtain the unity which represents one of the conditions of life. You are accurate only in the surroundings, your outlines are false, do not envelop each other, and give no promise of anything behind.

"There is a touch of truth here," said the old man, pointing to the saint's breast; "and here," he added, indicating the point where the shoulder came to an end. "But here," he said, reverting to the middle of the throat, "all is false. Let us not attempt to analyse anything; it would drive you to despair."

The old man seated himself on a stool, put his face in his hands, and said no more.

"Master," said Porbus, "I studied that throat very carefully in the nude figure; but, unfortunately for us, there are true effects in nature which seem improbable upon canvas."

"The mission of art is not to copy nature, but to express it! You are not a vile copyist, but a poet!" cried the old man, hastily interrupting Porbus with an imperious gesture. "Otherwise a sculptor would reach the end of his labours by moulding a woman! But try to mould your mistress's hand and to place it before you; you will find a horrible dead thing without any resemblance, and you will be obliged to resort to the chisel of the man who, without copying it exactly, will impart motion and life to it. We have to grasp the spirit, the soul, the physiognomy of things and of creatures. Effects! effects! why, they are the accidents of life and not life itself.

"A hand--as I have taken that example--a hand does not simply belong to the body; it expresses and carries out a thought, which you must grasp and represent. Neither the painter, nor the poet, nor the sculptor should separate the effect from the cause, for they are inseparably connected! The real struggle is there! Many painters triumph by instinct, without realising this axiom of art. You draw a woman, but you do not see her! That is not the way that one succeeds in forcing the secrets of nature. Your hand reproduces, without your knowledge, the model that you have copied at your master's studio. You do not go down sufficiently into the inmost details of form, you do not pursue it with enough enthusiasm and perseverance in its windings and its flights.

"Beauty is a stern and exacting thing which does not allow itself to be caught so easily; we must await its pleasure, watch for it, seize it, and embrace it closely, in order to compel it to surrender. Form is a Proteus much more difficult to seize and more fertile in evasions than the Proteus of fable; only after long struggles can one compel it to show itself in its real guise. You are content with the first aspect under which it appears to you, or at most with the second or third; that is not true of the victorious fighters! The invincible painters do not allow themselves to be deceived by all these subterfuges; they persevere until nature is reduced to the point where she must stand forth naked and in her real shape.

"That was the process adopted by Raphael," said the old man, removing his black velvet cap to express the respect inspired by the king of art; "his great superiority comes from the secret perception which, in him, seems determined to shatter form. In his figures form is what it really is in us, an interpreter for the communication of ideas and sensations, a vast poetic conception. Every figure is a world, a portrait, whose model has appeared in a sublime vision, tinged with light, indicated by an inward voice, disrobed by a divine figure, which points out the sources of expression in the past of a whole life. You give your women lovely robes of flesh, lovely draperies of hair; but where is the blood which engenders tranquillity or passion, and which causes special effects? Your saint is a dark woman, but this one, my poor Porbus, is a blonde! Your figures are pale, coloured spectres which you parade before our eyes, and you call that painting and art!

"Starting from the farthest point that you have reached, an excellent painting might perhaps be executed; but you grow weary too soon. The common herd admires, but the connoisseur smiles. O Mabuse, O my master," added this extraordinary individual, "you are a thief; you carried life away with you!--However," he continued, "this canvas is worth more than the painting of that mountebank of a Rubens, with his mountains of Flemish flesh powdered with vermillion, his waves of red hair, and his wilderness of colours. At all events, you have here colouring, drawing, and sentiment, the three essential parts of art."

"But that saint is sublime, my good man!" cried the young man, in a loud voice, emerging from a profound reverie. "Those two figures, of the saint and the boatman, have a delicacy of expression utterly unknown to the Italian painters; I don't know a single one of them who could have achieved the hesitation of the boatman."

"Does this little knave belong to you?" Porbus asked the old man.

"Alas! pray excuse my presumption, master," replied the neophyte, blushing. I am a stranger, a dauber by instinct, only lately arrived in this city, the source of all knowledge."

"To work!" said Porbus, handing him a pencil and a sheet of paper.

"O-ho!" cried the old man. "Your name?"

"That is not bad for a beginner," said the strange creature who harangued so wildly. "I see that we can safely talk painting before you. I don't blame you for admiring Porbus's saint. It is a masterpiece for the world, and only those who are initiated in the most profound secrets of art can discover wherein it offends. But since you are worthy of the lesson and capable of understanding, I will show you how little is necessary to complete the work. Be all eyes and all attention; such an opportunity for instruction will never occur again perhaps.--Your palette, Porbus!"

Porbus went to fetch palette and brushes. The little old man turned up his sleeves with a convulsive movement, passed his thumb over the palette laden with colours, which Porbus handed to him, and snatched rather than took from his hands a handful of brushes of all sizes; his pointed beard twitched with the mighty efforts that denoted the concupiscence of an amorous imagination. As he dipped his brush in the paint, he grumbled between his teeth:

"These colours are good for nothing but to throw out of the window, with the man who made them! They are disgustingly crude and false! How can one paint with such things?"

Porbus and Poussin stood like statues, each on one side of the canvas, absorbed in the most intense contemplation.

While he spoke, the strange old man touched all the parts of the picture: here two strokes of the brush and there only one; but always so opportunely that one would have said that it was a new painting, but a painting drenched with light. He worked with such impassioned zeal that the perspiration stood upon his high forehead; he moved so swiftly, with such impatient, jerky little movements, that to young Poussin it seemed as if there must be in that strange man's body a demon acting through his hands and guiding them erratically, against his will. The superhuman gleam of his eyes, the convulsions which seemed to be the effect of resistance, gave to that idea a semblance of truth, which was certain to act upon a youthful imagination. The old man worked on, saying:

"Paff! paff! paff! this is how we do it, young man! Come, my little touches, warm up this frigid tone for me! Come, come! pon! pon! pon!" he said, touching up the points where he had indicated a lack of life, effacing by a few daubs of paint the differences of temperament, and restoring the unity of tone which a warm-blooded Egyptian demanded. "You see, my boy, it is only the last stroke of the brush that counts. Porbus has given a hundred, but I give only one. Nobody gives us credit for what is underneath. Be sure to remember that!"

At last the demon paused, and, turning to Porbus and Poussin, who were dumb with admiration, he said to them:

Noticing the Norman's shabby jacket at that moment, he took from his belt a goat-skin purse, opened it, took out two gold-pieces and said, offering them to him:

"I will buy your sketch."

"Take it," said Porbus to Poussin, seeing him start and blush with shame, for the young neophyte had all the pride of the poor man. "Take it, he has the ransom of two kings in his wallet."

All three went down from the studio, and, discoursing on art as they walked, bent their steps to a handsome wooden house near Pont St.-Michel, the decorations of which, the knocker, the window-frames, and the arabesques, aroused Poussin's wondering admiration. The painter in embryo suddenly found himself in a room on the lower floor, before a bright fire, beside a table laden with appetising dishes, and, by incredible good fortune, in the company of two great artists overflowing with good nature.

"Young man," said Porbus, seeing that he stood in open-mouthed admiration before a picture, "don't look at that canvas too closely, or you will be driven to despair."

"There is life in it," he said; "my poor master surpassed himself; but it still lacks a little truth in the background. The man is thoroughly alive; he is about to rise and walk towards us. But the air, the sky, the wind, which we breathe and see and feel, are not there. And then there is only a man! Now the only man that ever came forth from the hands of God ought to have something of the divine, which he lacks. Mabuse himself said so with irritation, when he was not drunk."

Poussin glanced at the old man and Porbus in turn, with restless curiosity. He approached the latter as if to ask him the name of their host; but the painter put his finger to his lips with a mysterious air, and the young man, intensely interested, kept silence, hoping that sooner or later some chance remark would enable him to discover the name of his host, whose wealth and talent were sufficiently attested by the respect which Porbus manifested for him and by the marvellous things collected in that room.

Seeing a superb portrait of a woman upon the oaken wainscoting, Poussin exclaimed:

"What a beautiful Giorgione!"

"No," replied the old man; "you are looking at one of my first daubs."

The old man smiled like one long familiar with such praise.

"Master Frenhofer!" said Porbus, "couldn't you send for a little of your fine Rhine wine for me?"

"Two casks!" replied the old man; "one to pay for the pleasure which I enjoyed this morning in seeing your pretty sinner, and the other as a friendly gift."

"Show my work!" cried the old man, intensely excited. "No, no! I still have to perfect it. Yesterday, towards night," he said, "I thought that it was finished. The eyes seemed to me moist, the flesh quivered; the tresses of the hair moved. It breathed! Although I have discovered the means of producing upon flat canvas the relief and roundness of nature, I realised my error this morning, by daylight. Ah! to attain that glorious result, I have thoroughly studied the great masters of colouring, I have analysed and raised, layer by layer, the pictures of Titian, that king of light; like that sovereign painter, I have sketched my figure in a light shade, with soft, thick colour--for shading is simply an accident, remember that, my boy!--Then I returned to my work, and by means of half-tints, and of varnish, the transparency of which I lessened more and more, I made the shadows more and, more pronounced, even to the deepest blacks; for the shadows of ordinary painters are of a different nature from their light tones; they are wood, brass, whatever you choose, except flesh in shadow. One feels that, if a figure should change its posture, the shaded places would not brighten, and would never become light. I have avoided that fault, into which many of the most illustrious artists have fallen, and in my work the whiteness of the flesh stands out under the darkness of the deepest shadow.

"I have not, like a multitude of ignorant fools, who fancy that they draw correctly because they make a carefully shaded stroke, marked distinctly the outer lines of my figure and given prominence to the most trivial anatomical details, for the human body does not end in lines. In that regard, sculptors can approach the truth more nearly than we can. Nature demands a succession of rounded outlines which shade into one another. Strictly speaking, drawing does not exist!--Do not laugh, young man! However strange that remark may seem to you, you will understand its meaning some day.--The line is the means by which man interprets the effect of light upon objects; but there are no lines in nature, where everything is full; it is in modelling that one draws, that is to say, that one removes things from the surroundings in which they are; the distribution of light alone gives reality to the body! So that I have not sharply outlined the features; I have spread over the outlines a cloud of light, warm half-tints, the result being that one cannot place one's finger upon the exact spot where the outline ends and the background begins. Seen at close quarters, the work seems cottony and to lack precision; but two yards away, everything becomes distinct and stands out; the body moves, the forms become prominent, and one can feel the air circulating all about. However, I am not satisfied yet; I still have doubts.

"Perhaps I should not have drawn a single line; perhaps it would be better to attack a figure in the middle, devoting one's self first to the prominences which are most in the light, and passing then to the darker portions. Is not that the way in which the sun, that divine painter of the universe, proceeds? O Nature, Nature! who has ever surprised thee in thy flights? I tell you that too much knowledge, like ignorance, ends in a negation. I doubt my work!"

The old man paused, then continued:

"For ten years, young man, I have been working, but what are ten short years when it is a question of contending with nature? We have no idea how long a time Pygmalion employed in making the only statue that ever walked!"

The old man fell into a profound reverie, and sat with staring eyes, mechanically toying with his knife.

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