The Portrait - Iain Pears

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young revolutionaries, peering earnestly at that homely arrangement like a bunch of polite schoolboys. And then this girl comes in, and everyone sniggers. She was so young, so innocent-looking and so—prim. The sort who lives with her mother, drinks sherry once a month and is in bed by half past nine every night. Not the sort of woman you would want as a subject for a painting, unless you have a yen to depict the frail and delicate; although once I looked closer I thought maybe you could do something interesting with those pale cheeks, the thin hair pulled tightly into an unflattering bun at the nape of the neck, the slightly hunched pose, as if she were trying to hide her small breasts, pretend they were not there. She looks around, arranges herself, says good morning in a quiet, nervous voice, then begins. We all crowd round after a bit, to see the polite bit of feminine nonsense she had produced, and I saw that expression on your face.

      You had come to take me to dinner, and were waiting with unaccustomed patience for me to clean myself up enough to look respectable. Normally it was the other way round, with me waiting like a young girl for her first beau. I’d only known you for a month or so then, and was already captivated. A chance, overheard remark in a museum, and you came up to me and invited me for a drink. The Café de l’Opéra! Champagne! Brilliant conversation, so worldly and knowing. You were already known, and had started writing reviews of Paris exhibitions for the newspapers in London. Were the editor of an advanced journal with no circulation, someone who turned up at parties and dinners. Had a reputation for—something, although no-one really knew what. Yet you pursued me, initiated the friendship and cultivated it. You chose me to be your friend! You singled me out, paid attention to me, began my education. I was twenty-seven, but so inexperienced of this new world I wished to enter I’m sure I seemed much younger. You were near thirty already, but almost jaded from having seen so much.

      I think the others laughed at me behind my back, but I didn’t care. I wore my adoration, my reverence, like a badge of pride. “William says …” “William thinks …” “William and I …” Heavens, but I must have been ridiculous. You encouraged it, flattered and cajoled. “Don’t worry about the others. An artist like yourself …” “You have something special; real ability …” All those phrases; I lapped them up, wanted more, wanted you to say them again and again. It was like bathing in milk. And I didn’t realise how much I filled a need in you: everything was fresh for me; you had seen everything before, many times over. With me in tow you could catch some of the excitement of discovery and feel the joy of novelty once more. I think it is why you so earnestly advocate the new in art. You are constantly in search of something to excite you and stir an enthusiasm that a too-fortunate education has snatched from your grasp.

      No-one had ever taken me seriously before. You were the first not to regard me as skilled only in self-deception. You patronised me, of course, but then you patronised everyone. But even I realised that you liked to be around when I saw something for the first time, discovered a painter I had never heard of, gazed with wonder on a masterpiece you had known all your life. You could tell me everything about the artist, dissect his skill and turn his genius into words. But you couldn’t be frozen in amazement, couldn’t tremble with emotion. I provided that for you, and in return you gave me an education. Until you came along, I was sustained only by a deep-seated Scottish doggedness, but I knew already it wasn’t going to be enough. I loved you for that, always will. Because you were right, after all: I am a good artist.

      I threw myself into my work under your tutelage, labouring all hours of the day and night to make myself better, laying my improvements before you like a faithful dog coming back to his master with a stick. And I did get better, improved in ways I scarcely thought possible; I learned to take risks, not to be safe and hide behind my skill. Oh, bliss it was! I still look back on those evenings we spent together as the happiest part of my life, and I wanted it to go on forever. I didn’t want to get to know you any better; didn’t want to think about the shadows and the subtleties. But innocence is only pleasurable because it is transient.

      How is it that expressions change? I have spent years looking at people’s faces, and it is still a mystery to me. A minuscule, immeasurable movement of an eyebrow in relation to the eye and nose; a scarcely discernible tightening or loosening of the muscles in cheek and neck; the barest tremor on the lips; a shine in the eyes. But we know the eyes do not change; the most significant manifestation of emotion is pure illusion. And this fractional shifting is all that distinguishes contempt from respect, love from anger. Some people are crude; their faces can be read by anyone. Some are more subtle, and only those close to them can read the face correctly. Some are incomprehensible even to themselves.

      It has taken me years to unpick the expression on your face when you looked at Evelyn’s work that day in the atelier. I sometimes think my entire career, my life, even, could be cast as the quest to decipher that look, to peel away layer after layer, to plunge down into your mind and piece together the fragmentary emotions and responses that I saw but could not understand. I managed it eventually; I will tell you how soon enough.

      So the expression was obscure, but the response was not. That was as clear as a bell. A polite dismissal. Not even contempt. It carried weight, I followed you, but not so far as to make some comment; even then I could see something of myself in her. And I was not comfortable. Because my own immediate reaction had been different—the brief start that comes into the mind when faced with something unexpected and surprising. I could have dismissed that easily, of course; but it was echoed by the momentary hesitation I noticed in you; a sliver of time between your looking and your response.

      That’s what I want in this picture, the one I have been carefully sketching out all this while. I want that look, that penetration. I want that ability to see reflected back on the viewer, want the person looking at this portrait to think that it is he who is being assessed, not the other way round. And unless you manage to give it to me, old friend, I’ll have to try and conjure it up from my memory. No-one will understand but me, of course; it may be that it will all go down as merely a piece of bad painting, or be overlooked entirely. It doesn’t matter; this is not just a public portrait. It is also a private matter, between you and me. So that you understand my understanding, if you follow me.

      You see, the problem I have at the moment is that you have grown just a touch sleek in the last few years. I hadn’t expected that before you arrived, so I am having to rethink my approach. You’ve become a bit too self-confident, somewhat priggish. All those years back, there was a faint anxiety to your features. It made you more human, more complex at the same time that it made you more difficult and—let us not beat about the bush—more prickly. Your snobbishness, your arrogance, your ambition were all nearer the surface then, and even though they are not normally appealing qualities, they made you a more attractive person, and certainly an easier one to paint. Now years of success have worn all that away; I see none of it any more. But it is still there, somewhere, and I intend to bring it out. I know you haven’t really changed.

      At the moment you look merely sardonic, detached. No good at all. You’ve ruined my morning. We will stop here. No, I’ve no idea what you should do for the rest of the day; that’s your problem. I suggest a walk. You have too much of the urban about you; it makes you pale and rather lifeless—desiccated, even. Fresh air and exercise would be very much better for you than those nasty little pills. Besides, there are some things to see around here if you look; they are careless of their history in these parts and leave it lying around in the most surprising places. I like that tendency in them; they are concerned with the present, and feel no need to preserve and catalogue every last stone of their past. They have been futurists for generations. The avant-garde can tell them nothing they do not already know.

      I admit Houat is not much to look at, at first sight; it doesn’t yield up its charms easily. There’s nothing for a man schooled in Gainsborough, who knows of the sublime beauty of the Alpine landscape, the wooded gentleness of Suffolk, or expects his Campagna to be peopled with besporting nymphs and shepherds. There are no mountains, no woods. Scarcely even any trees. You have to look to see the clumps of wild carnations, the yellow of the broom, or the jasmine. The variety of grasses, each with a subtly different colour. All these things need to be studied, but above all you have to study the sea, which is the alpha and omega of this place, its definition and cause. The colours, the tones, the shapes of the sea in its different guises are all the scenery

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