Iain Pears - The Portrait

I started looking at the pictures. Of course I did; who wouldn’t? It never occurred to me not to. Every painter who ever came into my studio in Hammersmith went through the canvasses as a matter of course to see what I was up to. I did the same myself, wherever I went. Nosiness is the great driving force of art. Think of Raphael sneaking into the Sistine Chapel to see what his great rival was up to. In Evelyn’s little room I was astonished by what I saw; truly I was. You weren’t there to guide me, and I had seen nothing by her hand for ages. She had achieved a remarkable simplicity. One particularly stayed with me: a picture of her little wicker chair against the window. That was it; nothing else in the image at all, but it was delightful, warm and lonely, confident and despairing, simple and subtle. Such a mixture of differing emotions and reflections it threw up, it was quite dazzling. And tiny as well—not more than ten inches square. As near to perfection as you can get. She’d taken the spirit of someone like Vermeer and turned it into something wholly modern and personal. Exquisite.

I was looking at it when she came in, and instantly forgot all about wicker chairs. She was furious with me, and I had never seen her truly angry before. Nothing had ever got through the quiet, well-brought-up behaviour that made her so easy to underestimate. “How dare you go through my private things? Who do you think you are. . . .” Her rage was like a torrent that swept over me, terrifying in its intensity, the more so for being so completely unexpected.

And much much more. She was deeply offended, but more than that: she was terrified. As she bustled about, collecting the few pictures I had looked at, carefully stacking them once more with their faces to the wall so they could not be seen, I suddenly realised she was embarrassed; she thought I might make some critical remark, might make fun of her for painting a chair in a bedroom. Good heavens, that was the last thing that occurred to me. But she would not listen to any of my attempts to reassure, or even apologise. She was near to tears with fury; anyone would have thought I had made an indecent advance. By her lights I suppose I had, far more than in Paris. I had violated her privacy, and exposed her weakness—she put everything into those pictures, and she was afraid of what others might see in them. Still, I wished I had seen more, wished I could have seen the ones she particularly did not want me to look at.

She threw me out, and I had to write a grovelling letter—a long one—to win forgiveness. Even so, she didn’t speak to me for months and still wouldn’t talk about it, although I tried. “What’s the point of painting the wretched things if no-one ever sees them?” I tried saying once.

“They’re not ready. They’re not good enough and I don’t want to talk about it. . . .”

But eventually, she was forced to decide. I forced her. The Chenil gallery offered her a show, largely because I had enthused to them and piqued their interest. They decided to take a risk on a woman whose paintings they had never even seen. Imagine how good that made me feel! That I could exert such influence, that my word alone could conjure such things into existence. There was a bit of politics involved, of course. They wanted to put on an exhibition of Augustus John, but he had pulled out because the dates coincided with your big Post-Impressionism display. Not only was he mortally offended he’d not been invited by you, he was clever enough to realise that the furore you were going to cause would swamp everything else. So the Chenil had the prospect of blank walls for a couple of weeks. A little show by an unknown artist, which wouldn’t be seen as a defeat if it failed to get much attention, was just what they needed.

So they came to her. She hesitated, because she knew what accepting meant. It meant dropping the pretence of disdaining the opinion of outsiders. An exhibition means you do care what other people think. You do want their good opinion. And in order to get it you make yourself public, and invite comments, good and bad. You cannot keep up the illusion that you are merely trying to satisfy yourself. You sign a pact with the devil.

I pushed her, I admit it, and not for her sake. I had my own reputation to think of, and John Knewstub from the Chenil had made the approach on my recommendation. Besides, the couple of pictures I had seen were good. A damned sight better than many of the things that go on show. They were crying out to be seen, to have their chance. It was cruel to keep them locked up. Paintings are creatures of the open air; they need to breathe, to have attention to stop them withering. Crammed in the basement of a museum, or an art gallery or turned to face the wall in a studio, they die a little. It is not why they exist.

YOU’VE MANAGED to make yourself unpopular on this island already, you know. I have had words. The priest asked when you were leaving. A raised eyebrow from one of the fishermen. They are subtle people here; they never say something if they can communicate it in any other way. I tried to figure out what you have done to irritate, then decided that your mere existence was probably enough, although refusing to pay court to Father Charles probably helped. Are you so great that you will not submit yourself to boredom for even half an hour in order to create the right impression? The air of disdain which is such a useful tool in a metropolis is of little use here. They do not want you to be ingratiating, to engage them in conversation, or show an interest in their lives, of course. It would be a mistake to offer them a drink; that is their privilege, not yours. They can spot the difference between friendliness and condescension before even a foot is placed on the quayside. I had to wait nearly a year before my patience was rewarded with a nod in the road or a muttered comment about the weather. If I stayed another twenty years they would still be suspicious of me. They are poor, largely uneducated, and simple, by your lights and mine. But you should not make the mistake of considering them inconsequential, and I fear that the way you habitually insulate yourself from the outside world, the manner in which you look at people as though they were contained in an ornate frame, has not been a great hit. Rather than inspiring awe and a little fear, of disconcerting people and making them more malleable, it has had the opposite effect. They are stiff-necked, and proud, and need to be courted.

Deserve to be courted, I should say, because they can live in this place; you could not. They will not harm you, of course, you are not worth it to them. But you would never be able to go to them for help, or assistance. When you wish to go back to the mainland, it will be through my intercession, otherwise you would find that all the boats are much too busy. You are fed and lodged because I have requested it, otherwise you would starve on the beach. Should you fall ill or sustain an injury, any treatment you receive will be at my behest, not yours. You are alone here, and friendless. Apart from me. I wouldn’t worry about it too much, though. I was simply trying to alarm you, and remind you that your writ does not run everywhere. Your kingdom runs from Chelsea to Oxford Circus only. Outside that, you are powerless, and reliant on the goodwill of others.

Did I ever tell you of the moment when I decided to become a painter? When I realised that was what I was, in fact? It was in the drawing office, in my third year of apprenticeship in Glasgow. You have no interest in such things, I know, but it was a comradely place; I was not unhappy there. My father had decided he wanted me off his hands, and that I should be put to work, as he put it, earning good money. A trade, in fact, and it says something of him that he chose the best one—despite his apparent lack of interest in me, he could be a thoughtful man to his children, if harsh and unforgiving as well. He is one of the few people I have ever missed. A lesser parent might have sent me to the shipyards, to become a boilermaker, or apprenticed me in a bank as a clerk. It would have been cheaper, the rewards more sure. Such a place would have killed me. I’m not being dramatic; I mean merely that I would have stayed there and never found the courage to leave. In due course I would have been given my gold watch, and died, and that would have been that.