Little French Masterpieces. Honore de Balzac
doesn't come up to my Belle Noiseuse; however, a man could afford to put his name at the foot of such a work. Yes, I would sign it," he added, rising and taking a mirror in which he looked at it. "Now let us go to breakfast," he said. "Come to my house, both of you. I have some smoked ham and some good wine! Despite the evil times, we will talk painting. We are experts. This little man," he added, tapping Nicolas Poussin on the shoulder, "has a facile touch."
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."
It was the Adam which Mabuse painted in order to obtain his release from the prison in which his creditors kept him so long. In truth, that face was of such startling reality that Nicolas Poussin began at that moment to understand the true meaning of the old man's confused remarks. The latter glanced at the picture with a satisfied expression, but without enthusiasm, and seemed to say: "I have done better than that!"
"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."
"Tu-dieu! then I must be in the house of the god of painting!" said Poussin, ingenuously.
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."
"Ah! if I were not always ill," rejoined Porbus, "and if you would let me see your Belle Noiseuse, I might be able to paint a picture, high and wide and deep, in which the figures would be life-size."
"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.
"He is conversing with his spirit now!" said Porbus in an undertone.
At that word Nicolas Poussin became conscious of the presence of an indefinable artistic curiosity. That old man with the white eyes, staring and torpid, became in his eyes more than a man; he assumed the aspect of an unreal genius living in an unknown sphere. He stirred a thousand confused ideas in his mind. The mental phenomenon of that species of fascination can no more be defined than one can define the emotion aroused by a ballad which recalls the fatherland to the exile's heart. The contempt which that old man affected to express for the most beautiful works of art, his wealth, his manners, the deference with which Porbus treated him, that work kept secret so long – a work of patience and of genius doubtless, judging by the head of a Virgin which young Poussin had so enthusiastically admired, and which, still beautiful, even beside Mabuse's Adam, bore witness to the imperial workmanship of one of the princes of art – everything, in short, about the old man went beyond the bounds of human nature.
The one point which was perfectly clear and manifest to Nicolas Poussin's fertile imagination was a complete image of the artistic nature, of that irresponsible nature to which so many powers are entrusted, and which too often misuses them, leading cold reason, the honest bourgeois, and even some experts, through innumerable rock-strewn paths,