His Masterpiece. Emile Zola
the voices had risen to a high pitch again. Fagerolles was telling a story.
‘Yes, old fellow; at the School they even correct Nature herself. The other day Mazel comes up to me and says: “Those two arms don’t correspond”; whereupon I reply: “Look for yourself, monsieur – the model’s are like that.” It was little Flore Beauchamp, you know. “Well,” Mazel furiously replies, “if she has them like that, it’s very wrong of her.”’
They almost all shrieked, especially Claude, to whom Fagerolles told the story by way of paying court. For some time previously the younger artist had yielded to the elder’s influence; and although he continued to paint with purely tricky skill, he no longer talked of anything but substantial, thickly-painted work, of bits of nature thrown on to canvas, palpitating with life, such as they really were. This did not prevent him, though, from elsewhere chaffing the adepts of the open-air school, whom he accused of impasting with a kitchen ladle.
Dubuche, who had not laughed, his sense of rectitude being offended, made so bold as to reply:
‘Why do you stop at the School if you think you are being brutified there? It’s simple enough, one goes away – Oh, I know you are all against me, because I defend the School. But, you see, my idea is that, when a fellow wants to carry on a trade, it is not a bad thing for him to begin by learning it.’
Ferocious shouts arose at this, and Claude had need of all his authority to secure a hearing.
‘He is right. One must learn one’s trade. But it won’t do to learn it under the ferule of professors who want to cram their own views forcibly into your nut. That Mazel is a perfect idiot!’
He flung himself backward on the bed, on which he had been sitting, and with his eyes raised to the ceiling, he went on, in an excited tone:
‘Ah! life! life! to feel it and portray it in its reality, to love it for itself, to behold in it the only real, lasting, and changing beauty, without any idiotic idea of ennobling it by mutilation. To understand that all so-called ugliness is nothing but the mark of individual character, to create real men and endow them with life – yes, that’s the only way to become a god!’
His faith was coming back to him, the march across Paris had spurred him on once more; he was again seized by his passion for living flesh. They listened to him in silence. He made a wild gesture, then calmed down.
‘No doubt every one has his own ideas; but the annoyance is that at the Institute they are even more intolerant than we are. The hanging committee of the Salon is in their hands. I am sure that that idiot Mazel will refuse my picture.’
Thereupon they all broke out into imprecations, for this question of the hanging committee was the everlasting subject of their wrath. They demanded reforms; every one had a solution of the problem ready – from universal suffrage, applied to the election of a hanging committee, liberal in the widest sense of the word, down to unrestricted liberty, a Salon open to all exhibitors.8
While the others went on discussing the subject, Gagniere drew Mahoudeau to the open window, where, in a low voice, his eyes the while staring into space, he murmured:
‘Oh, it’s nothing at all, only four bars; a simple impression jotted down there and then. But what a deal there is in it! To me it’s first of all a landscape, dwindling away in the distance; a bit of melancholy road, with the shadow of a tree that one cannot see; and then a woman passes along, scarcely a silhouette; on she goes and you never meet her again, no, never more again.’
Just at that moment, however, Fagerolles exclaimed, ‘I say, Gagniere, what are you going to send to the Salon this year?’
Gagniere did not hear, but continued talking, enraptured, as it were.
‘In Schumann one finds everything – the infinite. And Wagner, too, whom they hissed again last Sunday!’
But a fresh call from Fagerolles made him start.
‘Eh! what? What am I going to send to the Salon? A small landscape, perhaps; a little bit of the Seine. It is so difficult to decide; first of all I must feel pleased with it myself.’
He had suddenly become timid and anxious again. His artistic scruples, his conscientiousness, kept him working for months on a canvas the size of one’s hand. Following the track of the French landscape painters, those masters who were the first to conquer nature, he worried about correctness of tone, pondering and pondering over the precise value of tints, till theoretical scruples ended by making his touch heavy. And he often did not dare to chance a bright dash of colour, but painted in a greyish gloomy key which was astonishing, when one remembered his revolutionary passions.
‘For my part,’ said Mahoudeau, ‘I feel delighted at the prospect of making them squint with my woman.’
Claude shrugged his shoulders. ‘Oh! you’ll get in, the sculptors have broader minds than the painters. And, besides, you know very well what you are about; you have something at your fingers’ ends that pleases. There will be plenty of pretty bits about your vintaging girl.’
The compliment made Mahoudeau feel serious. He posed above all for vigour of execution; he was unconscious of his real vein of talent, and despised gracefulness, though it ever invincibly sprung from his big, coarse fingers – the fingers of an untaught working-man – like a flower that obstinately sprouts from the hard soil where the wind has flung its seed.
Fagerolles, who was very cunning, had decided to send nothing, for fear of displeasing his masters; and he chaffed the Salon, calling it ‘a foul bazaar, where all the bad painting made even the good turn musty.’ In his inmost heart he was dreaming of one day securing the Rome prize, though he ridiculed it, as he did everything else.
However, Jory stationed himself in the middle of the room, holding up his glass of beer. Sipping every now and then, he declared: ‘Well, your hanging committee quite disgusts me! I say, shall I demolish it? I’ll begin bombarding it in our very next number. You’ll give me some notes, eh? and we’ll knock it to pieces. That will be fine fun.’
Claude was at last fully wound up, and general enthusiasm prevailed. Yes, yes, they must start a campaign. They would all be in it, and, pressing shoulder to shoulder, march to the battle together. At that moment there was not one of them who reserved his share of fame, for nothing divided them as yet; neither the profound dissemblance of their various natures, of which they themselves were ignorant, nor their rivalries, which would some day bring them into collision. Was not the success of one the success of all the others? Their youth was fermenting, they were brimming over with mutual devotion; they indulged anew in their everlasting dream of gathering into a phalanx to conquer the world, each contributing his individual effort; this one helping that one forward, and the whole band reaching fame at once in one row. Claude, as the acknowledged chief, was already sounding the victory, distributing laurels with such lyrical abundance that he overlooked himself. Fagerolles himself, gibing Parisian though he might be, believed in the necessity of forming an army; while even Jory, although he had a coarser appetite, with a deal of the provincial still about him, displayed much useful comradeship, catching various artistic phrases as they fell from his companions’ lips, and already preparing in his mind the articles which would herald the advent of the band and make them known. And Mahoudeau purposely exaggerated his intentional roughness, and clasped his hands like an ogre kneading human flesh; while Gagniere, in ecstasy, as if freed from the everlasting greyishness of his art, sought to refine sensation to the utmost limits of intelligence; and Dubuche, with his matter-of-fact convictions, threw in but a word here and there; words, however, which were like club-blows in the very midst of the fray. Then Sandoz, happy and smiling at seeing them so united, ‘all in one shirt,’ as he put it, opened another bottle of beer. He would have emptied every one in the house.
‘Eh?’ he cried, ‘we’re agreed, let’s stick to it. It’s really pleasant to come to an understanding among fellows who have something in their nuts, so may the thunderbolts of heaven sweep all idiots away!’
At that same moment a ring at the bell stupefied him. Amidst the sudden silence of the others, he inquired – ‘Who, to the deuce, can that be – at eleven o’clock?’
He
The reader will bear in mind that all these complaints made by Claude and his friends apply to the old Salons, as organized under Government control, at the time of the Second Empire. – ED.