The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol (56 page)

The artist read this announcement with secret pleasure: his face beamed.
He was being talked about in print—a new thing for him.
He read the lines over several times.
The comparison with Van Dyck and Titian pleased him very much.
The phrase “Viva, Andrei Petrovich!” also pleased him very much; to be called by his first name and patronymic in print was an honor hitherto completely unknown to him.
He began to pace the room rapidly, ruffling his hair, now sitting down on a chair, now jumping up and moving to the couch, constantly picturing himself receiving visitors, men and women, going up to a canvas and making dashing gestures over it with a brush, trying to impart graciousness to the movement of his arm.
The next day his bell rang; he rushed to open the door.
A lady came in, preceded by a lackey in a livery
overcoat with fur lining, and together with the lady came a young eighteen-year-old girl, her daughter.

“Are you M’sieur Chartkov?” asked the lady.

The artist bowed.

“You are written about so much; your portraits, they say, are the height of perfection.” Having said this, the lady put a lorgnette to her eye and quickly rushed to examine the walls, on which nothing was hung.
“But where are your portraits?”

“Taken down,” said the artist, slightly confused.
“I’ve only just moved to this apartment, they’re still on the way … haven’t come yet.”

“Have you been to Italy?” said the lady, aiming her lorgnette at him, since she found nothing else to aim it at.

“No, I haven’t, but I wanted to … however, I’ve put it off for the time being … Here’s an armchair, madam, you must be tired …”

“No, thank you, I sat in the carriage for a long time.
Ah, there, I see your work at last!” said the lady, rushing across the room to the wall and aiming her lorgnette at the sketches, set pieces, perspectives, and portraits standing on the floor.
“
C’est charmant! Lise, Lise, venez ici!
A room to Teniers’
¹¹
taste, you see—disorder, disorder, a table with a bust on it, an arm, a palette.
There’s dust, see how the dust is painted!
C’est charmant!
And there, on that other canvas, a woman washing her face—
quelle jolie figure
!
Ah, a peasant!
Lise, Lise, a little peasant in a Russian shirt!
look—a peasant!
So you don’t do portraits only?”

“Oh, it’s rubbish … Just for fun … sketches …”

“Tell me, what is your opinion regarding present-day portraitists?
Isn’t it true that there are none like Titian nowadays?
None with that strength of color, that … a pity I can’t express it in Russian” (the lady was a lover of art and had gone running with her lorgnette through all the galleries of Italy).
“However, M’sieur Null … ah, what a painter!
Such an extraordinary brush!
I find his faces even more expressive than Titian’s.
Do you know M’sieur Null?”

“Who is this Null?” asked the artist.

“M’sieur Null.
Ah, such talent!
He painted her portrait when
she was only twelve.
You absolutely must come and visit us.
Lise, you shall show him your album.
You know, we came so that you could start at once on her portrait.”

“Why, I’m ready this very minute.”

He instantly moved over the easel with a prepared canvas on it, took up the palette, and fixed his eyes on the daughter’s pale face.
Had he been a connoisseur of human nature, in a single moment he would have read in it the beginnings of a childish passion for balls, the beginnings of boredom and complaints about the length of time before dinner and after dinner, the wish to put on a new dress and run to the fete, the heavy traces of an indifferent application to various arts, imposed by her mother for the sake of loftiness of soul and feelings.
But the artist saw in this delicate little face nothing but an almost porcelain transparency of body, so alluring for the brush, an attractive, light languor, a slender white neck, and an aristocratic lightness of figure.
And he was preparing beforehand to triumph, to show the lightness and brilliance of his brush, which so far had dealt only with the hard features of crude models, with the stern ancients and copies of some classical masters.
He could already picture mentally to himself how this light little face was going to come out.

“You know,” said the lady, even with a somewhat touching expression on her face, “I’d like to … the dress she’s wearing now—I confess, I’d like her not to be wearing a dress we’re so used to; I’d like her to be dressed simply and sitting in the shade of greenery, with a view of some fields, with herds in the distance, or a copse … so that it won’t look as if she were going to some ball or fashionable soiree.
Our balls, I confess, are so deadly for the soul, so destructive of what’s left of our feelings … simplicity, there should be more simplicity.”

Alas!
it was written on the faces of mother and daughter that they danced themselves away at balls until they nearly turned to wax.

Chartkov got down to work, seated his model, pondered it all somewhat in his head; traced in the air with his brush, mentally establishing the points; squinted his eye a little, stepped back, looked from a distance—and in one hour had begun and finished
the rough sketch.
Pleased with it, he now got to painting, and the work carried him away.
He forgot everything, forgot even that he was in the presence of aristocratic ladies, even began to exhibit some artistic mannerisms, uttering various sounds aloud, humming along every once in a while, as happens with artists who are wholeheartedly immersed in their work.
Without any ceremony, just with a movement of his brush, he made his model raise her head, for she had finally become quite fidgety and looked utterly weary.

“Enough, that’s enough for the first time,” said the lady.

“A little longer,” said the artist, forgetting himself.

“No, it’s time, Lise, it’s three o’clock!” she said, taking out a small watch hanging on a golden chain from her belt and exclaiming, “Ah, how late!”

“Only one little minute,” Chartkov said in the simple-hearted and pleading voice of a child.

But the lady did not seem at all disposed to cater to his artistic needs this time, and instead promised a longer sitting the next time.

“That’s annoying, though,” Chartkov thought to himself.
“My hand just got going.” And he recalled that no one had interrupted him or stopped him when he was working in his studio on Vasilievsky Island; Nikita used to sit in one spot without stirring—paint him as much as you like; he would even fall asleep in the position he was told.
Disgruntled, he put his brush and palette down on a chair and stopped vaguely before the canvas.
A compliment uttered by the society lady awakened him from his oblivion.
He rushed quickly to the door to see them off; on the stairs he received an invitation to visit, to come the next week for dinner, and with a cheerful look he returned to his room.
The aristocratic lady had charmed him completely Till then he had looked at such beings as something inaccessible, born only to race by in a magnificent carriage with liveried lackeys and a jaunty coachman, casting an indifferent glance at the man plodding along on foot in a wretched cloak.
And now suddenly one of these beings had entered his room; he was painting a portrait, he was invited to dinner in an aristocratic house.
An extraordinary contentment came
over him; he was completely intoxicated and rewarded himself for it with a fine dinner, an evening performance, and again took a carriage ride through the city without any need.

During all those days he was unable even to think about his usual work.
He was preparing and waiting only for the moment when the bell would ring.
At last the aristocratic lady arrived with her pale daughter.
He sat them down, moved the canvas over, with adroitness now and a pretense to worldly manners, and began to paint.
The brightness of the sunny day was a great help to him.
He saw much in his light model of that which, if caught and transferred to canvas, might endow the portrait with great merit; he saw that he might do something special, if everything was finally executed according to the idea he now had of his model.
His heart even began to throb lightly when he sensed that he was about to express something others had never noticed.
The work occupied him totally, he was all immersed in his brush, again forgetting about his model’s aristocratic origin.
With bated breath, he saw the light features and nearly transparent body of a seventeen-year-old girl emerge from under his brush.
He picked up every nuance, a slight yellowness, a barely noticeable blue under the eyes, and was even about to catch a small pimple that had broken out on her forehead, when suddenly he heard the mother’s voice at his ear.
“Ah, why that?
There’s no need for it,” the lady said.
“And you’ve also … look, in a few places … it seems a bit yellow, and look, here it’s just like dark spots.” The artist started to explain that it was precisely those spots and the yellowness that had played out so well, and that they made up the pleasing and light tones of the face.
To which he received the reply that they did not make up any tones and had not played out in any way, and that it only seemed so to him.
“But allow me to touch in a little yellow here, just in this one place,” the artist said simple-heartedly.
But that precisely he was not allowed to do.
It was declared that Lise was merely a bit indisposed that day, and there had never been any yellowness in her face, that it was always strikingly fresh in color.
Sadly, he began to wipe out what his brush had brought forth on the canvas.
Many barely noticeable features disappeared, and the likeness partly disappeared along with them.
Unfeelingly, he began to lend it the
general color scheme that is given by rote and turns even faces taken from nature into something coldly ideal, such as is seen in student set pieces.
But the lady was pleased that the offensive colors had been quite driven out.
She only expressed surprise that the work was taking so long, and added that she had heard he finished a portrait completely in two sittings.
The artist found nothing to reply to that.
The ladies rose and prepared to leave.
He put down his brush, saw them to the door, and after that stood vaguely for a long time on the same spot in front of the portrait.
He gazed at it stupidly, and meanwhile those light feminine features raced through his head, those nuances and ethereal tones he had observed and which his brush had mercilessly destroyed.
All filled with them, he set the portrait aside and found somewhere in the studio an abandoned head of Psyche, which he had roughly sketched out on canvas once long ago.
It was a deftly painted face, but completely ideal, cold, consisting only of general features that had not taken on living flesh.
Having nothing to do, he now began going over it, recalling on it all that he had happened to observe in the face of the aristocratic visitor.
The features, nuances, and tones he had caught laid themselves down here in that purified form in which they come only when an artist, having looked long enough at the model, withdraws from it and produces a creation equal to it.
Psyche began to come to life, and the barely glimpsed idea gradually began to be clothed in visible flesh.
The facial type of the young society girl was inadvertently imparted to Psyche, and through that she acquired the distinctive expression which gives a work the right to be called truly original.
It seemed he made use of both the parts and the whole of what his model had presented to him, and he became totally caught up in his work.
For several days he was occupied with nothing else.
And it was at this work that the arrival of his lady acquaintances found him.
He had no time to remove the painting from the easel.
Both ladies uttered joyful cries of amazement and clasped their hands:

“Lise, Lise!
Ah, what a likeness!
Superbe, superbe!
What a good idea to dress her in Greek costume.
Ah, such a surprise!”

The artist did not know what to do with the agreeably deceived ladies.
Embarrassed and looking down, he said quietly:

“It’s Psyche.”

“In the guise of Psyche?
C’est charmant!
” the mother said, smiling, and the daughter smiled as well.
“Don’t you think, Lise, that it’s most becoming for you to be portrayed as Psyche?
Quelle idée délicieuse!
But what work!
It’s Corrège.
¹²
I confess, I had read and heard about you, but I didn’t know you had such talent.
No, you absolutely must paint my portrait as well.”

The lady evidently also wanted to be presented as some sort of Psyche.

“What am I to do with them?” thought the artist.
“If they want it so much themselves, let Psyche pass for whatever they want.” And he said aloud:

“Be so good as to sit for a little while, and I’ll do a little touching up.”

“Ah, no, I’m afraid you might … it’s such a good likeness now.”

But the artist understood that there were apprehensions regarding yellow tints and reassured them by saying that he would only give more brightness and expression to the eyes.
For, in all fairness, he felt rather ashamed and wanted to give at least a little more resemblance to the original, lest someone reproach him for decided shamelessness.
And, indeed, the features of the young girl did finally begin to show more clearly through the image of Psyche.

“Enough!” said the mother, beginning to fear that the resemblance would finally become too close.

The artist was rewarded with everything: a smile, money, a compliment, a warm pressing of the hand, an open invitation to dinner—in short, he received a thousand flattering rewards.
The portrait caused a stir in town.
The lady showed it to her lady friends; all were amazed at the art with which the painter had managed to keep the likeness and at the same time endow the model with beauty.
This last observation they made, naturally, not without a slight flush of envy on their faces.
And the artist was suddenly beset with commissions.
It seemed the whole town wanted to be painted by him.
The doorbell was constantly ringing.
On the one hand, this might have been a good thing, offering him endless practice, diversity, a multitude of faces.
But, unfortunately, these were all people who were hard to get along with, hurried people, busy or
belonging to society—meaning still busier than any other sort, and therefore impatient in the extreme.
From all sides came only the request tha it be done well and promptly.
The artist saw that it was decidedly impossible to finish his works, that everything had to be replaced by adroitness and quick, facile brushwork.
To catch only the whole, only the general expression, without letting the brush go deeper into fine details—in short, to follow nature to the utmost was decidedly impossible.
To this it must be added that almost all those being painted had many other claims to various things.
The ladies demanded that only their soul and character be portrayed in the main, while the rest sometimes should not even be adhered to, all corners should be rounded, all flaws lightened, or, if possible, avoided altogether.
In short, so as to make the face something to admire, if not to fall completely in love with.
And as a result of that, when they sat for him, they sometimes acquired such expressions as astonished the artist: one tried to make her face show melancholy, another reverie, a third wanted at all costs to reduce the size of her mouth and compressed it so much that it finally turned into a dot no bigger than a pinhead.
And, despite all that, they demanded a good likeness from him and an easy naturalness.
Nor were the men any better than the ladies.
One demanded to be portrayed with a strong, energetic turn of the head; another with inspired eyes raised aloft; a lieutenant of the guards absolutely insisted that Mars show in his look; a civil dignitary was bent on having more frankness and nobility in his face, and his hand resting on a book on which would be clearly written: “He always stood for truth.” At first these demands made the artist break out in a sweat: all this had to be calculated, pondered, and yet he was given very little time.
He finally worked the whole business out and no longer had any difficulty.
He could grasp ahead of time, from two or three words, how the person wanted to be portrayed.
If someone wanted Mars, he put Mars into his face; if someone aimed at Byron, he gave him a Byronic pose and attitude.
If a lady wished to be Corinne, Ondine, or Aspasia,
¹³
he agreed to everything with great willingness and added a dose of good looks on his own, which, as everyone knows, never hurts, and on account of which an artist may even be forgiven the lack of likeness.
Soon he himself began to marvel at the wonderful
quickness and facility of his brush.
And those he painted, it goes without saying, were delighted and proclaimed him a genius.