“I’ve had it for two years. The demand is so great I have just completed installing a second.”
“That must have been what I heard. People are talking.”
Masgayl snorted. “They always talk. Only imagers never talk. They don’t need to. And artists and portraiturists shouldn’t say much, but let their work speak for them.”
“We do try, honored factorius. When you are finished with today’s sitting, would you like to see the work I am doing for the daughter of Imager Heisbyl?”
“I am certain it shows an excellently attractive woman. Whether or not it resembles the lady might well be another question.”
I almost missed a brush stroke at those words.
“All my work resembles those whom I portray, most honored Masgayl.”
“Oh . . . I’m quite assured that it does, perhaps on their best days in the best possible light.” The factorius offered an ironic laugh. “Your journeyman does you credit, Caliostrus.”
After what Masgayl had just said, I wasn’t certain that I wanted that credit, but I said nothing and switched my concentration to the drape and the play of the light on the right lower sleeve of the factor’s bastognan-brown jacket. There was something there. I could see it . . .
Then, it was there on the canvas, just as I had visualized it, but I wasn’t aware that I’d actually painted it. Still, the brushstrokes were there, if a touch more precise than usual, more the way I wished they were than they sometimes were.
“He has talent and promise, honored factorius, and, if he continues to listen,” Caliostrus added with a touch of asperity, “he might even have more commissions such as yours.”
That was a not-so-veiled reference to Masgayl’s beady eyes, and I attempted to work on the smaller left section of the sleeve, trying to get the fall of the light and the creases just right.
“He might indeed,” agreed the factorius politely. “Is that the portrait you mentioned, the one you put on the easel?”
“It is indeed. It is as of the moment most incomplete,” Caliostrus said before lifting the canvas and carrying to where Masgayl could see it.
“Ah, yes,” nodded the rope factor, “a most flattering image, but one certainly recognizable as the younger Mistress Heisbyl.”
“I’m glad that you find it so.” Caliostrus’s words were strained.
“Don’t mind me, master portraiturist. I’m cynical about far too much in life. I’d rather make cables for ships, but I also provide rope for the gaolers in at the Poignard Prison. We all have aspects of what we do that we could do without.”
Master Caliostrus retreated with the portrait. Once he had placed it on his working easel, he motioned for Stanus to leave and then followed, inclining his head to the factor just before he opened the studio door. “Until later, honored factorius.”
“Until later.”
Once the door closed, I went back to working on the area around the factor’s eyes. Caliostrus had been right about one thing-the eyes were central to showing a true likeness.
When Masgayl finally rose at the end of the glass, he stretched, then began to don his cloak, which even he might need against a wind that was more indicative of the winter gusts of Ianus than reminiscent of the pleasant harvest breezes of Erntyn.
“Young Rhenn, you are most unusual for a portraiturist, even for a journeyman.” Masgayl smiled courteously, but for the first time, I could sense a ferocity behind the smile. “The advantage of commerce is that one can be accurate and prosper. Doing so is far more . . . difficult . . . when one’s craft depends on pleasing the perceptions of those who pay. Before long, you will doubtless have to choose between accuracy and perception . . . if you have not already done so.”
“Sir.” I just inclined my head politely. There was little I could or should have said, not given my position.
He smiled again, as if he had made a jest, then turned and left the studio. For a moment, I just stood with the chill wind of the coming winter gusting past me.
8
755 A.L.
Those who would judge a work of art reveal more of themselves than of the artist under their scrutiny or of his work.
For some reason, Samedi mornings in Ianus seemed colder than other winter mornings. The ceramic stove in the center of the studio did radiate warmth, but the windowpanes sucked that heat out of the room. The corner windows and those at the other end of the studio were covered with thick hangings, but not the others, because I needed as much light as I could get in order to paint the girl seated on the chair.
“Mistress Thelya . . . if you would please keep looking toward the vase on that table . . . that’s it.”
Her governess refrained from uttering a word.
“Yes, Master Rhennthyl.”
I didn’t correct her this time. There wasn’t any point to it. Mistress Thelya D’Scheorzyl was all of nine years old. She was sweet and had the manners of a much older girl, thankfully, and the attention span of a gnat, not-so-thankfully. She stroked the cat in her arms gently. The cat had yellow-green eyes and a long silky white coat with tortoiseshell accents. Given that Thelya’s mother had insisted that her daughter be painted in a silver-gray dress, I’d had to find a blue-gray-shaded pillow on which the cat could rest in order to get enough contrast between the cat’s coat, Thelya’s pale complexion, and the dress. Even so, I’d had to change the shade of the pillow in the portrait to get those colors and contrasts so that they enhanced her prettiness rather than clashed with it. I still worried about the eyes . . . there was something there I didn’t have quite the way it should be.
“You’ll make Remsi look good, won’t you?”
“You and Remsi will look good together,” I replied, working on Thelya’s jawline.
In some ways, depicting her cat, the rather languorous Remsi, was the easiest part of the commission, because Remsi was almost totally white with the exception of tortoiseshell paws, tail, and ears.
The jawline still wasn’t quite the way I wanted it. I looked to Thelya, fixing the side of her face in my mind, then at the canvas, and the brushstrokes. The oils on the canvas shimmered, then shifted, ever so slightly. The brushstrokes were still mine, but the jawline was cleaner-and right. I’d only been able to do that recently, but I knew what I was doing bordered on imaging. Yet it was only with oils, and it was cleaner and faster than scraping and repainting and certainly better than overpainting. For all that, I wasn’t about to try it often, only when I had a very clear image in my mind-and definitely not when Master Caliostrus was around.
I worked to get the rest of the left side of her face finished before the ten bells of noon chimed-and managed to do so as well as finish the cat’s face as well, setting down the brush just as the first bell rang.
“Can I see?” asked Thelya, scampering off the chair, but still holding the cat.
“We still need two more sittings,” I said to the governess.
“Then . . . next Mardi afternoon, at the third glass of the afternoon, and next Samedi, at the ninth glass of morning.” She nodded brusquely.
Thelya scurried past me to look at the canvas. “That’s Remsi! It looks just like her.”
I forbore to mention that was the point of a portrait and just smiled.
Once I saw them off, I put in another glass of work on details for the portrait that did not require their presence. I used what little of the oils I had left on a small work, a still life, which I could not do for hire or sale, but only for open exhibit at the annual festival-the only venue where an artist could exhibit or sell out of his discipline-although it would be next year’s festival, since the final judging on this year’s submissions would be later in the evening.