CHAPTER 17
Though Dinny had no expert knowledge of pictures, she had, with Wilfrid, made an intensive examination of such as were on permanent show in London. She had also enjoyed extremely the Italian Exhibition of 1930. It was, therefore, natural to accept her Uncle Adrian’s invitation to accompany him to the French Exhibition of 1932. After a syncopated lunch in Piccadilly they passed through the turnstile at one o’clock on January the 22nd, and took stand before the Primitives. Quite a number of people were emulating their attempt to avoid the crowd, so that their progress was slow, and it was an hour before they had reached the Watteaus.
“‘Gilles,’” said Adrian, resting one leg; “that strikes me as about the best picture yet, Dinny. It’s queer—when a genre painter of the decorative school gets hold of a subject or a type that grips him, how thoroughly he’ll stir you up. Look at the pierrot’s face—what a brooding, fateful, hiding-up expression! There’s the public performer, with the private life, incarnate!”
Dinny remained silent.
“Well, young woman?”
“I was wondering whether art was so conscious. Don’t you think he just wanted to paint that white dress, and his model did the rest? It’s a marvellous expression, but perhaps he had it. People do.”
Adrian noted her face with the tail of his eye. Yes! People did. Paint her in repose, render her when she wasn’t aware of how she was looking, of keeping her end up, or whatever you might call it, and wouldn’t you have a face that stirred you with all that lay behind it? Art was unsatisfactory. When it gave you the spirit, distilled the essence, it didn’t seem real; and when it gave you the gross, cross-currented, contradictory surface, it didn’t seem worth while. Attitudes, fleeting expressions, tricks of light—all by way of being ‘real,’ and nothing revealed! He said suddenly:
“Great books and portraits are so dashed rare, because artists won’t high-light the essential, or if they do, they overdo it.”
“I don’t see how that applies to this picture, Uncle. It’s not a portrait, it’s a dramatic moment and a white dress.”
“Perhaps! All the same, if I could paint you, Dinny, as you truly are, people would say you weren’t real.”
“How fortunate!”
“Most people can’t even imagine you.”
“Forgive imperence, Uncle, but—can YOU?”
Adrian wrinkled up his goatee.
“I like to think so.”
“Oh, look! There’s the Boucher Pompadour!”
After two minutes in front of its expanse Adrian continued:
“Well, for a man who preferred it nude, he could paint what covers the female body pretty well, couldn’t he?”
“Maintenon and Pompadour. I always get them mixed.”
“The Maintenon wore blue stockings, and ministered to Louis the XIVth.”
“Oh, yes! Let’s go straight from here to the Manets, Uncle.”
“Why?”
“I don’t think I shall last much longer.”
Adrian, glancing round, suddenly saw why. In front of the Gilles were standing Clare and a young man whom he did not know. He put his arm through Dinny’s and they passed into the next room but one.
“I noticed your discretion,” he murmured, in front of the ‘Boy Blowing Bubbles.’ “Is that young man a snake in the grass, or a worm in the bud, or—?”
“A very nice boy.”
“What’s his name?”
“Tony Croom.”
“Oh! the young man on the ship? Does Clare see much of him?”
“I don’t ask her, Uncle. She is guaranteed to behave for a year”; and, at the cock of Adrian’s eyebrow, added: “She promised Aunt Em.”
“And after the year?”
“I don’t know, nor does she. Aren’t these Manets good?”
They passed slowly through the room and came to the last.
“To think that Gauguin struck me as the cream of eccentricity in 1910,” murmured Adrian; “it shows how things move. I went to that post-impressionist exhibition straight from looking at the Chinese pictures in the B. M. Cézanne, Matisse, Gauguin, Van Gogh—the last word then, hoary now. Gauguin certainly IS a colourist. But give me the Chinese still. I fear I’m fundamentally of the old order, Dinny.”
“I can see these are good—most of them; but I couldn’t live with them.”
“The French have their uses; no other country can show you the transitions of art so dearly. From the Primitives to Clouet, from Clouet to Poussin and Claude, from them to Watteau and his school, thence to Boucher and Greuze, on to Ingres and Delacroix, to the Barbizon lot, to the Impressionists, to the Post–Impressionists; and always some bloke—Chardin, Lépicié, Fragonard, Manet, Degas, Monet, Cezanne—breaking away or breaking through towards the next.”
“Has there ever before been such a violent break as just lately?”
“There’s never before been such a violent break in the way people look at life; nor such complete confusion in the minds of artists as to what they exist for.”
“And what DO they exist for, Uncle?”
“To give pleasure or reveal truth, or both.”
“I can’t imagine myself enjoying what they enjoy, and—what is truth?”
Adrian turned up his thumbs.
“Dinny, I’m tired as a dog. Let’s slip out.”
Dinny saw her sister and young Croom passing through the archway. She was not sure whether Clare had noticed them, and young Croom was clearly noticing nothing but Clare. She followed Adrian out, in her turn admiring his discretion. But neither of them would admit uneasiness. With whom one went about was now so entirely one’s own business.