Luncheon of the Boating Party by Susan Vreeland Page B

Africa until I’m finished. No disappearing down in the
    catacombs.”
    Paul ran his hand through his hair and leaned back. “Are you going to ask that Valadon girl to pose too? Marie Clémentine?”
    Auguste spoke in a low voice. “And bring down Degas’ wrath? He
    thinks he owns her because he put a brush in her hand after she left the circus.”
    “I thought that was Puvis de Chavannes,” Paul said.
    “Maybe he did too, after he put his pubis there. Pubis de Chavannes, painter of stiffs. No doubt they both exercised themselves on her. No, I’m not dawdling after her. She’s only a girl. What do you take me for, a philanderer?” Paul chortled. “Will you be there anyway?”
    “Yes.” Paul peered at his pages. “Just leave me alone now. It’s coming.”
    “Then let it come and come again.” Renoir snickered and snapped his finger against Paul’s shoulder as he stood up. “Come early if you want to take out a girl in a yole. Bring Pierre Lestringuèz, to keep you in line. There’ll be plenty of boats.”
    He stood to leave and Edgar Degas hailed him. My God. He couldn’t have heard him. Auguste went over to his table.
    “Look here, Renoir,” Degas said without a smile, his mustache and his shoulders drooping, permanently tired. “I’m starting a new magazine, Le Jour et la Nuit, entirely made up of lithographs depicting society in the style of Realism. Lithography is the new way to advertise your work. Forain and Bracquemond here have already submitted. You’re welcome to submit too.”
    The false ring to Degas’ invitation made him sense a trap being laid.
    “All in the style of Realism, mind you. Nothing false. You embellish your models because you can’t stand ugliness, and it’s a deception, an offense against reality. If a woman has a horsey jaw, give it to us that way.”
    “Or if a man has a bloody cheek,” Forain said, looking him over curiously.
    “What we’re after is the truth of life,” Degas said.
    “Prettiness is truth too. You’ve painted plenty of pretty dancers.”
    • 40 •
    L u n c h e o n o f t h e B o a t i n g P a r t y
    “This is a journal of modern life,” Raffaëlli said with the smug assurance that he was Degas’ favorite. “So the subjects are café scenes of solitary down-and-outs, beggars at train stations, ragpickers in the Maquis, old men crippled in the war. That’s modern life.”
    “If you want to preach, young man, you ought to wear some kind of clerical costume so people would be warned. In my mind, there are too many unpleasant things in life as it is without creating still more of them. I hate le misérabilisme. I’m in the shining business, not the darkening business.”
    “Still doing commissioned portraits, then,” Degas said, taking charge again. “Prettying up your sitters so their husbands will throw their money at you. Renoir, you have no character at all to continue churning them out.”
    “There’s character in paying my own way and in painting my own
    way. I won’t have my motifs assigned. I’m not some student, if you haven’t noticed.”
    “We certainly didn’t notice you at the last Impressionist show.”
    “I would have been noticed there as well as at the Salon if it weren’t for your arbitrary rules.”
    “Raffaëlli here made an astonishing showing,” Degas said.
    “So I’ve heard.” He gave him a nod as recognition.
    Degas smoothed his grizzled beard the way he always did before
    pontificating. “Thirty-six works to your two that the Salon allows. Not that your two weren’t good paintings, but hung so badly among thousands that they were wasted. You’re making a mistake casting your net there.”
    “Several hundred thousand people come to the Salon compared to
    our three thousand in a good year. I go where I’m likely to be more noticed.”
    “And betray the group with your selfishness in the process.”
    A hot brand in his gut, that accusation.
    “Fine, fine. Think whatever way you will. Good