wasn’t good enough, and d’you know why? Because they were dead. They had no character, no personality. Obviously not, you say, and I don’t want to stress the obvious. But the only way you can depict the flight of character, of the soul, is if you have known the person in life. The man who sculpted Louis XII must have known him well. The absence of personality wells out of that statue like a great hole; you can know the man by what is no longer there.
I HOPE YOU NOTICE that I have radically altered my technique since you last saw me. I have done away with those vastly long brushes that used to be my stock in trade. A pity, in some ways, as they looked so good. I remember the photograph that went with the review of my first big show at the Fine Art Society in 1905. I was more proud of the photograph than the reviews, I think, good though they were. Now there, I thought, there is a painter. And it was true. I was a handsome dog, and every inch the artist, standing so proud some three feet from the canvas, with that long thin brush extended before me. A bit like the conductor of an orchestra, forcing my colours to take on the shape and shades I required. Big brush strokes, very Impressionist. But it was all thirty years too late, wasn’t it? We were so proud of ourselves for challenging the establishment, bravely taking on the academicians, banishing the dusty and fusty, the conventional and the staid. But they were already dying on their feet anyway, those old codgers. We didn’t really have to fight; our generation never has. Never will, either; if there is a war now—and people tell me there may be one day—it won’t be us marching along, rifle in hand. We’re too old already. Besides, we were merely imitators, importers of foreign ware into England, with no more originality than the people we so greatly despised. Less, perhaps; you would never have mistaken one of their pictures for a French one; our radicalism consisted of making ourselves copyists.
Ah, but it looked good for a while, no doubt about it, and it was the way to make a living, win a reputation. The English cannot take too much novelty; thirty-year-old fashions are quite radical enough for them. Not a criticism; it’s comfortable and safe, but even then I think I was aware that our excitement and fervour were not quite genuine. There was always something of the amateur theatricals about us. So I went back to the beginning when I came here. I’d been a good enough painter, but not an entirely honest one, so I started again. Out went those long-handled brushes, in came perfectly ordinary ones, the sort you can get at any supplier’s. Change that, and you change everything. The movement of the brush on the canvas, how much paint you pick up, how you mix it. I am more precise, more considered and meticulous now. And I am more interested in what I am painting.
A big change. My inability to remember the name of that woman I so horribly insulted was no accident. I can scarcely remember any of my sitters; could hardly remember them then. I didn’t know them when they came into my studio for the first time, and knew them scarcely any better when they left clutching their finished portrait. I painted what I thought they looked like, how the light reflected off their clothes and skin, the interplay of colours around them. Character and personality played second fiddle to technique. And that was not good enough. Reynolds knew that, and said so. Rembrandt knew it so well he couldn’t even be bothered to mention it. He no doubt wanted to paint the soul, Reynolds wanted a psychological study, but it was the same thing they were after, really. What lies beneath; the skull beneath the skin, and the soul within the skull—or wherever it may be found.
And I was putting down a lazy, superficial glance, thinking that because it was my glance, put down in the latest French style, it was enough. All I was saying was: Look at me! Aren’t I clever? A very poor
I HOPE YOU NOTICE that I have radically altered my technique since you last saw me. I have done away with those vastly long brushes that used to be my stock in trade. A pity, in some ways, as they looked so good. I remember the photograph that went with the review of my first big show at the Fine Art Society in 1905. I was more proud of the photograph than the reviews, I think, good though they were. Now there, I thought, there is a painter. And it was true. I was a handsome dog, and every inch the artist, standing so proud some three feet from the canvas, with that long thin brush extended before me. A bit like the conductor of an orchestra, forcing my colours to take on the shape and shades I required. Big brush strokes, very Impressionist. But it was all thirty years too late, wasn’t it? We were so proud of ourselves for challenging the establishment, bravely taking on the academicians, banishing the dusty and fusty, the conventional and the staid. But they were already dying on their feet anyway, those old codgers. We didn’t really have to fight; our generation never has. Never will, either; if there is a war now—and people tell me there may be one day—it won’t be us marching along, rifle in hand. We’re too old already. Besides, we were merely imitators, importers of foreign ware into England, with no more originality than the people we so greatly despised. Less, perhaps; you would never have mistaken one of their pictures for a French one; our radicalism consisted of making ourselves copyists.
Ah, but it looked good for a while, no doubt about it, and it was the way to make a living, win a reputation. The English cannot take too much novelty; thirty-year-old fashions are quite radical enough for them. Not a criticism; it’s comfortable and safe, but even then I think I was aware that our excitement and fervour were not quite genuine. There was always something of the amateur theatricals about us. So I went back to the beginning when I came here. I’d been a good enough painter, but not an entirely honest one, so I started again. Out went those long-handled brushes, in came perfectly ordinary ones, the sort you can get at any supplier’s. Change that, and you change everything. The movement of the brush on the canvas, how much paint you pick up, how you mix it. I am more precise, more considered and meticulous now. And I am more interested in what I am painting.
A big change. My inability to remember the name of that woman I so horribly insulted was no accident. I can scarcely remember any of my sitters; could hardly remember them then. I didn’t know them when they came into my studio for the first time, and knew them scarcely any better when they left clutching their finished portrait. I painted what I thought they looked like, how the light reflected off their clothes and skin, the interplay of colours around them. Character and personality played second fiddle to technique. And that was not good enough. Reynolds knew that, and said so. Rembrandt knew it so well he couldn’t even be bothered to mention it. He no doubt wanted to paint the soul, Reynolds wanted a psychological study, but it was the same thing they were after, really. What lies beneath; the skull beneath the skin, and the soul within the skull—or wherever it may be found.
And I was putting down a lazy, superficial glance, thinking that because it was my glance, put down in the latest French style, it was enough. All I was saying was: Look at me! Aren’t I clever? A very poor
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