thing, that. I have concluded that unless you are humble before your subject, you are no good. And it doesn’t matter whether your subject is the King-Emperor of Britain and the Indies, or a cheap model, or a bowl of fruit.
You see the link, no doubt? Of course you do, you got there way before me; you were always cleverer than me. I am trying to justify why it is that most Sundays you will find me on my knees in the local church. I am trying to become a better painter, my friend, because if the Almighty doesn’t make me feel humble, the pasty face of William Nasmyth smirking before me in my best chair is hardly likely to do so either. I am trying to paint you, inside and out, and that is why I find it all so difficult. You are a hard one to fathom, always have been, because you have always been a bit of a charlatan.
There! That’s what I mean! Most people would look displeased at that, a little concerned at least. I have never met anyone, however despicable, who does not believe that they are fundamentally decent. It is part of the human condition. Nothing to be done about it. We need to feel as though we are doing our best. We need to justify our ways, to ourselves even if to no-one else. But you are different. You smile at the accusation. Not in a dismissive way, either, as if to say, foolish man, you cannot touch me so easily. No; with you there is the slightest, smallest nod. Of agreement. Of course I am a charlatan, that little inclination of your head says. That is my profession. We live in an age when appearance is all, and I am the master of it. I am a purveyor of the new upon the public, the intermediary. I persuade people to love what they hate, buy what they do not want, despise what they love, and that can only be done with the techniques of the circus ring-master. But I am honest, nonetheless, and tell the truth. In that lies my integrity: I am a fraud with a purpose.
“What do all men desire, except fame?” That was the question you put to me one night in a pub in Chelsea. We were a little drunk, I recall, so I didn’t reply; I knew you were going to answer for me anyway. I liked those evenings; to talk of such things, surrounded by the boatmen drinking away their wages, the porters and the grocers getting louder and louder as the publican pocketed their children’s food for the next week. It still meant a lot to me, though I was beginning to touch my emancipation by then. Your words were no longer received uncritically, and I was coming to see myself as your equal in stature. Is that not what a good teacher does, after all, stands and watches his pupils grow through, then outgrow, his tutelage? But then I realised you did not want me to grow. Just as much as I needed you to teach me, you needed my worship and naïveté and were not prepared to do without. I often wonder what it must be like to be a father, to see your child no longer childish, losing that automatic tendency to adore. Does it come in a moment, or gradually? Is it a peaceful or a violent process? Is that why artists behave like children, needing to humiliate and denigrate their elders in order to feel sure of themselves?
I suppose I will never find out. I will not see forty-five again, and it is too late; children are a form of creation that I will not experience. My decline is imminent; already I feel my bones ache when I get out of bed, feel tired at the end of the day, have trouble seeing things as well as I once did. It is the great curse of the portraitist, to be so aware of one’s own decline. I have spent years looking at people’s faces and bodies, know which muscles need to sag to produce that look of diminution in the elderly. I see a face and can trace the lines creeping across the cheeks and forehead, the way the eyes sink and lose their lustre. I have to see my fate every time I look in a mirror. I can foresee the future. It was no shock to me when you arrived. I knew exactly what you would look like; knew the precise
You see the link, no doubt? Of course you do, you got there way before me; you were always cleverer than me. I am trying to justify why it is that most Sundays you will find me on my knees in the local church. I am trying to become a better painter, my friend, because if the Almighty doesn’t make me feel humble, the pasty face of William Nasmyth smirking before me in my best chair is hardly likely to do so either. I am trying to paint you, inside and out, and that is why I find it all so difficult. You are a hard one to fathom, always have been, because you have always been a bit of a charlatan.
There! That’s what I mean! Most people would look displeased at that, a little concerned at least. I have never met anyone, however despicable, who does not believe that they are fundamentally decent. It is part of the human condition. Nothing to be done about it. We need to feel as though we are doing our best. We need to justify our ways, to ourselves even if to no-one else. But you are different. You smile at the accusation. Not in a dismissive way, either, as if to say, foolish man, you cannot touch me so easily. No; with you there is the slightest, smallest nod. Of agreement. Of course I am a charlatan, that little inclination of your head says. That is my profession. We live in an age when appearance is all, and I am the master of it. I am a purveyor of the new upon the public, the intermediary. I persuade people to love what they hate, buy what they do not want, despise what they love, and that can only be done with the techniques of the circus ring-master. But I am honest, nonetheless, and tell the truth. In that lies my integrity: I am a fraud with a purpose.
“What do all men desire, except fame?” That was the question you put to me one night in a pub in Chelsea. We were a little drunk, I recall, so I didn’t reply; I knew you were going to answer for me anyway. I liked those evenings; to talk of such things, surrounded by the boatmen drinking away their wages, the porters and the grocers getting louder and louder as the publican pocketed their children’s food for the next week. It still meant a lot to me, though I was beginning to touch my emancipation by then. Your words were no longer received uncritically, and I was coming to see myself as your equal in stature. Is that not what a good teacher does, after all, stands and watches his pupils grow through, then outgrow, his tutelage? But then I realised you did not want me to grow. Just as much as I needed you to teach me, you needed my worship and naïveté and were not prepared to do without. I often wonder what it must be like to be a father, to see your child no longer childish, losing that automatic tendency to adore. Does it come in a moment, or gradually? Is it a peaceful or a violent process? Is that why artists behave like children, needing to humiliate and denigrate their elders in order to feel sure of themselves?
I suppose I will never find out. I will not see forty-five again, and it is too late; children are a form of creation that I will not experience. My decline is imminent; already I feel my bones ache when I get out of bed, feel tired at the end of the day, have trouble seeing things as well as I once did. It is the great curse of the portraitist, to be so aware of one’s own decline. I have spent years looking at people’s faces and bodies, know which muscles need to sag to produce that look of diminution in the elderly. I see a face and can trace the lines creeping across the cheeks and forehead, the way the eyes sink and lose their lustre. I have to see my fate every time I look in a mirror. I can foresee the future. It was no shock to me when you arrived. I knew exactly what you would look like; knew the precise
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