Читать книгу The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Various - Страница 5

They were in the presence of a man with flowing hair, flowing beard, and flowing language, in a studio, all light from which was excluded by heavy curtains, except enough to display an easel on which was placed a painting, a background of dark blue where were many apparently spider and crow-tracks.

'Those who in the profundity of their darkness incline to the belief that the vitality of art, butterfly-like, has fled from this sunny world, have made the biggest kind of a mistake,' said Mr. Artaxerxes Phlamm, the Mystic Artist, to Caper. The hit was evidently intended for Rocjean, but that descendant of the Gauls, for some reason, did not smite back again; he contented himself with the remark:

'Art is long.'

'Yes, sir,' continued Mr. Phlamm, 'not only it has length, but breadth, breadth, broadness—it extends from—yes—from—pole to pole.'

'Like a clothes-line,' said Caper.

'Ah!' continued Phlamm, with a pickled smile, 'Fancy, ever Fancy, but it is Imagination that, as it were, brings man to a level with his destiny and elevates him to the Olympium hights of the True, and all that rises much above the meedyochre. But I must not forget that this is your first visit to me studeeyoh. The painting on the easel is a view of Venice on the Grand Canal.'

'But,' said Rocjean, 'I do not see the canal.'

'When you are gazing at the stars do you see your boots?' asked Phlamm.

'I always do,' spoke Caper quickly, 'always gaze at 'em at night—smoke a cigar—put my feet higher than my head—sit in a chair—stars reflected in boots—big thing!'

'You are full of life and spirits, Caper,' continued Phlamm, 'full of 'em; but Rocjean is more serious, more imbued with his nobil calling. My illustration, as he understands, would convey the idea that such a thing as foreground in a painting is false; it's a sham, it's a delusion, and all that. It may do for pre-Raffleites, but for a man who looks Naychure in the face, he sees her operating diversely, and he works according. I repeat it again, when I was on the Grand Canal in Venice, I didn't see the Grand Canal.'

'Neither did I,' spoke Caper, 'we're just alike; I kept my head all the time out of the gondola-window looking for pretty girls—and I saw them!'

'May I ask why you dead-color your canvas blue, and then make your drawing in black outline?' asked Rocjean.

'What is the color of the sky? Is it not blue? Is not blue a cold color; is it not the negative to the warmth, the balance to the scales, the one thing needed on which to rear the glorious fabric that Naychure reveals to the undimmed vision of man? I know your answer, and I refute it. I have studied Art from its roots, and now I'm in the branches, and I grasp the fruit. My manner is peculiar—I have no patent for it—I ask for none. The illimitable passes the legitimate, and the sw-word is carried by the hero—for me the bruzh, the paint-bruzh. You see that painting before you—it is my child—I lavish on it my intentions—I am going to work three years on that picture!'

'I bet you a new hat you sell it, and a dozen more, and send 'em off before six months. You're all the rage now since you sold old Goldburg a picture,' quoth Caper.

'I don't bet, I am opposed to betting. But look that picture of mine in the face, in the face! Here is a finished painting, The Lake of Zurich; see those clouds floating mistily away into the far distance—there's atmosphere for you—there's air! You can't cut those clouds into slices of cheese as you can them of that humbug of a Cloud Lowrain. Cloud Lowrain! he's a purty painter! Naychure is my teacher. I go out mornings and hear the jackdaws chatter, and see trees and all that; sometimes I walk around in a garden for ten minutes and commune with Naychure—that's the way to do it. Look at clouds before you paint 'em—I know it's hard when the sun's in your eyes, but do it—I've spent a week at a time out-doors, like Wordsworth and the great, the grand, the colossial Ruzking.'

'I like that water,' said Rocjean, alluding to that of the painting.

'Water is my peculiar study; I am now engaged experimenting on it—see there!' Here Phlamm pointed to a basin.

'Been washing your hands?' asked Caper.

'Scientifically experimenting, not manually. Water is soup-or-fish-all—earth is not soup-or-fish-all.'

'Our dinners are, during Lent,' quoth Caper, 'unless we're heretics.'

'I don't understand your frivolity—what do you mean?'

'Didn't you say, 'Soup or all fish?''

'Pshaw! You will never make an artist—never, never—you are too, too superficiall, too much of the earth, dirty.'

'Oh! now I understand,' answered Caper; 'give it to me, I deserve it.'

'I was studying water, its shadows and its superficiality, in that basin,' continued Phlamm, 'and I study the ocean there, and have devolved great principles from it. What makes my pictures sought for by the high and the low, wealthy? What? It's the Truth in 'em, the Mystery, the Naychure. The old masters were humbugs, they weren't mysterious, they had no inner sight into the workings of Naychure. Who'd buy one of their pictures when he might have a Turner for the same price? Nobody.'

'Wouldn't he?' asked Caper. 'Try him with a Raphael, just a small one.'

'Raphael? You mean Raffaele. Ah! he was a painter, he wasn't one of the old masters, however, he was a middle-age master. What sweetness, what a kind of—sweetness generally; what a blending of the prayerful infant with the enthusiastic beauty; the—the polished chastity of his Mad-donas; the folds of his drapery, and—the drapery of his folds. Truly enchanting, and so very uncommonly gentlemanly in his colors.'

'The Chesterfield of oil-colors?' suggested Rocjean. 'But à propos of Nature, you never paint a picture directly from her, do you?'

'Never! Does a great historical painter use the model? No, sir; he draws on his imagination for his figures. He scorns to copy from a model. I convey the impression of mystery that Naychure gives me; I am no servile copyist. And I claim to leave an impression on the minds of the beholders of my works. Why, even Caper, I believe, can see what I wish to tell, and read my poems on canvas. Tell me, Caper, what idea does even that rough sketch of Venice awake in your imaginative faculties, and all that?'

Caper's face wore a deeply thoughtful look, as he answered: 'I do see it; I do claim to read the lesson you would teach–'

'Speak it out,' interrupted Phlamm, 'I knew you would feel the deep, mysterious sentiment as is in it.'

'Spider-tracks and crows' feet on the blue mud of a big marsh,' spoke Caper resolutely.

'Pshaw!' exclaimed Phlamm impetuously; 'you have no Faith, and without that, all Art is a sealed thing. Goldburg, to whom I lately sold a painting, had faith; he saw the grand idea which I explained to him in that picture; he knew that the Earl of Bigbarns had purchased a work of mine, and he said to me: 'The opinion of such a man is an opinion as should be a valuable opinion to a business man, and govern the sentiments of those who worship Art.' Other artists see Naychure, but how do they see her? I answer, blindly! They don't feel her here!' (Phlamm struck his waistcoat in fearful proximity to a pocket in it, and altogether too low for his heart.)

'Nay-chure,' said Caper to Rocjean, as they left this studio of the mysterious one, 'ruined a good Barnum to make a poor Phlamm, when she made him.'