Book Report: The Portrait

43. Iain Pears, The Portrait (2005) (1/15/19)

This slim (211-page) volume is a tour de force: a somewhat menacing, mysterious (very masculine) monologue, spoken by an artist—a portraitist—to an art critic over the course of a few days, as the critic sits as the subject of a painting. It takes place in 1912, on the tiny Breton island of Houat: the time is significant, being just at the crux between Post-Impressionism and Modernism; as, to a certain extent, is the place, it turns out in the end (though I won't give that away).

As you get going, the narration seems rather random, skipping from memory to memory—the artist, Henry MacAlpine, and the critic, William Nasmyth, were once good friends, the well-to-do British critic something of a mentor to the less worldly Scots painter—and filling the critic in on the last four years, beginning shortly before the artist left London and moved to this desolate fishing island. The speech is formal, dated—appropriate to the time. Over the course of the monologue we learn about how the Post-Impressionists came to be, if not embraced, at least known (which is half the battle) in London; about the creative opportunities of Paris, London, and (not so much) Glasgow; about women's place in the art world (virtually nonexistent); about showing and being received as an artist. And we learn about these two men's personal circle—a few individuals who end up playing a large role as the story unfolds.

I wasn't entirely sure I liked the book—Henry is a little mean, at once self-effacing and self-sure—but I kept going. And in the end, I'm glad I did, because all the undercurrents did finally lead to a satisfyingly chilling resolution. It is a mystery, but more of the Edgar Allan Poe than the Agatha Christie variety. There are signposts along the way to suggest what might happen.

And there is some beautiful writing. Here are a couple of examples. First, the task of the portraitist:

Now, to work. I have finished sketching, had enough experi-menting with your fine features. I tried all sorts of angles and poses in my head, and have settled on the one that was in my mind from the very beginning. The characteristic one you have of sitting in a chair with one shoulder slightly forward, and your head fractionally turned towards it. It gives you a sense of being about to move all the time, of energy. Quite undeserved, I think, as you are one of the laziest people I have ever known. Your energy is not physical at all; it is a fine case of the body reflecting the mind, creating an illusion which has nothing to do with the pills for the heart, weak arms and your tendency to puff and wheeze up stairs. It is an example of the superiority of the will over reality; I could beat the hell out of you, pick you up and carry you halfway across the island even against your will. Most people could; but I suspect the idea has never crossed anyone's mind since you were at school—where I imagine you were bullied, as children do not appreciate the power of the intellect. A further problem to be solved, of course—for the painting must convey the intellect through the physical—how to communicate the strength of one and the weakness of the other at the same time?

And here's a lovely meditation on place, via painting:

You see that my style has changed? Of course you have; you never miss anything. Along with the brushes, I have jettisoned the method. What were we taught? Line, line, line. And the immediacy of the impression: the great irreconcilables that have destroyed a generation or more of English painters. There we were, slopping down great gobs of paint trying to fix something glimpsed for a moment then half forgotten. As Monet had shown us, so we did. Well and good: it produced a few pretty things, although personally there was always some little Calvinist inside me tutting away about French corruption. By all means, try and capture that brilliant flash of light on the lily pond; the play of autumn sun on the cathedral façade. But we never get much sun in Scotland, you know. Not much light, either. We have fifty-nine different shades of grey. We are a nation en grisaille, and can see all of God's creation in the difference between an overcast dawn and a threatening, squally morning. Even the green of the hills is grey, if you study it properly. The heather and the lochs, all on a grey ground. The sun itself is a grey sun. Grey is not an immediate colour. It makes no immediate impression. You cannot paint it like that. you have to study grey for years—generations, I might say—before it will reveal its secrets. And then you have to paint deep, not on the surface. It would be like asking Tiepolo to paint his confections using the city councillors of Glasgow instead of the nobility of Venice. If you tried, the result would be laughable. Better not to try, and think of something else.
 Or leave, of course. There are some Scots who have reached that conclusion, abandoned the land of their birth and headed for the Mediterranean so they no longer have to use so much grey paint I can imagine what they must say back in Dundee. "Och, mon, it's sae very garish. Will ye just look at that, noo? Have ye everr seen a girrul with an orrange face before? I wouldnae hae' that in ma hoose if ye paid me." I used to sneer at the jute merchants of Dundee as well, all import ledgers and profit tallies, living in a world of penny counting and constraint. But they are right, after all. You have to make sense of what is around you, not dream of something so far away it is unattainable. You never do get girls with orange faces in Dundee; never see the sun refracted on the clear blue water.

Now, though, I think I'll read something a little less I-driven, and a lot more feminine.