painter! Such an extraordinary brush! I find his faces even more expressive than Titian's. Do you know M'sieur Null?'
'Who is this Null?' asked the artist.
'M'sieur Null. Ah, such talent! He painted her portrait when she was only twelve. You absolutely must come and visit us. Lise, you shall show him your album. You know, we came so that you could start at once on her portrait.'
'Why, I'm ready this very minute.'
He instantly moved over the easel with a prepared canvas on it, took up the palette, and fixed his eyes on the daughter's pale face. Had he been a connoisseur of human nature, in a single moment he would have read in it the beginnings of a childish passion for balls, the beginnings of boredom and complaints about the length of time before dinner and after dinner, the wish to put on a new dress and run to the fete, the heavy traces of an indifferent application to various arts, imposed by her mother for the sake of loftiness of soul and feelings. But the artist saw in this delicate little face nothing but an almost porcelain transparency of body, so alluring for the brush, an attractive, light languor, a slender white neck, and an aristocratic lightness of figure. And he was preparing beforehand to triumph, to show the lightness and brilliance of his brush, which so far had dealt only with the hard features of crude models, with the stern ancients and copies of some classical masters. He could already picture mentally to himself how this light little face was going to come out.
'You know,' said the lady, even with a somewhat touching expression on her face, 'I'd like to… the dress she's wearing now-I confess, I'd like her not to be wearing a dress we're so used to; I'd like her to be dressed simply and sitting in the shade of greenery, with a view of some fields, with herds in the distance, or a copse… so that it won't look as if she were going to some ball or fashionable soiree. Our balls, I confess, are so deadly for the soul, so destructive of what's left of our feelings… simplicity, there should be more simplicity.'
Alas! it was written on the faces of mother and daughter that they danced themselves away at balls until they nearly turned to wax.
Chartkov got down to work, seated his model, pondered it all somewhat in his head; traced in the air with his brush, mentally establishing the points; squinted his eye a little, stepped back, looked from a distance-and in one hour had begun and finished the rough sketch. Pleased with it, he now got to painting, and the work carried him away. He forgot everything, forgot even that he was in the presence of aristocratic ladies, even began to exhibit some artistic mannerisms, uttering various sounds aloud, humming along every once in a while, as happens with artists who are wholeheartedly immersed in their work. Without any ceremony, just with a movement of his brush, he made his model raise her head, for she had finally become quite fidgety and looked utterly weary.
'Enough, that's enough for the first time,' said the lady.
'A little longer,' said the artist, forgetting himself.
'No, it's time, Lise, it's three o'clock!' she said, taking out a small watch hanging on a golden chain from her belt and exclaiming, 'Ah, how late!'
'Only one little minute,' Chartkov said in the simple-hearted and pleading voice of a child.
But the lady did not seem at all disposed to cater to his artistic needs this time, and instead promised a longer sitting the next time.
'That's annoying, though,' Chartkov thought to himself. 'My hand just got going.' And he recalled that no one had interrupted him or stopped him when he was working in his studio on Vasilievsky Island; Nikita used to sit in one spot without stirring- paint him as much as you like; he would even fall asleep in the position he was told. Disgruntled, he put his brush and palette down on a chair and stopped vaguely before the canvas. A compliment uttered by the society lady awakened him from his oblivion. He rushed quickly to the door to see them off; on the stairs he received an invitation to visit, to come the next week for dinner, and with a cheerful look he returned to his room. The aristocratic lady had charmed him completely. Till then he had looked at such beings as something inaccessible, born only to race by in a magnificent carriage with liveried lackeys and a jaunty coachman, casting an indifferent glance at the man plodding along on foot in a wretched cloak. And now suddenly one of these beings had entered his room; he was painting a portrait, he was invited to dinner in an aristocratic house. An extraordinary contentment came over him; he was completely intoxicated and rewarded himself for it with a fine dinner, an evening performance, and again took a carriage ride through the city without any need.
During all those days he was unable even to think about his usual work. He was preparing and waiting only for the moment when the bell would ring. At last the aristocratic lady arrived with her pale daughter. He sat them down, moved the canvas over, with adroitness now and a pretense to worldly manners, and began to paint. The brightness of the sunny day was a great help to him. He saw much in his light model of that which, if caught and transferred to canvas, might endow the portrait with great merit; he saw that he might do something special, if everything was finally executed according to the idea he now had of his model. His heart even began to throb lightly when he sensed that he was about to express something others had never noticed. The work occupied him totally, he was all immersed in his brush, again forgetting about his model's aristocratic origin. With bated breath, he saw the light features and nearly transparent body of a seventeen-year-old girl emerge from under his brush. He picked up every nuance, a slight yellowness, a barely noticeable blue under the eyes, and was even about to catch a small pimple that had broken out on her forehead, when suddenly he heard the mother's voice at his ear. 'Ah, why that? There's no need for it,' the lady said. 'And you've also… look, in a few places… it seems a bit yellow, and look, here it's just like dark spots.' The artist started to explain that it was precisely those spots and the yellowness that had played out so well, and that they made up the pleasing and light tones of the face. To which he received the reply that they did not make up any tones and had not played out in any way, and that it only seemed so to him. 'But allow me to touch in a little yellow here, just in this one place,' the artist said simple-heartedly. But that precisely he was not allowed to do. It was declared that Lise was merely a bit indisposed that day, and there had never been any yellowness in her face, that it was always strikingly fresh in color. Sadly, he began to wipe out what his brush had brought forth on the canvas. Many barely noticeable features disappeared, and the likeness partly disappeared along with them. Unfeelingly, he began to lend it the general color scheme that is given by rote and turns even faces taken from nature into something coldly ideal, such as is seen in student set pieces. But the lady was pleased that the offensive colors had been quite driven out. She only expressed surprise that the work was taking so long, and added that she had heard he finished a portrait completely in two sittings. The artist found nothing to reply to that. The ladies rose and prepared to leave. He put down his brush, saw them to the door, and after that stood vaguely for a long time on the same spot in front of the portrait. He gazed at it stupidly, and meanwhile those light feminine features raced through his head, those nuances and ethereal tones he had observed and which his brush had mercilessly destroyed. All filled with them, he set the portrait aside and found somewhere in the studio an abandoned head of Psyche, which he had roughly sketched out on canvas once long ago. It was a deftly painted face, but completely ideal, cold, consisting only of general features that had not taken on living flesh. Having nothing to do, he now began going over it, recalling on it all that he had happened to observe in the face of the aristocratic visitor. The features, nuances, and tones he had caught laid themselves down here in that purified form in which they come only when an artist, having looked long enough at the model, withdraws from it and produces a creation equal to it. Psyche began to come to life, and the barely glimpsed idea gradually began to be clothed in visible flesh. The facial type of the young society girl was inadvertently imparted to Psyche, and through that she acquired the distinctive expression which gives a work the right to be called truly original. It seemed he made use of both the
