You do look embarassed. You are convinced that I have lost my reason; that I have sunk into a religious mania which is but one stop from the asylum. Not so; I do not mean my place in heaven, because if that is not already lost to me, it will be, soon enough. I mean my posthumous reputation.
Oh no! You’d prefer the religious fervour, wouldn’t you? Better that than the hopeless dreaming of the disappointed, convinced that posterity will see what the contemporary does not. I have been many things in my life, but never pathetic, never an object of sympathy. Is that what exile has reduced me to?
I notice that you do not rush to reassure. You do not smile and say, “Of course! Sooner or later the world will see your true worth. Think of Cézanne, think of van Gogh. . . .” Because you know that is not the case; or you hope not, because that would mean defeat for you and all those very different people you champion. I would never be one of your Post-Impressionists. I am further away from them now than ever. You would rather have your old friend consigned to a footnote in your own biography than have him accorded any recognition. You have decided where the high road of artistic progress is heading and I am merely a branch off it, a diversion slowly clogging with weeds from neglect, soon to be overgrown and forgotten entirely.
But still, I am right, not you. And you are going to be the means of re-establishing my reputation. You said it yourself, did you not? All those years ago, when you were justifying your decision to become a critic. The painter without the critic is nothing. The good critic can make the mediocre famous, the great obscure. His power is limitless; the artist is his servant, and one day will recognise the fact. And you were right; you proved it in the way you straddled the galleries, the collectors, the patrons and the journals, whispering to each, hinting and guiding. Who dared stand against you? Who even thought they needed to?
I am not accusing you. You never did me any harm, professionally speaking. Quite the contrary. You cosseted and protected me, encouraged me always. Take the great exhibition of 1910 when you introduced those wretched Post-Impressionists into England. The latest French fashion, brought over by yourself to whack the English in the eye, shock them out of their somnolence, shake them out of their complacency. Only a few—a very select few—English painters were invited to show their pictures alongside those august new masters. And I was one of them. How kind of you. How generous you were, always were.
I still remember every detail of that evening when you came and asked me to take part. You sent my model packing, then got out a small hamper of food and champagne. Laid it out and opened the bottle.
“So what great accomplishment are we to celebrate?” I asked. “Or have you finally realised my true worth as an artist and come to pay homage?”
“Both and neither,” you replied with a smile. Not quite a grin—you never let yourself go so far—but close enough. “I am going to pull off the biggest explosion in the history of British art. And I need your help.”
And then you laid out what you were going to do. Bring over pictures by Cézanne, Seurat, van Gogh, Degas, mix them in with a few—a select few—English artists who could stand the company, and open the doors.
“With no preparation? No warning? The reviews will be terrible. Atrocious. You won’t sell anything. You’ll be a laughing stock,” I said.
And you laughed again; genuinely this time. “Of course. It will be a catastrophe. If I don’t get the worst notices in history, then I shall be severely disappointed. I even intend to write some of them myself, to be published anonymously. ‘Never in the history of art has such rubbish been offered up to insult the public sensibility. . . .’ That sort of thing. That’s the point, don’t you see?”
“No.”
“Think, man! What have we talked about all these years? About the feebleness of taste in these islands. About how the Good British Public wouldn’t know a masterpiece if it was served up to them for breakfast with eggs and bacon.”
“True enough.”
“And think how everybody agrees with that. Not just you and me and other artists. But everybody. The only universal feature of British art is agreement on how dreadful the public is.”
“Agreed.”
“So what is the point of trying to get good reviews? If people like it, it proves that it is no good. The only way to ensure long-term success is for it to be absolutely detested. That is the test in modern art. Has been since Manet; has been since Whistler sued when he was accused of throwing a paint pot in the public’s face. Which he shouldn’t have done. He should have worn it as a badge of pride. It showed what an old-fashioned man he really was. Artists should no longer seek fame. They must seek notoriety. . . .”
Oh, it was grand. There we were,
“Of course. You can have my portrait of . . .”
“No, no. I will choose. I will choose what best compliments the other ones, if you don’t mind. . . .”
Wonderful. Exhilarating. But. But. The Post-Impressionists weren’t the latest French fashion, were they? Matisse and Picasso were already going beyond them. You pulled the wool over our eyes. Little did we know that things had already moved on. You knew, of course. You knew everything. But all those newfangled doctrines were too much even for you. The limits to your radicalism showed you up as the conservative you really were, and instead you set up as a confidence trickster, selling old goods as new. How pathetic you made us all seem, even as you were shocking us.
And how pathetic you made me seem as well, and all the other English painters who fell into your trap. We thought we were there to derive glory by association, to become identified with the latest in art. But no. That was not the point, was it? It was an exercise in power that you put on; we were there to show how backward English art was. Anyone with advanced tastes would look at what you had brought over from France, and look at what we were doing, and draw their own conclusions. I wondered why you chose those particular paintings of mine. The portrait of the Countess of Albemarle’s gardener; the landscape in Hyde Park. The picture of that ridiculous little dog I painted for your wife. I offered to show you some others, even my dockyard scenes and some of my little whores, but you refused them.
It was a wonderful success. A trumpet blast. Anyone who wanted the latest would have to go to you; you were the gatekeeper of the modern. And if I ever did show my dark pictures, what would have been the result? I would have been congratulated on learning so swiftly from the new art you had brought in. You stole my originality, sir. Reduced me to a cheap imitator of your French friends.
I laughed about it, of course, not least because my pictures were admired and you didn’t manage to unload a single Cézanne. A cheap and pyrrhic victory on my part; the more I sold, the more my reputation would eventually sink. Not that I realised that immediately, of course. It was Mrs. Algernon Roberts who pointed it out to me. No? Not one of your circle? I’m not surprised. She is—or was—a large, amiable woman who rides a horse and has a backside which resembles one. Her husband owns a large part of Suffolk, I believe, and in eight generations the family has read two books. Both about hunting. She gardens, badly, and tries to marry her daughter off to rich men, also with little success. She is also—I must add in the interests of accuracy—a charming and generous woman, kind and gentle. Not your sort at all, as I’m sure you will agree.
Anyway, that evening, your opening. She came along. I don’t know why; someone must have invited her as a joke. She was dressed in her best and looked as though she’d just emerged from a palace ball. She was wandering around looking utterly bewildered by all those pictures you’d hung up—she whose idea of artistic radicalism is Constable—and then saw me. We had met through one of her friends, whom I’d painted a year or so previously. She had arrived in mid-sitting and insisted on watching me at work. I was a bit hard up at the time and thought it might lead to a commission, which it might have, had I not come here. So I let her sit behind me and found her presence oddly congenial. Unlike her friend, who kept on rushing round to see what I was doing and making imbecilic remarks—so much so that I felt like taking off my belt and strapping her to her chair—she sat quietly and watched. “It’s like birthing a horse,” she said cheerfully—and quite appropriately, considering what her friend looked like. “The beast needs all its concentration.”
