The Painter

by Will Davenport

  'Why don't we read it?' Don said, and his voice was thick.

  'All right,' she agreed, sitting up, hoping she could get back to that place he had just left. She took the top sheet of the stack. It was titled 'Rembrandt's self-portraits. Notes to an illustrated lecture, Ferens Art Gallery, October 1979.'

  'Ever heard of Alexander Brigham?' she asked.

  Don shook his head and from behind them Parrish's voice said, 'He was a man who wore paisley pattern scarves and talked in rather a high voice and he died five years ago, mostly of disappointment, I think.'

  'How long have you been standing there?' Amy asked, turning round to look at him and trying to remember what they'd been saying. Don gave a sigh.

  'I just arrived.'

  'What do you mean he died of disappointment?'

  'Nobody ever took him seriously. You'll find out why if you read that.'

  'Well, I'm sitting comfortably if you want to begin,' said Don, and Peter Parrish sat down to join them.

  Looking at the twenty-two-year-old lecture notes, Amy complained, 'He writes like an old man.' She tried putting on an old man's voice but it only lasted a minute.

  'It is my contention that the self-portraiture of the incomparable Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn may be divided into three distinct periods, each marked, one might say, by a very particular state of mind. I am fully cognisant of the fact that many art experts may take issue with what I plan to say but I believe you, the audience should be the judge. Broadly speaking, and I shall come back to this in more detail later in the course of this lecture, the first period beginning in the artist's youthful Leiden years is characterized by a wish to see himself as rather more dashing and handsome than he actually was. Lights dim. First slide.'

  'What?' said Don.

  'That's what's written here. Lights dim. First slide.'

  'We'll just have to imagine it,' said Parrish. 'Go on.'

  'Perhaps the exemplar of this period is the portrait, dated 1629 and now in the Nuremberg Museum, of the young Rembrandt, aged twenty-two or twenty-three years, adorned by a small piece of armour in the form of a gorget or neck guard, just the sort of fashionable accessory a young blade might have worn as an affectation. What do we see when we look at him? This Rembrandt is a bonny lad. An aristocrat, a sophisticate. He looks at us with one eyebrow raised a shade sardonically. He has a little quiff and a rather adorable look to him. This Rembrandt is indeed rather a one for the ladies, one might think. Pause. Await laughter. Good God, do you suppose anyone did laugh?'

  'It was a long time ago,' said Parrish. 'We laughed at gentler jokes then.'

  'Where was I? This Rembrandt is a beau, a dandy, a youth to attract the fluttering sighs of the fairer sex. Do we believe it? We might be fooled, might we not, were there not another witness waiting in the wings, for Rembrandt was not alone in Leiden. Oh no. He shared his studio with none other than the renowned Jan Lievens. Now, we have no way of telling after all this time what form the relationship between the two young men took, although we do have the words of a visitor, Constantijn Huygens, who says they were stubborn and arrogant young men, wonderful but difficult – a pair of right royal know-it-alls, too obsessed by their own brilliance to bother to learn from their betters. They have no time, he says, for the innocent pleasures of youth. They are like two old men. He wants them to relax a little to ease up on their all-consuming art because their young bodies are being ruined by this sedentary occupation as they egg each other on. Mind you, Huygens has no trouble picking out the better of the two painters, no trouble at all. He sees with absolute clarity that the one who will go down in history is, pause, Lievens. Look around whimsically. Wait for laughter.'

  Don made a little noise of irritation. Peter Parrish smiled.

  'What we do not know therefore, is whether, when Lievens painted Rembrandt he was deliberately unkind, for there can be no doubt that his view of his colleague is altogether less dashing, much less fine, a different man altogether. Lieven's version of the young Rembrandt resembles a turnip with a startled expression.'

  Parrish laughed and Amy frowned at him.

  'Hush. It doesn't say anything about laughing there. We see then that right through Rembrandt's early life, except when he is practising some of his wilder expressions in the mirror, he takes care to paint himself in a very much more flattering light than a more dispassionate observer might choose to. We turn then to the middle period of his life and here again we see a certain degree of self-gratification. I believe one can represent this period by another single exemplar. Slide. Pause. Here we see Rembrandt at the age of fifty-two in the painting that now resides in New York in the remarkable Frick collection. What a fine fellow he is. There he sits, expansively, gazing at us with that impassive expression and how magnificently he is dressed. That wonderful golden garment, almost a bodice, which crosses his manly chest. That magnificent cape, thrown over his shoulders. All false, all pretence. Do you know what they were? We do know. We have the information in the catalogues from the forced sales of his possessions just a year or two later. They are junk. They are old clothes he has himself bought at auction as costumes for his painting but, my goodness, with his world falling in ruins around his ears, bankrupted by his collecting obsession and by the collapse of the Dutch financial system, the end of the tulip boom, the fellow still can't give up the pretence that he is a hugely successful painter. The only thing lacking in this portrait, the only part of the delusion he has abandoned is the golden chain around the neck. The earlier portraits in this middle period of his life usually portray that golden chain and the significance of that chain is immense. It is the chain that Rembrandt never had, the chain he longed for. It is the chain of royal patronage that Peter Paul Rubens deservedly had and that many lesser painters of the time received from their royal sponsors but Rembrandt never achieved it. He spent his life longing for it on the one hand, and behaving in such an individual and, not to put too fine a point upon it, cantankerous manner that he denied himself the chance of ever receiving it. So the saddest thing, the very saddest thing, ladies and gentlemen, is that in the end he had to bestow it on himself, in paint. For that chain, ladies and gentlemen, existed only in paint. We know, again from the sales inventory when he was forced to give up that great house in Amsterdam's Breestraat and move to the squalor of the Jordaan district, that his golden chain was mere costume jewellery and probably looked finer in his painted rendition than it ever did in real life.'

  For no reason she could name, Amy looked up across the vast, relentless river and found the power of its seaward push unsettling. A dinghy was scudding across it, two crew members hanging out on trapezes, and as she followed it, the little boat abruptly capsized.

  'Look,' she said. 'Are they all right?'

  'That's what dinghy sailors do all the time,' said Don, but they all watched until the little boat was upright again and scooting on its course. During the time it had been over on its side, the stream had moved it a long way to their left. He turned to Peter Parrish. 'Why don't you tell Amy about Marvell's father?'

  Parrish looked at Don sharply and then at the little boat. 'The drowning? Well, it's true. His father died out there, you know.' Amy thought she heard an odd inflection in his voice. 'It's a dangerous beast, that river, as we know, Marvell's father was Vicar of Winestead, You could see it from here if we were a bit higher up. It's a tiny little place. Just a few miles inland.'

  'What happened?'

  'He was coming across the river with some woman and the boatman was drunk. Apparently there was a sudden storm and that was that. Nothing was ever seen of them again.'

  'How old was his son?'

  'A teenager, I think.'

  'What was all that stuff about him being some sort of secret agent? I couldn't remember,' said Don.

  Parrish shrugged. 'The story goes that he was a bit of an expert on Holland and we kept having wars with the Dutch so he was backwards and forwards over there. They always say he was a great patriot but I'm not su
re about that. I sometimes wonder whether he wasn't dead against the King even after the restoration. Perhaps he was really plotting with the exiled republicans for another revolution.'

  'That's what Mum always says,' Don said. 'She gets all her opinions from you.' It could have been flattering but his tone undermined that possibility.

  'Ellen's quite capable of making up her own opinions,' Parrish retorted, 'Maybe I got it from her,' He seemed to have suddenly had enough. 'I must get back. I'll see you tomorrow, I expect.' And it was only after he had gone that Amy thought to wonder why he had been looking for her in the first place.

  'You were a bit sharp with him,' she said to Don.

  'No I wasn't.'

  'That's the way it sounded to me.'

  'Do me a favour. Listen, I've known him since I was five, right? He was always around the place. He's the one who pushed me through school. He never stops pushing.'

  'Perhaps you needed it. He seems such a kind man.'

  He shook his head as if her statement was an irritating fly and turning his face away, looked across the river in silence.

  'Now we're here by ourselves, will you tell me how that poem goes?' she asked.

  'No. Especially now we're here by ourselves.'

  'Is it that powerful? I promise not to misunderstand you.'

  'I said no. I might misunderstand myself.'

  Abruptly, she wanted him again, wanted to climb through his barriers, but he looked round at her and someone else was behind those eyes now. He stared at her as if he was studying her weaknesses. Those eyes were all she saw with a view so tightly focused that the rest of his face lay outside its range. She wondered if she should run.

  'Shall I read the next bit?' she said and to her it seemed her voice sounded as if she had already been running.

  'No, it's bloody boring,' he said. 'You've got Amelia's book haven't you? Read that if you must read something.'

  How had he known? She had put it in a bag, unwilling to leave it in her room with predators around. Between them, they carefully separated another page and she enjoyed the conspiracy of their bent heads and their single purpose. She pored over what they had revealed. 'There's a poem,' she said. 'She's written out a poem.'

  'Can you read it?'

  'Give me a minute.' She studied it and he studied her.

  'Did you like being called a leggy blonde?' he asked.

  'I'm not answering that,' she said. 'I'm a modern, liberated woman, me. I don't accept any typecasting by chauvinistic men. Of course I liked it. Now let me concentrate.'

  Cars departed behind them on the evening run to the pub, disturbing the rooks in the trees. It was dusk and a bank of cloud somewhere beyond Hull was staging an unrealistic light show in purple and orange.

  'Okay,' she said, 'I think I've got it. It's much smaller writing than last time. As usual it starts halfway through a sentence, which is a little frustrating on account of what that sentence says.'

  She cleared her throat. 'It says … demanded to know, without once considering the likely truth of the situation what it was that we did and the limner, divining Marvell's meaning though he had spoken in my own tongue did reply at length and in a way that seemed to me, even without understanding, to come it quite high. Marvell strove to interrupt him and I feared others in the household would hear so to dissuade him from further discourse I told him I knew a verse of his by rote and would like to test it with him for accuracy. He was amused by this and bade me say it and I said it as I shall here write it down for use on another occasion.'

  Amy stopped for a moment. 'Wow,' she said, 'so this is a genuine Marvell poem.'

  'Read it.'

  'Of a tall stature and sable hue

  Much like the son of Kish, that swarthy Jew,

  Twelve years complete he suffered in exile

  And kept his father's asses all the while.

  At length by wondrous impulse of fate

  The people called him home to mend the state

  And clothed him all from head to foot anew.

  Nor did he such small favours then disdain

  Who in his thirtieth year began to reign.

  Bishops and deans, pimps, peers and knights he made,

  Things highly fitting for a monarch's trade.

  With women, wine and viands of delight

  His jolly wastrels feast him day and night.'

  'What are viands?'

  'Meat, I think,' said Amy, 'like the French.'

  'It's not very good poetry. More like doggerel really. Go on.'

  She looked down at it. 'When I had said it, he demanded to know who had told it me but I would only say that it was a good poem though some might think it too cruel to our restored King. At that he blanched and I said I thought no more harm of him for it than he did of the limner for … That's it. End of the page.'

  'It's blackmail isn't it?' said Don, pleased. There's some row between Marvell and our friend and so she's stepped in to say she knows he's written this poem which amounts to treason.'

  'You're guessing. There's not much to go on.'

  'There's not much to go on right through this whole thing.'

  'I want to know what this contest is really all about. Amelia's judging Marvell and Rembrandt and she's giving a prize.'

  Don looked at the book. The answer's probably in there somewhere.'

  'Don, do you really, really believe that we've got this right? That Rembrandt came here in real life? That he painted that sketch on the wall? That he fell into the mud?' It wasn't just a question about a long-dead painter, it was a question about where they stood, she and Don. Were they together, not just in this but in all the rest of it? She needed him to say yes.

  He was silent for a while, staring out to where the dinghy had been. 'My heart does some of the time,' he said in the end, 'but my head hasn't quite got there yet.'

  'What's the alternative if it's not him?' she demanded.

  'That someone else came here calling himself van Rijn? Someone with the same surname. A pretty good painter who just never got to be famous. Maybe, having the same name, he fibbed a little. The whole thing could be just that, nothing more. Of course, if it was him, then that wall's worth a fortune. Pity we can't fit it in the back of your car.'

  Amy didn't want to be flippant and she really, really didn't want to believe Don's alternative. She looked back towards the house. 'I expect they've all gone. Can I paint you right now?' she said. 'I want to get on with it. Let's go upstairs.'

  'I don't know what this is about,' he said, shaking his head, and again, a stranger had taken over his voice. 'Maybe you just have to have all these fantasies going in your life.'

  'What do you mean? What fantasies?'

  'Rembrandt. Amelia. Me. What are you into, Amy? Is it just that life's too dull if you're not pulling the strings? What am I? Some stray dog you're rescuing?'

  'Why would you think that?'

  'Look at me. Look at the state I'm in.'

  'Balls. I think you look just fine.'

  'Oh sure.'

  'You mustn't live like this, Don,' she said. 'It's not pretty but it's healing. It's not you. It's just an injury.'

  He was on his feet in a flash. 'Fuck you,' he said in a low and savage tone. 'I made a kid scream today. Remember that?'

  NINETEEN

  Thursday, January 23rd, 1662

  Marvell had come into the room like an officer of the watch arresting some felon and I found, to my intense irritation, that I could not easily face him down. He even used a Dutch expletive, something I had not heard him do before and he got it right, which was worse.

  'Bijgans bloet dood,' he said, and that got my full attention. 'By Christ's bloody death, you are taking liberties, sir. That is your host's wife you are touching.'

  'Duizend pokken, Marvell,' I said, replying in kind, 'A dozen plagues on you. I am touching her face to learn its contours, the better to paint it. That is what we have to do, us painters.'

  'Save your tales for the unweaned,'
he retorted. 'I have been painted three times and nobody ever felt the need to feel the contours of my face.'

  'You have been painted by lesser painters then,'I said. 'I am famous for the depth of my images. That requires more than just looking. Your poems may float around in the firmament of your own head, anchored to nothing but the frothings of your mind. My art is rooted in the world outside it. I have to know the uttermost truth of the shapes that I paint.'

  'Well, I wonder,' he said. The painting will be the test of that. You fooled me in York but I am less certain now that you are who you claim you are, van Rijn.'

  'What? I made no claims for myself at all,' I said. 'I think you'll remember it was someone else entirely who named me.'

  'How do I know what you might have fixed up with some passing crony countryman of yours?'

  'You were there, sitting next to me on the bloody bench. How could I have fixed up anything?'

  'I was … I was transported by my art,' he said. 'I was half a world away, walking the banks of the Nile, searching out the scenes of my poem. Anything might have happened in my absence.'

  'Oh, bollocks to your poem,' I said, 'I didn't fix up anything. I wish he'd never opened his vile mouth.'

  Amelia was standing by, looking extremely concerned, I noticed as her colour rose further that it changed the focus of her face in a most interesting way, highlighting the cheekbones remarkably. I resolved to see if I could introduce that colour into her cheeks next time she sat. Now she spoke to Marvell and I would have given a hundred guilders to know what she said. It sounded light and conversational and halfway through it took on the quality of a recitation. The words she now spoke seemed to rhyme and to scan like verse and they were clearly familiar to Marvell and he kept nodding and raising a hand as though to cut her off, but she, guileless, insisted on continuing. She said a final, sweet barbed sentence which drained the rest of the colour out of his face and they stared at each other. It was clear she had the upper hand. Marvell coughed to gain time, turned to me and said, 'Mrs Dahl has explained that what happened here was of no import and that I may have misunderstood it. I am satisfied with her explanation. The matter need proceed no further.'