The Painter

by Will Davenport

  'You've got more of Amelia's journal?' asked Amy. 'Not just the bits about the building?'

  'Oh yes, Ellen typed out the whole thing for me. Didn't I say?'

  'No, you didn't. Can I borrow it?'

  She could hardly believe it had been sitting there all the time without her knowing. No more stolen moments in the Hull archives, queueing for a machine, struggling with the script to glimpse a day at a time.

  'Of course you can. I'll bring it in for you. There's a whole lot more.' He was holding a single sheet in his hand. 'Are you ready?'

  They both nodded.

  'Here goes: I confess I am more and more vexed with the limner who does go out of his way each day to distemper me. I will sit for the picture because it will please my dear husband but for no other reason and I shall not tell my husband on his return what lengths this does put me to, lest he break in pieces with the limner who will be soon gone when the picture is made. He is a corpulent and ill-favoured man, of gouty visage, who prates incessantly in his ugly and incomprehensible tongue. I fear he is an incontinent rogue.' Parrish looked up. 'That doesn't mean what you might think, by the way. Incontinent meant someone who wasn't exactly a saint, sexually speaking.'

  'What does gouty mean?' asked Amy.

  'Sort of swollen, puffy, that kind of thing.'

  'She doesn't exactly like our painter, does she?' Don said.

  'It fits your man though,' answered Parrish. 'Think of those later self-portraits. Corpulent and gouty sounds about right.'

  With the three of them and Rembrandt, the rest of the world could stay outside their door. 'Does incontinent sound right too?' Amy asked.

  Parrish raised an eyebrow. 'Rembrandt? I rather think so. He was a lusty man. After Saskia died he couldn't keep his hands off the housekeepers. It got him into no end of trouble. Do you know about Geertge?'

  'No.'

  'Geertge Dircxz, the trumpeter's widow. She was quite attractive in her chubby little way, judging from his pictures. When Saskia died, little Titus was only a year old and she came in as his nurse. Pretty soon she was sharing her bed with Rembrandt. He got a bit carried away and he gave her some of Saskia's jewellery.' He stopped. 'Am I just banging on or do you want to hear?'

  'We want to hear,' said Don from his corner. Amy suddenly found tears in her eyes and hoped they couldn't see.

  'Anyway, with Geertge promoted to bedmate, he hired another woman to do the household stuff and that was Hendrickje Stoffels. Have you heard of her?'

  'I've seen the portraits,' said Amy. The one with the woman holding her skirts up in the river, that's meant to be her, isn't it?'

  'A Woman Bathing, yes, supposedly. He went out of his way to make her beautiful in that bulky way of his, didn't he? You can tell he liked her a lot. Hendrickje was a good egg, much better than Geertge. Anyway, all three of them were living together under the same roof and when Geertge saw his attentions were switching, she took him to court. He'd given her Saskia's ring and she said that proved he'd agreed to marry her.'

  'Did she win?' Amy asked.

  'To start with, yes. The court awarded her life-long support. Then, I'm afraid, we have to see old Remmy in a rather poor light for what happened next. He didn't want to shell out cash for years to come so he got her sent to prison on some trumped-up charge – in fact not just a prison, but a terrible place, a mad-house more or less. She spent five years in there before her friends got her out. He still owed her money when he died.'

  'He wasn't a nice man then,' Don said.

  'Who knows,' said Parrish. 'Perhaps she had it coming. She sounds pretty terrible. Not at all like Hendrickje. Now there was a woman who stood by her man. When Rembrandt went bust, she stuck it out. She and Titus even went into business to sell his paintings when he was banned from doing it himself.'

  'Why did he go bust?' Don asked.

  'He stopped being fashionable. People didn't like the way he painted any more. Can you imagine it? Long, long sittings, immensely thick paint, unfashionably thick, built up in layers so that it stuck out like a sculpture. The paint that runs down like dung, that's what they called it. Ironic, isn't it? All the things that killed off his trade were the very same things that eventually got him recognized as one of the best there's ever been. Of course, it was too late to give him any pleasure, poor old boy.

  'But I think there was more to it than that,' continued Parrish. 'There was his grandiosity. He thought great paintings should be worth a great price, so he'd go to auctions and pay mad prices for Old Masters just to show how much they should be worth. Then again, he was an inveterate collector of absolutely anything old and interesting – he was buying stuff left, right and centre. Most of all though, he bought a very pricey house on Breestraat which he couldn't really afford, using borrowed money. And when his reputation started going downhill, his creditors wanted their money back.'

  Don frowned. 'Couldn't he have sold some of those Old Masters?'

  Parrish snapped his fingers. 'Now! This is where it gets interesting. Have you read that thing I gave you, the transcript of the talk at the Ferens? You know, the Brigham lecture?'

  'Bits of it,' said Amy, who had forgotten all about it.

  'He says all this has a simple explanation. Yes, of course Rembrandt could have sold those pictures, normally. He might not have got the inflated prices he paid for them in the first place but he'd have done all right. No, he was as unlucky as it gets because if you look at the dates, which very few art historians seem to have bothered to do, all this comes in the wake of the collapse of the Dutch tulip boom. You know about the tulip boom?'

  'Yes,' said Amy.

  'Not really,' said Don.

  'Do you want the one-minute version? Tulips were brought back from far-off lands. They had that odd quality which makes people behave in a daft way when they see something new. You could breed them to make fantastic multi-coloured offsprings and of course, you could then divide their bulbs and make your fortune the following year when those grew. Supposedly. It was a perfect recipe for boom and bust. All those silly speculators bet their shirts on a few bulbs and when the bubble burst they were ruined overnight. So what happened? They couldn't afford to have their portraits painted any more and they started unloading everything they had for sale, houses, pictures, the whole lot. Prices went through the floor. Poor old Rembrandt was doing his best to sell his stuff but there weren't any buyers. That part's all documented. He got back a tenth of what he paid for some of those pictures and of course the house itself wasn't worth a fraction of what he'd bought it for. So, bankruptcy came along and cut him to the bone.'

  He fell silent and the turn of phrase brought Dennis abruptly back into Amy's mind. Perhaps the same thing happened to Parrish because he frowned and went on again.

  'I was just thinking how it must have been, moving from glamorous Breestraat into the Jordaan. Twenty years earlier, the Jordaan was just a boggy mess of dykes and ditches on the edge of one of the big canals. They built the streets on the dykes. Nothing fancy. Then they moved all the unwanted industries out there, the smelly ones like tanneries and sugar factories. After that they moved in the immigrants, the Sephardic Jews from Spain, Belgian and French craftsmen, then the Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe. I can't help thinking he probably liked it there. The houses were little, jerry-built rabbit warrens but the people were much more his sort, you know, artistic renegades.'

  'So his life changed, did it?' Don put in.

  'Oh, yes. So did his painting. Something happened to him round about then, from the early 1660s. He became less pompous, more honest – in his pictures at least.'

  'What do you mean?'

  'Those later ones are his greatest self-portraits by far. After 1662, that's when you get the real honesty, the unvarnished truth, age and self-knowledge staring you in the eyes.'

  'Because he went bust?'

  'What else do we know about which could possibly explain it?'

  A contest, thought Amy, but she could not say the wo
rds out loud. A contest which took place right here under this roof. A contest between a great painter and a great poet for the approval of a beautiful woman in which her beauty was the raw material. With a thrilling surge of certainty she knew what the prize must have been.

  Parrish looked at them. 'That's about it. That's our man. Are you ready to go looking for him?'

  'Where do we start?' asked Don, while Amy rolled this new idea around her mind.

  'There are some pictures stacked up against the wall behind the commode. I think there are more in the middle of this lot. There was a big tea chest, I remember. It's full of them.' He glanced at each of them in turn. 'Be careful. If there is something here, remember this might represent the art find of the millennium.'

  'Which has after all only just started,' said Don, getting up.

  'Of any millennium then,' said Parrish, 'I'm serious.'

  'So you believe in all this now, do you?' asked Don.

  'I'll suspend disbelief,' said Parrish, 'for as long as there's a chance of finding something in here.'

  The pictures by the wall were a disappointment, a misty Scottish mountain scene with a stag proudly waiting to be shot, an appallingly sentimental Victorian scene of a mother comforting a sick child and an amateur view of the Humber. After that, they started moving furniture. The tea chest proved to be right in the middle of the stack and very hard indeed to get at. It took all three of them tugging to move the chest out of the awkward position it was in, jammed between a pine cupboard and a splintered bookcase. There were several pictures in it, wrapped in old curtains. Peter Parrish lifted out the first one and unwrapped it carefully. It was not at all what they wanted to see – some sort of framed proclamation of good service to one Richard Bolitho, dated 1955. The second was just a frame and a backing board, with nothing else to it at all. The rest were all Victorian, dead, dreary things. Amy tried blotting them out, looking through them, and for a moment the room grew young again, shimmering to pale blues and gold, filled with flowers. The musty smell of storage beat it off and the vision fled.

  'Are you sure there aren't any others?' Amy asked.

  'Pretty sure, I'm afraid,' said Parrish.

  'Nothing in the attic?'

  'Definitely not,' said Parrish. 'That was emptied right out because they had to strip the roof completely. Most of this came from up there.'

  'Perhaps they sold it,' said Don, disappointed.

  'Oh yes, that's possible. I did pull out those sale catalogues I mentioned, and the bill of sale for the house. There are a couple of suspects. Let's see now.' He ruffled through his folder. 'Here's the auction catalogue. "J.J. Metcalfe and Sons, August the eleventh, 1933. The major part of the contents of Paull Holme Manor, late the property of Major Reginald Dale MC." Stacks of furniture, various outside effects and the pictures. There's a few Dutch items. A van Goyen. Gosh, someone's pencilled in the price it got. 740 guineas. That's a serious picture for the time. Then there's what it calls a small landscape by Jacob van Ruisdael. Now he was pretty much a direct contemporary of our man. 920 guineas, that one. I wonder if it could be the same one that's in the Ferens now? Beautiful picture of a wood and a cornfield. There's even a Constable sketch, Somerset Cottage with Figures. Nothing else that sounds remotely like Rembrandt.'

  'There would be two portraits, wouldn't there?' Amy ventured. The one Vertue saw of Dahl himself and the one we know he was painting of Amelia.'

  'If he ever finished it,' said Parrish. 'From the sound of the journal, she might not have let him. Let's look at the other one, the bill of sale for the house. This is it.' He held up a thin grey booklet, opened it and leafed through.

  'It's a funny old mixture of stuff. Carpets and curtains, fair enough. A string of horses and a Chevrolet horse-box. All sorts of outside equipment. Now, here are the pictures. "Lady sitting on chair. Signed P. Cullingford. Eight feet by four feet." That's not it. "Head of old man with red cap. Two feet by two feet." How about that?'

  'Dahl wasn't that old, was he?' said Amy.

  'We don't know.'

  'Yes we do,' said Amy and, getting a sudden nudge from Don, realized it was only because of the day-book that they knew it. 'No we don't,' she added.

  'Actually, come to think of it, we do know about that picture because it was here and it's gone off for conservation. Late eighteenth century, I believe,' said Parrish. 'Ah, wait a moment. What about this? "Pair of companion portraits. Gentleman and Lady. On oak boards. Eighteen inches by twenty-two. Poor condition."

  'No artist's name?' asked Amy.

  'Nothing else. That's all it says.' Parrish was clearly excited. 'Think about it. It's a pair and they're the same size so the chances are they really were a pair, painted together. Not only that but they're on oak panels, not canvas.'

  'Did Rembrandt paint on wood panels?' Don was on his feet and looking over Parrish's shoulder at the catalogue.

  'He certainly did early on, but I think he always used canvas in his later years.'

  'Perhaps he had no choice,' suggested Amy. 'Perhaps oak was all there was here, I mean if he did come to Hull, would he have brought all his stuff with him?'

  'Oh, I should think so,' said Parrish. 'Aren't artists rather pernickety about that sort of thing? He would have come prepared, surely? He wouldn't have arrived empty-handed.'

  'Yes, but it could be him, couldn't it? Two portraits, a gentleman and a lady. Where are they?'

  Parrish put the piece of paper down and stared around him. The pictures they had unwrapped were propped against the remains of a wooden rocking horse.

  'I haven't a clue,' he said, then he stiffened and snapped his fingers. 'Yes I have. Good God, how stupid.'

  'What?' asked Amy and Don together.

  'Use your eyes,' said Parrish, 'One of them's right in front of us.'

  Amy looked around. She could see nothing.

  'Where?' she demanded.

  'Eighteen inches by twenty-two,' said Parrish. 'I'll get a tape measure but that looks pretty close. Oak panels, and we didn't give it a second look.'

  He was pointing at the picture they had already discarded, the one that consisted only of a frame and a backing board.

  'It didn't occur to me,' he said, picking it up and turning it to the light. 'It's not just a backing board. Look at it closely, do you see? The wood's been really carefully jointed together.'

  Amy was on her feet too now. 'Better than that,' she said. 'It's been prepared. Look at the little hollows, where the grain's uneven. There's traces of something in there.'

  'You're right,' said Parrish. 'What is it? Gesso? Some sort of smoothing layer. They used size, didn't they? Boiled-up rabbit glue. That's what it is.'

  'For Christ's sake! That's it? I can't bear it,' said Don. 'Are you telling me that thing is a Rembrandt and all we've got left are a few specks of bloody undercoat?'

  'Maybe,' said Parrish. 'I'm no expert but it could easily be seventeenth century. That frame is carved wood. Look at the curve on it, it's beautiful. Oh, and look at this.'

  There were two tiny holes in the bottom of the frame.

  'There's been a nameplate on this at some point. Do you know, that could be the plate that old Vertue saw, couldn't it? The one that said all those things about the date and the place and Dahl's name.' Parrish now sounded very like a convert.

  'The nameplate might have dropped off,' suggested Amy. 'Look in the tea chest.'

  There was nothing to be found there and they searched as much of the room as they could get at between the array of objects filling it.

  'I think that plate's been missing for a long time,' said Don, peering at the holes. They're full of old dirt. If the screws had come out recently, they'd be cleaner.'

  'Can I hold it?' asked Amy.

  'Of course,' said Parrish, 'It can't really come to any more harm than it already has.'

  Amy held it out at arm's length, willing it to tell her something, trying hard to see the ghost of a face in its dark surface. For a moment she felt it was tryi
ng to communicate. A half-formed idea came into her mind and then fled again before she could seize it. She felt as if she had held this picture in her hands before.

  'You know, one thing I do remember from art history,' she said, 'is that lots of pictures have needed serious restoration because they were painted with bad-quality oil and pigment, Supposing this is the earthly remains of Dahl's picture and supposing Rembrandt did paint it, he might have been improvising, mightn't he? If he didn't have any canvas and he had to use wood, maybe he didn't have his paints with him, either. Maybe he had to use second-rate supplies and it has literally all dropped off.'

  'Very ingenious,' said Parrish, 'but you make it sound like he was on the run.'

  'Perhaps he was. You said yourself that he hadn't been having an easy time of it.'

  'Stop taking it so bloody calmly, you two,' said Don. 'Look at that. Just boards. All the rest of it, all the beauty, all the skill completely gone. Dust. Rembrandt dust on the floor. Swept up and thrown out. I can't bear it. Isn't there anything you can do? They X-ray old pictures, don't they? Then you can see what's underneath.'

  'Don, this one doesn't need an X-ray,' said Parrish gently.

  'That is the underneath. I will do something, though. There's somebody at the Ferens who knows a thing or two about old frames and wooden panels. I'll ask them to have a look at it. Then at least we might know whether it's the right age.'

  'Will you tell them anything about it?'

  'Perish the thought, I don't want to be laughed at any more than I can help. I'll just say we found it here and wondered how old it was.'

  'If it is Dahl,' said Amy, looking at the picture still with the feeling that she was missing something, 'that still leaves Amelia.' She looked round the room. 'It's only seventy years ago, isn't it? The catalogue, I mean. They wouldn't have kept one picture and not the other, would they? I'm sure she's here somewhere.'

  They had another look to be quite sure. Amy realized she had passed the last five minutes without thinking of Dennis at all. Then there was no good reason to go on searching and no reason not to go back out into the house and confront the grief which had crept into the corridors to fill their throats.