His Masterpiece, Émile Zola [essential reading txt] 📗

it, at all events he now at the first glance saw all its defects, after having remained blind to them, as it were, for months. With a few strokes of the brush he, in thought, altered the whole of it, deepened the distances, set a badly drawn limb right, and modified a tone. Decidedly, the gentleman in the velveteen jacket was worth nothing at all, he was altogether pasty and badly seated; the only really good bit of work about him was his hand. In the background the two little wrestlers⁠—the fair and the dark one⁠—had remained too sketchy, and lacked substance; they were amusing only to an artist’s eye. But he was pleased with the trees, with the sunny glade; and the nude woman⁠—the woman lying on the grass appeared to him superior to his own powers, as if someone else had painted her, and as if he had never yet beheld her in such resplendency of life.

He turned to Sandoz, and said simply:

“They do right to laugh; it’s incomplete. Never mind, the woman is all right! Bongrand was not hoaxing me.”

His friend wished to take him away, but he became obstinate, and drew nearer instead. Now that he had judged his work, he listened and looked at the crowd. The explosion continued⁠—culminated in an ascending scale of mad laughter. No sooner had visitors crossed the threshold than he saw their jaws part, their eyes grow small, their entire faces expand; and he heard the tempestuous puffing of the fat men, the rusty grating jeers of the lean ones, amidst all the shrill, flute-like laughter of the women. Opposite him, against the handrails, some young fellows went into contortions, as if somebody had been tickling them. One lady had flung herself on a seat, stifling and trying to regain breath with her handkerchief over her mouth. Rumours of this picture, which was so very, very funny, must have been spreading, for there was a rush from the four corners of the Salon, bands of people arrived, jostling each other, and all eagerness to share the fun. “Where is it?” “Over there.” “Oh, what a joke!” And the witticisms fell thicker than elsewhere. It was especially the subject that caused merriment; people failed to understand it, thought it insane, comical enough to make one ill with laughter. “You see the lady feels too hot, while the gentleman has put on his velveteen jacket for fear of catching cold.” “Not at all; she is already blue; the gentleman has pulled her out of a pond, and he is resting at a distance, holding his nose.” “I tell you it’s a young ladies’ school out for a ramble. Look at the two playing at leapfrog.” “Hallo! washing day; the flesh is blue; the trees are blue; he’s dipped his picture in the blueing tub!”

Those who did not laugh flew into a rage: that bluish tinge, that novel rendering of light seemed an insult to them. Some old gentlemen shook their sticks. Was art to be outraged like this? One grave individual went away very wroth, saying to his wife that he did not like practical jokes. But another, a punctilious little man, having looked in the catalogue for the title of the work, in order to tell his daughter, read out the words, “In the Open Air,” whereupon there came a formidable renewal of the clamour, hisses and shouts, and whatnot else besides. The title sped about; it was repeated, commented on. “In the Open Air! ah, yes, the open air, the nude woman in the air, everything in the air, tra la la laire.” The affair was becoming a scandal. The crowd still increased. People’s faces grew red with congestion in the growing heat. Each had the stupidly gaping mouth of the ignoramus who judges painting, and between them they indulged in all the asinine ideas, all the preposterous reflections, all the stupid spiteful jeers that the sight of an original work can possibly elicit from bourgeois imbecility.

At that moment, as a last blow, Claude beheld Dubuche reappear, dragging the Margaillans along. As soon as he came in front of the picture, the architect, ill at ease, overtaken by cowardly shame, wished to quicken his pace and lead his party further on, pretending that he saw neither the canvas nor his friends. But the contractor had already drawn himself up on his short, squat legs, and was staring at the picture, and asking aloud in his thick hoarse voice:

“I say, who’s the blockhead that painted this?”

That good-natured bluster, that cry of a millionaire parvenu resuming the average opinion of the assembly, increased the general merriment; and he, flattered by his success, and tickled by the strange style of the painting, started laughing in his turn, so sonorously that he could be heard above all the others. This was the hallelujah, a final outburst of the great organ of opinion.

“Take my daughter away,” whispered pale-faced Madame Margaillan in Dubuche’s ear.

He sprang forward and freed Régine, who had lowered her eyelids, from the crowd; displaying in doing so as much muscular energy as if it had been a question of saving the poor creature from imminent death. Then having taken leave of the Margaillans at the door, with a deal of handshaking and bows, he came towards his friends, and said straightway to Sandoz, Fagerolles, and Gagnière:

“What would you have? It isn’t my fault⁠—I warned him that the public would not understand him. It’s improper; yes, you may say what you like, it’s improper.”

“They hissed Delacroix,” broke in Sandoz, white with rage, and clenching his fists. “They hissed Courbet. Oh, the race of enemies! Oh, the born idiots!”

Gagnière, who now shared this artistic vindictiveness, grew angry at the recollection of his Sunday battles at the Pasdeloup Concerts in favour of real music.

“And they hiss Wagner too; they are the same crew. I recognise them. You see that fat fellow over there⁠—”

Jory had to hold him back. The journalist for his part