His Masterpiece, Émile Zola [essential reading txt] 📗

they agreed with the opinion that since his Village Wedding the painter had produced nothing equal to that famous picture. Indeed, after maintaining something of that standard of excellence in a few works, he was now gliding into a more scientific, drier manner. Brightness of colour was vanishing; each work seemed to show a decline. However, these were things not to be said; so Claude, when he had recovered his composure, exclaimed:

“You never painted anything so powerful!”

Bongrand looked at him again, straight in the eyes. Then he turned to his work, in which he became absorbed, making a movement with his herculean arms, as if he were breaking every bone of them to lift that little canvas which was so very light. And he muttered to himself: “Confound it! how heavy it is! Never mind, I’ll die at it rather than show a falling-off.”

He took up his palette and grew calm at the first stroke of the brush, while bending his manly shoulders and broad neck, about which one noticed traces of peasant build remaining amid the bourgeois refinement contributed by the crossing of classes of which he was the outcome.

Silence had ensued, but Jory, his eyes still fixed on the picture, asked:

“Is it sold?”

Bongrand replied leisurely, like the artist who works when he likes without care of profit:

“No; I feel paralysed when I’ve a dealer at my back.” And, without pausing in his work, he went on talking, growing waggish.

“Ah! people are beginning to make a trade of painting now. Really and truly I have never seen such a thing before, old as I am getting. For instance, you, Mr. Amiable Journalist, what a quantity of flowers you fling to the young ones in that article in which you mentioned me! There were two or three youngsters spoken of who were simply geniuses, nothing less.”

Jory burst out laughing.

“Well, when a fellow has a paper, he must make use of it. Besides, the public likes to have great men discovered for it.”

“No doubt, public stupidity is boundless, and I am quite willing that you should trade on it. Only I remember the first starts that we old fellows had. Dash it! We were not spoiled like that, I can tell you. We had ten years’ labour and struggle before us ere we could impose on people a picture the size of your hand; whereas nowadays the first hobbledehoy who can stick a figure on its legs makes all the trumpets of publicity blare. And what kind of publicity is it? A hullabaloo from one end of France to the other, sudden reputations that shoot up of a night, and burst upon one like thunderbolts, amid the gaping of the throng. And I say nothing of the works themselves, those works announced with salvoes of artillery, awaited amid a delirium of impatience, maddening Paris for a week, and then falling into everlasting oblivion!”

“This is an indictment against journalism,” said Jory, who had stretched himself on the couch and lighted another cigar. “There is a great deal to be said for and against it, but devil a bit, a man must keep pace with the times.”

Bongrand shook his head, and then started off again, amid a tremendous burst of mirth:

“No! no! one can no longer throw off the merest daub without being hailed as a young ‘master.’ Well, if you only knew how your young masters amuse me!”

But as if these words had led to some other ideas, he cooled down, and turned towards Claude to ask this question: “By the way, have you seen Fagerolles’ picture?”

“Yes,” said the young fellow, quietly.

They both remained looking at each other: a restless smile had risen to their lips, and Bongrand eventually added:

“There’s a fellow who pillages you right and left.”

Jory, becoming embarrassed, had lowered his eyes, asking himself whether he should defend Fagerolles. He, no doubt, concluded that it would be profitable to do so, for he began to praise the picture of the actress in her dressing-room, an engraving of which was then attracting a great deal of notice in the print-shops. Was not the subject a really modern one? Was it not well painted, in the bright clear tone of the new school? A little more vigour might, perhaps, have been desirable; but everyone ought to be left to his own temperament. And besides, refinement and charm were not so common by any means, nowadays.

Bending over his canvas, Bongrand, who, as a rule, had nothing but paternal praise for the young ones, shook and made a visible effort to avoid an outburst. The explosion took place, however, in spite of himself.

“Just shut up, eh? about your Fagerolles! Do you think us greater fools than we really are? There! you see the great painter here present. Yes; I mean the young gentleman in front of you. Well, the whole trick consists in pilfering his originality, and dishing it up with the wishy-washy sauce of the School of Arts! Quite so! you select a modern subject, and you paint in the clear bright style, only you adhere to correctly commonplace drawing, to all the habitual pleasing style of composition⁠—in short, to the formula which is taught over yonder for the pleasure of the middle-classes. And you souse all that with deftness, that execrable deftness of the fingers which would just as well carve coconuts, the flowing, pleasant deftness that begets success, and which ought to be punished with penal servitude, do you hear?”

He brandished his palette and brushes aloft, in his clenched fists.

“You are severe,” said Claude, feeling embarrassed. “Fagerolles shows delicacy in his work.”

“I have been told,” muttered Jory, mildly, “that he has just signed a very profitable agreement with Naudet.”

That name, thrown haphazard into the conversation, had the effect of once more soothing Bongrand, who repeated, shrugging his shoulders:

“Ah! Naudet⁠—ah! Naudet.”

And he greatly amused the young fellows by telling them about Naudet, with whom he was well acquainted. He was a dealer, who, for some few years, had been revolutionising the picture