‘It is agreed,’ says Provis loudly. Smirke murmurs ‘agreed’ in chorus with him.
‘Then I think we should fill our glasses and raise a toast,’ declares Farington. ‘This is an important moment in the history of our Academy. Till this point, I fear we were doomed to be judged harshly by posterity for our handling of the Venetian Secret. Hopefully the crisis has been averted.’
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Benjamin West and the art of self-deception
‘Take your linseed oil, and during the summer put it into a bronze or copper pan, or a basin, and keep it in the sun when August comes. If you keep it there until it is reduced to a half, this will be most perfect for painting.’
cennino cennini,
The Craftsman’s Handbook, c. 1400
How does a man lie to himself? With ease. The architecture of self-deception is powerful because it is intrinsic to the architecture of the self. When Benjamin West considers the bricks and mortar of who he is, he sees the young man covered in mud in Pennsylvania, he sees the adventurer travelling across Europe in search of new styles of art, he sees the man who defied all of London by changing history painting forever. Reality has added failure, compromise and self-doubt to who he is, and there are many days when this is all he can see. Yet the fierce belief that he can transcend his fellow artists remains.
Is he a thief? Not within the architecture of self-deception. When the Provises came to him, after all, they came to him because they needed West’s interpretation of their manuscript. It was he who brought the insights that were needed. He who had the knowledge that drew them to his door. He who had travelled the world to understand precisely the light, the landscape and the painting traditions that had inspired the manuscript. All they had done was inherit some papers. Their luck, in essence, was an accident of history.
He would never voice such sentiments out loud. Perhaps if he did, he would engage more fully with the problem that while he has provided the insights into the manuscript, Ann Jemima appears to have produced the greater work from it. In the rare moments that he does think of this, he tells himself that either she has benefited from what he has taught her, or she has experienced some happy accident aided by an aspect of the method he has not yet seen. Whichever of these is the truth, he will not hand over any payment until he has worked out how much is down to his contribution, how much to her ability, and how much to these unknown parts of the method. Apart from anything else, once he has handed over the payment, it is his duty to share the method with the other artists. And this, for reasons he will not even contemplate, he is not prepared to do at this stage.
The whole imprecise nature of creativity is a considerable aid to his self-deception. In a letter he has written to his brother, William, he has expressed it thus:
‘I am now convinc’d that what the girl understands of her Manuscript is not enough to yield up the secrets of Titian. She has not traveled as much as I, nor indeed has she read as much as I. Yet in the many visits she has made to my house, I have managed to provyde some Illuminasion that has enabled her to produce a powerful Effekt. I truly believe it could have as dramatick a Result on our understanding of colour as the publication of Newton’s Opticks almost a century ago.’
He does not think for a moment of William’s assertion of how his ambition blinds him to the needs of others. In his studio, as he attempts to recreate the effect on his own, it is instead Titian who dominates his imagination. When he thinks of the artist these days, it is the older Titian who appears before him, the long white beard softening the harsh-lined, watchful face, the trademark black skullcap perched above faintly reddened eyes, worldly and yet unworldly. Like Benjamin West he is working for royalty, but where George III is doomed to be remembered for losing America and his sanity, Titian’s emperor – Charles V – is the most powerful man in Renaissance Europe.
It is a challenge for Titian to paint this emperor. Charles’s lantern jaw is so pronounced, he cannot close his mouth properly, while his feet are in eternal agony because of his gout. By the time the artist goes to stay with Charles at Augsburg, the emperor is not in a fit physical state even to sit on a horse, and has to be carried into battle in a litter. Yet there he is, in one of Titian’s portraits, mounted proudly on his black steed, the jutting lantern jaw transformed into a sign of determination and bravery rather than deformity. A different reality has been created through visual echoes – Charles has become a Roman emperor rising stoically into battle, or Dürer’s courageous warrior in his Knight, Death and the Devil, surrounded by evil but riding unflinchingly forward.
Like West, Charles wishes to see an image of himself that changes and enhances the truth, and has give strict instructions for this commission. Both the men’s delusions are connected to power and vanity – but where West’s deceit thrives on omitting details (which will prove his downfall), Charles’s is about transcending them (which has proved his triumph). As Titian seeks to celebrate Charles’s victory at the Battle of Muhlberg, he engages with the emperor so that he becomes philosopher-king as much as warrior. He is dressed for battle, yet the mood is meditative: he rides out onto a calm sylvan landscape with the sky flaming behind him – a bringer of stability as well as war.
Reflecting on his own less happy relationship with King George, West wonders whether Titian’s relationship with Charles was always conducted at the exalted level recorded in the history books. Whether Charles ever really did stoop to pick up that paintbrush for Titian in his studio. And if so, what it was like to be the artist staring at the top of the imperial head as it tilted downwards, to hear the grunt of pain as the gouty knees were bent. When Charles sat for Titian, did they talk, or did Titian – as he was renowned to do – go into a trance while he was painting, deaf to any complaints of boredom or physical discomfort that Charles might have made? And when they did converse, what were their discussions about? Charles’s wars against the Ottomans? The annulment of the marriage of his aunt, Catherine of Aragon? Or was the conversation more mundane? Their children perhaps, or the latest remedy for an aching tibia?
Muttering to himself, West goes over to the large table at the end of his studio. He tips Prussian blue powder onto his palette. Gently he drips the linseed oil onto it from the cap of a bottle and swirls the powder and oil together with a palette knife. He takes some of the ivory black shade and stirs it into the blue. Looks at his palette with pleasure as the colour becomes more complex. Once he has achieved the right thickness, he takes a small scoop of paint – the size of an almond – and places it in the middle of the palette. Then he takes his muller and starts to grind, wielding the heavy weight so that it blends the colours with the oil.
Yet again he feels the stirring of excitement. He reflects on how that first return visit to the Provises was almost unintentional. Another part of his justification for not paying them yet was that he had initially found the techniques they had given him from the method unsatisfactory, and was on the point of abandoning it. What, then, was it that had hauled his feet to their doorstep? Battling against the sleet and his own disbelief.
‘I think I wanted it to be true for the girl,’ he had told his twenty-one-year-old son, Raphael. ‘She was so passionate about it, so… convinced. Her enthusiasm reminded me of myself when I was younger. I felt I would be letting her down if I didn’t give her at least one more chance of explaining it to me.’
His son had delivered him a cynical glance as he stirred his bowl of chocolate. The smell of cocoa and aniseed drifted across the table. But Thomas Provis had been right, there was no sexual flicker there. The seduction, at that stage, was just as West described it – the resurrection of his younger self through Ann Jemima’s enthusiasm, in which he hoped to be the ultimate beneficiary.
Was it this sense of new optimism, or some attribute of the method that led to the next stage? After that visit he had created a painting of the Crucifixion that he had suddenly realised was closer to Titian than anything he had done before. Again he drew on his obsession with the d
ifferent ways of creating colour ever since he was a boy. How to make the silk on a lady’s dress shimmer so you could almost hear the rustle as she walked into the room. How to evoke the tone of flesh so you could sense the blood flowing beneath it. He thought back again to Running Wolf teaching him how to create different pigments by mixing riverbank clay with bear grease. This time he remembered the pungent scent of the grease and laughed wryly – when he had first smelled it he had wanted to be sick.
As the year went on, he started to become more obsessed than he would admit with what other revelations the manuscript might contain.
‘Can you truly comprehend the mind of another artist through a formula he has used?’ his son Raphael had asked him. ‘Thoughts do not translate perfectly from one person to another. The music of Beethoven is as close to an artistic formula as any I have ever encountered – yet when some play it is brilliant, and when others do they sound as if they have souls of tin and fingers of lead.’
West felt his heart quickening.
‘Indeed, my boy. That is my view entirely. Only truly great artists can interpret other great artists.’
‘So the value of the method becomes greater according to the aptitude of the artist using it. From you they are asking £500. For a lesser artist like myself, it may be only be worth half as much. Maybe it is I who should put in the bid.’
West laughed.
‘You tease me, my son.’
‘Yet I am serious too. When are you going to decide on the payment? You have seen the Provises many times now. Surely you believe they deserve some form of recompense.’
He smiled tightly.
‘We are potentially at a great moment in history. There are more important things to be considered than the vulgar issue of money?’
‘When will you talk to them?’
West was quiet.
‘When I have decided what they deserve,’ he eventually said.
In his studio later that day he finds himself thinking back to January 1793, when news has reached England that King Louis XVI has just been executed. As the political tremors spread through France and across the rest of Europe, West is summoned to see King George III. He is concerned that the purpose of the summons is for him to be cross-examined once more as a potential revolutionary. But it turns out that the King wishes to interrogate him about something rather different – the Orléans art collection that has been smuggled into England.
‘It is the greatest art collection in the world.’ At this meeting, the King has insisted that West stands. They are at St James’s Palace, and Queen Charlotte is also in attendance, watching West with hostility.
‘Indeed. I know how keen Your Majesty is to acquire it,’ West replies.
‘War, theft and bankruptcy have marked its passage to these shores.’ The King’s expression changes. For a moment it becomes conspiratorial, friendly – in the way, West thinks with resentment, it used to frequently. ‘Those same dangers threaten to take it away again – and I need you to prevent this.’
West nods. ‘I am aware that the collection has already been divided in two since we first heard it was for sale,’ he replies. ‘It has attracted much interest on both sides of the Channel. It is an extraordinary coincidence that both the current owners have now brought their share of the collection to London for safekeeping.’
‘An extraordinary coincidence and an extraordinary opportunity,’ replies the King. ‘We cannot afford all of them of course, but if we were to secure the best, we could use them as the basis to open the National Gallery you have so often suggested.’
For a moment it is as if the sun has risen over their conversation. West looks at the King in amazement.
‘That would be remarkable, Your Majesty.’
The King nods approvingly.
‘I would like you to go and assess what the owner of the French and Italian part of the collection might be prepared to sell.’
West chooses to make his visit with Joseph Johnson’s former lover, Henry Fuseli. Fuseli’s impatient brilliance indulges no one he considers a fool, and into that category he places most of the human race. West’s early acquaintance with him has been marked by a savage dislike on both sides. But over time he has realised that Fuseli’s arrogance is part of a ruthless honesty that means it is possible to trust what he says in a way that he cannot quite trust anyone else at the Academy.
On the day they go to visit the collection, they meet outside St Clement Danes at the top of the Strand. As he approaches, West can make out Fuseli’s distinctive white hair long before he recognises the details of his face. Before they discuss what they are about to see, Fuseli – as West has anticipated – wants to talk about the latest experiments he is conducting to test the relationship between body and imagination. Recently he has been eating raw pork before bedtime to see if the nightmares that transpire will prove worthy subjects for paintings. This has resulted in bouts of extreme sickness, yet though West fears for Fuseli’s health, he is not unwise enough to betray his concern since he knows he will be dismissed for triviality.
Finally Fuseli is ready to talk about the matter at hand. ‘Should I credit the rumour that the man whose family owned this collection has renamed himself Philippe Égalité?’ he asks sardonically. Their carriage rattles through the stink and clamour of the Strand, lurching over large stones and chunks of debris.
‘To be known as the Duke of Orléans has become somewhat awkward since the Revolution commenced,’ replies West wryly.
‘So he wishes to be known as Monsieur Equality.’ Fuseli’s lips twitch.
‘From what I hear that will not save him from the guillotine,’ replies West. ‘He is a curious individual. He ran up gambling debts that ruined his family long before the Revolution decided their wealth should be stripped from them.’
The carriage suddenly jolts them both backwards. Outside, the dalmatians accompanying the carriage start to bark. West looks out of the window to see that a dead mongrel is blocking their course. The coach driver jumps down, cursing, and kicks the carcass to one side so they can proceed.
‘There is some part of me that feels guilty about profiting from Monsieur Égalité’s tragedy,’ West continues, as the carriage starts off again.
‘Why should it taunt you?’ declares Fuseli. ‘The man is a profligate and a hypocrite. How can you champion the rights of the people on the one hand, and gamble away one of the biggest family fortunes in France on the other? I cannot conceive how you can lose any money of consequence through gambling. I have tried hard on a couple of occasions. Yet even when I’m playing faro I’ve only managed to lose my breeches. And that, I must confess, proved ultimately pleasurable.’
The afternoon winter sun is low and golden. A shaft of it falls through the carriage window and across Fuseli’s face, illuminating the complacent features animated by satyric humour. West refuses to acknowledge the innuendo. He knows that Fuseli wishes to provoke him, but with a faint self-loathing realises he is too uncomfortable to respond.
‘How is your wife?’ he replies instead.
‘My beautiful wife is well. She sends her regards.’
The tone of his voice is icily amused.
‘Égalité attempted to pay off his debts by selling the family gems to Catherine the Great,’ West continues firmly. ‘Yet even selling the gems did not raise enough money. So then he sold his entire collection of art.’
The carriage turns as they reach Charing Cross, rocking dangerously to the right as it does so. Brightly coloured fabric shops are doing brisk business, while men and women are emerging from the gin booths interspersed between them. Some look as if they have just purchased redemption, others the last step towards damnation. A plague of stray cats darts between legs and under carriages.
‘You say that it is a French Count who has now brought the Italian and French paintings here,’ says Fuseli. ‘What would he have done had the revolution not forced him to do so?
‘I think he bought them to preserve them for the F
rench nation. But as you are well aware, the Terror is making that impossible. So much art is being destroyed by the Revolutionaries as a protest against religion as well as royalty.’ West shakes his head. ‘I never foresaw that it would come to this. At what point does liberty become the smashing up of statues, the burning of paintings?’
Fuseli’s eyes are cold.
‘Acquaintances have told me that it is a protest against the decadence of royalty, the corruption of the Church. Yet this wanton destruction is no less decadent. The loss to history at the hands of vandals perverting the cause of the Revolution is incalculable. The extent of the madness only struck me when I heard they had beheaded half the statues at Notre Dame Cathedral.’ He looks towards West. ‘You know how much I wanted this Revolution.’
West does not trust himself to talk.
Fuseli’s voice softens. ‘No rational man could have been satisfied with the way things were. But in place of Louis, we have the fanatic Robespierre. Do you realise he drinks only water? A man who trusts himself not to drink wine is a man whose impulses should be feared by everybody.’
West laughs weakly.
‘You have been told, I take it, that the Dutch, German and Flemish paintings will go to auction later this year,’ he says as they turn into the gardens of Leicester Square. ‘These Italian and French paintings present a more delicate proposition, since we do not know how many the Count will part with – if any.’
‘And the King desires you to be a negotiator. There is a good deal of sense in that. As an American you are outside the establishment – in every other sense, for better or worse, you are very much inside it. You have the right perspective for dealing with such a man as our unwilling benefactor.’
It is not long till they reach the large white townhouse where the paintings are stored. As the carriage jolts to a halt, they descend with alacrity and regard the building for a moment before entering. The shutters of the windows are all closed, yet still it seems watchful, hostile to the world around it.
The Optickal Illusion Page 20