‘The Count will not be here to receive us this afternoon,’ declares West as he approaches the steps leading up to the front door. ‘He sent me word that he has left his servants to open up two of the rooms where the paintings are stored.’ He looks up towards the door. ‘I feel great excitement at what we are about to witness, but I am also fearful of the damage they may have suffered in the journey from France.’
‘I am impressed at the extent to which he clearly trusts you, though you have met but twice,’ declares Fuseli loudly. ‘In his position I would be concerned about thieves. Who can guarantee that we will not sneak out with a pair of Correggios in our breeches?’
West suddenly turns on him in irritation.
‘Make not light of it,’ he hisses, ‘especially when we may be heard.’
His friend’s eyes flare with mild amusement.
‘My dear West,’ replies Fuseli calmly. ‘You know you have my full support. Be not so wary.’
As he speaks, a butler opens the door and examines them intently. As West stares back, he becomes transfixed by the flourishing eyebrows that are black at the point closest to the bridge of the nose and grey and white as they taper out at the end.
‘Mr West, I take it,’ the butler finally declares.
West dips his head in acquiescence.
‘Welcome. This is your friend Mr Fuseli?’
‘That is right,’ replies West with severity, glaring at his companion.
‘Will you both follow me?’ the butler says.
West gives a sharp nod to Fuseli, who walks after him into the house, smiling to himself. As from the outside, there’s an atmosphere of watchfulness – the walls of the noiseless corridors almost seem like spies listening to their footsteps as they click across the polished stone floor. The butler leads them up another flight of stairs, and finally into a room at the back of the house. As at the front of the house, all the shutters are closed.
In the semi-darkness West can see two large paintings hung on opposite walls, while on the floors lie other framed canvases, wrapped in cloth. There’s a sense of slumbering, a sense of lives and secrets waiting to be revealed.
The butler walks over to the windows. Slowly and methodically he opens the shutters. In the hushed darkened atmosphere the sunshine feels like an intrusion. West’s eyes are first drawn towards the light outside the window. Then he looks to see the paintings that have been illuminated.
‘Good God, West.’ The tension that has lingered between them since their entrance to the house is wiped away. Fuseli’s hand clutches West’s arm.
West feels a sense of unreality descending on him as he looks around. On one level he has been prepared for this. On another, he is struck speechless as he recognises the images of which he has only seen copies in the past.
The butler dips his head. ‘I will leave you two gentlemen alone,’ he says, ‘and will be downstairs should you have any questions you want me to pass onto Monsieur Laborde.’
The moment he is gone, the two men rush to the walls and examine the paintings closely. Fuseli turns to West. A faintly manic light dances in his wide-set eyes, while his hands gesticulate to both walls.
‘Can you believe what we are seeing?’
West shakes his head. ‘This is remarkable, truly remarkable.’
‘Titian’s two greatest works, Diana and Callisto and Diana and Actaeon.’ Fuseli looks from one to the other. ‘I have never been in a room with so many naked women.’ His eye briefly catches West’s and he laughs at his puzzlement. He drops his hands and walks up to the Diana and Callisto. ‘The luminosity of the flesh…’ Now his voice is more serious. ‘He almost orders us to look at their bodies – most of the faces are in shadow.’
‘When Titian places faces in shadow,’ replies West, ‘it is a sign that something sinister is about to happen.’
‘Yes, but Titian was also very adept at making the human body as eloquent as the face,’ replies Fuseli. ‘Which of course allows the works to be as erotic as they are didactic…’
He swings round. ‘He did not paint these for Charles, did he?’
‘No,’ smiles West. ‘They were for his son, Philip II of Spain.’ He coughs. ‘A very different character. More sophisticated in his artistic tastes than his father…’
‘… and also more sexually adventurous,’ mutters Fuseli.
They are silent again. Fuseli continues to stare at the Diana and Callisto.
‘They are both such wonderfully perverse tales,’ he says distractedly as he studies it. ‘Callisto was a nymph who was seduced by Zeus, was she not?’
‘Yes,’ says West calmly. ‘She was one of Zeus’s conquests.’
‘Zeus disguised himself as Diana so that he might seduce her…’ Fuseli turns and raises his eyebrows.
‘He disguised himself as Diana in order to be alone with her,’ replies West shortly, refusing to hold his gaze. ‘Whether or not she thought he was Diana at the point of the seduction is not entirely clear.’
Fuseli laughs low.
‘I suspect Philip would have relished the idea of Diana and Callisto making love. Though if Zeus left her with child, I presume the male member must have become obvious at some point in the proceedings.’
West sighs.
‘Mr Fuseli. I rarely find that anatomy and mythology make happy companions.’
‘Is that so?’ Fuseli’s voice sharpens as he stands back from the painting. ‘Play not the prude, Mr West. In truth, I think Titian would disagree with you. This painting is full of anatomy. The whole story is told in the swelling of Callisto’s belly, and Diana’s beautiful white hand pointing angrily in her direction.’
West is silent. He turns determinedly towards the Diana and Actaeon. It is a very different work, and as he looks at it he wonders once again at the undertone of savagery present in so many of Titian’s paintings. Here Diana’s arm is raised up, as she glares at the man who has stumbled upon the glade where she and her companions are bathing. The sense is not of embarrassment but of fury – next to her a dog, its hackles raised and teeth bared, barks at the intruding Actaeon. The hunter stumbles back, almost as if he has been struck by her glance – his hands flung up defensively as he takes in the forbidden view.
Yet while Actaeon is horrified by what he sees before him, it is what he cannot see that is most sinister. Behind Actaeon stands one of his hunting hounds – the very same who will later rip him apart for his transgression after Diana, in revenge, has turned him into a deer. At the moment Actaeon does not know that the dogs who follow him will later be turned into the agents of his destruction. His doom is presaged in the shadows of the sky, the sense of the wind in the branches and an oncoming storm. On top of the pillar behind which one nymph is hiding is a deer skull – a memento mori that, for better or worse, he is still unable to understand.
‘Actaeon had committed no crime,’ West exclaims almost involuntarily. ‘He was pursuing his passion of hunting – he had no desire to interrupt Diana as she bathed.’
Fuseli comes over and stands next to him.
‘That is what is so powerful about the myth. It acknowledges what all rational men fear – that we live in an irrational and cruel world, and may be punished unfairly at any time.’
West nods. ‘Indeed.’ He returns to staring at the painting. At Actaeon reeling back, at his hounds behind him.
‘It is a particularly cruel aspect of the story that he was devoured by his own hounds. Why would you present this to a king?’
Fuseli reflects for a few moments. ‘Because great art is supposed to unsettle us,’ he finally says. ‘As Louis XVI has learnt to his cost, even when you are a king, your hounds can turn against you at any moment.’
‘It is also about forbidden knowledge. Do we believe in that in an age of science.’
Fuseli is quiet. ‘Yes, we do.’
There is an edge to his voice, and West looks at him. ‘And those in power will always reinforce that sense of the forbidden,’ he continues with quiet ange
r. ‘The concept of sin is a great method of controlling society.’
They hold each other’s gaze for a moment.
West looks away.
‘What do you think I should report to the King?’ he says briskly.
Fuseli takes a deep breath.
‘That he should offer every guinea that he has to buy these works, and if that is not enough, he should sell St James’s Palace to raise the money.’
Yet the King was not prepared to hand over the money that was necessary, and West was forced to agree that he would try to persuade the Count to sell the paintings at a lower rate. He will never forget the rage and despair he felt at the decision – he knew that the Count would never accept the offer, and he bitterly resented the humiliation of having even to attempt the negotiation. Nor can he forget his own desire to possess the paintings when he saw them, that sense of being almost turned inside out by the contradictory feelings they inspired. If just once he could create a painting that had the same effect on the onlooker, he could go to his grave feeling some of the strife he had endured throughout his long and humiliating presidency had been worth it.
As the cold creeps up his fingers, like a twitch of irritation another image assails him. That moment when he walks back into this very studio after leaving the girl alone, when he sees the Venus and Cupid as she has altered it. He remembers the surge of jealousy, the disbelief at what she has created, the clarity of something that he does not want to know. For him this feels like a moment of forbidden knowledge. Though who has supplied the knowledge and by whom it is forbidden are questions that cannot be entertained within the rigid walls of who he thinks he is.
Around him everything is silent. The fire in the grate has long since burnt out, and a shiver runs across the top of his shoulders. Briskly he rubs his hands together till the friction of skin sends blood back to the fingertips. He is finding the paint a little too viscous, so he adds a little more linseed oil and stirs it with the palette knife.
Once the exhibition is over, he tells himself, he will have the Provises to a meal, praise them enough to satisfy them, make them feel they have played a little part in history. Once they have seen what he has created on his own, they will understand. He is sure they will understand.
‘But when will I understand?’ he whispers to himself, almost involuntarily.
He dips his paintbrush once again and tentatively applies the colour to the canvas.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The tide turns against Mr West
‘… no knowledge however extensive in the mechanic of colours can make the artist, without the scientific and sublime enthusiasm of genius; but it is certainly narrow to hold back assistance so far as it can be communicated, or to throw impediments in the way of an art which hath met with and merited the protection of the best and wisest men in all ages.’
william williams,
An Essay on the Mechanic of Oil Colours, 1787
By the morning of 12 January the Academy is in revolt. Each artist has had a different reaction to the Provises’ visit, but as they discuss the problem among themselves the suspicions about West’s conduct become more substantial. It is as if clouds of dust on a dry London street have slowly mutated to grow limbs and horns until finally they become a stampeding herd.
John Rigaud, once the Provises’ greatest doubter, leads the accusations. ‘West brings shame on us all,’ he cries to anyone who will listen. ‘From henceforth a new President of the Royal Academy should be elected every year.’ Richard Westall silently mocks Rigaud’s outrage, but still cannot disguise his delight at the strength with which opinion has turned against Benjamin West. He himself has now carefully refashioned his account of Provis’s assault against him as the act of an innocent man driven to desperation. ‘If West has pushed him thus far without remorse,’ he has declared to Opie, ‘who can say what other transgressions our President has committed without our knowledge? I believe it is not safe to leave him in such a position of responsibility any more.’
Smirke, in a rare moment of indiscretion, goes even further at a late night meeting with Joseph Farington. ‘If the Provises are proved to be in the right, and Benjamin West has deliberately deceived us all, then it reflects very badly on the judgement of the King that he has not got rid of him earlier,’ he says, tapping his cane emphatically on the floor. ‘A few years ago, that would not have mattered one jot, but in these more turbulent times…’ He pauses. ‘I am not suggesting this might bring down the monarchy. But King George might well have to dispose of West in order to make sure that his Royal patronage continues to exert its full authority.’
Even John Opie, when he wakes that morning, is starting to feel the wretched seductions of the case against West. His room is filled with a strange yellowish light that indicates another early-morning fall of snow. As he lies and stares at a spider crawling slowly across his ceiling, he reflects, like the other artists, on the severity of the accusations. At the same time he ponders that it is not this that disturbs him most. In the last week he has felt his most intense anger when observing each fellow artist’s attempts to claim the Provises as their own. There is a stench of greed to all of this, he mutters to himself. Every single one of them harbours an agenda. The stench was particularly strong when he conversed with Farington. ‘We must secure the Venetian Secret so only the appropriate people may see it,’ Farington declared, holding Opie’s arm in a pincer-like grip. ‘The more people that discover it, the more its value decreases. We must ensure that the honest Provises go nowhere else with their manuscript.’
Opie’s own impression of the Provises is – as Thomas Provis has observed – somewhat more guarded. In the father he perceives an appetite for self-education and a dignity that convinces him he deserves to be treated with a certain respect. Yet there is something about Provis that disturbs him too, even though at this stage he is unable to say what. It is the same with Ann Jemima. He recalls the moment when she first sat down before him. The girl was so perfectly composed that he almost expected her silhouette to be cut into the air when she finally rose from her seat. His mind has reflected more times than he would like to admit on her silhouette. Yet the thought keeps recurring: ‘She was too composed. Too perfect.’ Why precisely this worries him currently eludes him. Yet his thoughts return again and again to the visit like a tongue prodding where a missing tooth has once been.
Mary Wollstonecraft picks up on his distraction within moments of receiving him at her house. They have gone into her parlour for the latest sitting for her portrait, and she has positioned herself by the window. The stark winter sun delineates the bridge of her nose and casts sharp shadows on her throat. Her white dress amplifies the sense of light. As she sits down, Opie reflects on how profoundly she has transformed from the severe female scholar whom he first met more than a decade ago. Then she seemed to absorb light rather than radiate it. She had just written her first book, and seemed torn between tempestuous emotion and over-earnest intellect. Yet he had liked her immediately, in a more straightforward manner than he had liked any woman before, even as he observed with amazement her crow-like disdain for female beauty and all its accessories.
Though her appearance has softened in the interim, her powers of perception have not.
‘Mr Opie.’ Her voice is sharp. He starts guiltily. ‘You are not altogether present today. Pray tell me it is for happy reasons.’
His laugh jangles wretchedly.
‘Happy is not the word I would use.’
‘So what is it?’ Curiosity like quicksilver in her voice.
He puts his palette and paintbrush down, and picks up a rag with which to wipe his fingers.
‘My fellow artists are in a frenzy. Tonight they gather at Wright’s Coffee House to debate what Benjamin West’s punishment should be for keeping the secret of painting like Titian to himself, and how they themselves may gain access to the method.’ He hesitates. ‘If this report proves to be true, like all of them, I will demand some kind of justice is
done. But the reaction of my fellow artists has been…’ he hesitates, groping for the words, ‘I don’t believe it is justice they want done… they are like dogs in a hunting pack – baying for West’s blood with such enthusiasm that it is as if they desire to tear him limb from limb.’
She rises from her chair and removes her black hat. Now the light falls across the skirt of her dress. Long elegant shafts like stripes on the cotton.
‘I take it that it is permitted for me to relax my pose.’
The tone of her voice indicates this is not a question. She walks towards the fire to warm herself. Opie laughs drily.
‘The portrait is utterly contrary to your nature, Mary Wollstonecraft – it does not talk, it does not move. It is the ultimate challenge for me to keep you still enough to complete it.’
‘But this time the fault is yours for providing the distraction. And, indeed, for being so distracted by it.’
He nods.
‘I am happy to accept the responsibility.’
She sits by the fire and indicates with a motion of the hand that he should join her.
‘You are disturbed by the other artists’ reaction. Even though you yourself are angry with Benjamin West?’
He takes a deep breath.
‘I am. If the facts are as they seem, the man has acted like a scoundrel. He should be made to apologise to the Provises, and acknowledge that the girl has helped him with his experiments. But I do not think my colleagues’ real concern is that the Provises should be recognised. I think they are using self-righteous anger to mask their jealousy.’
Her glance is abrasive, but as she absorbs the impact of what he says it changes. ‘Self-righteous anger is an ugly but powerful instinct,’ she concedes. ‘And there is a violence to it. They may not tear your Mr West limb from limb, but he will suffer damage from it.’
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