The Optickal Illusion

by Rachel Halliburton

  ‘Indeed he will. They may not be murderers… but perhaps they are something worse.’

  ‘And that is?’

  ‘Hypocrites. Half of them want to deprive Mr West of his job for a crime I believe most would have committed themselves. If any member of the Academy believed he had discovered a method that would make him the greatest artist of his age, well you can imagine…’

  He shrugs, then comes and sits opposite her. Reaching his hands out to the fire, he gazes into it contemptuously. Flames dance on the surface of his eyes.

  She leans forward.

  ‘Why are the artists so interested in this formula?’ she says. ‘You and I have talked often about the importance of originality.’

  He feels the jab of her provocation as strongly as if it were a needle.

  ‘Many manuscripts deal with these techniques. The question with all of them is how good the scholarship is. Some of them are like scientific documents, some – which are of course more common – are more like witches’ spells.’

  ‘And this is more like science?’

  ‘It is an intricate document of Venetian techniques, from a time when the Venetians were the most brilliant colourists known to history. All the evidence I have heard is that what the Provises have presented seems a most credible account from that time.’

  ‘Yet you are not interested in the document itself.’

  He hesitates, splaying the fingers of his hand on his breeches as he looks back at her.

  ‘Mr Opie, if Ann Jemima is good enough to demonstrate the technique, why did she take the manuscript to Mr West at all?’

  He reflects for a moment.

  ‘I looked at the painting of Venus and Cupid in which she apparently assisted West. When she first told me which parts she had assisted with, my thoughts were that she was clearly better than any pupil I myself have taught. But then, when I thought back to my first reaction to West’s painting, my conclusion was still more dramatic. I thought that it was better than anything he had done in recent years.’

  She frowns.

  ‘Your conclusion is extraordinary. Are you saying that this young girl has greater ability than the President of the Royal Academy?’

  ‘If, like myself, you do not believe that a painting method – whatever its merits – could make a bad painter good, or a good painter excellent, then yes, that is the obvious conclusion.’

  ‘You believe she is better than the President of the Royal Academy?’

  Her tone is stern.

  ‘She is certainly a better colourist.’

  ‘Forgive my stupidity. What precisely does that mean?’

  He smiles.

  ‘A great colouring technique is one that manages to suggest something beyond itself.’

  ‘And still I am no wiser.’

  ‘Well then let us take flesh as an example. A person’s skin and complexion can tell us of so many things – whether or not they are in good health, what their age is, whether they are feeling desire, whether they are in pain.’ She studies him closely. ‘This is not to do with the intrinsic colour of the flesh – it is to do with a quality of translucence, of luminosity…’

  ‘Forgive me, Mr Opie. Now I am truly confused. Of luminosity?’

  He shakes his head impatiently, recognising he is being teased.

  ‘People who are happy glow. You have seen this. You have demonstrated it. Since you and Mr Godwin became close, you glow. When you were sad…’ his voice becomes quiet. ‘When you were sad you did not.’ He moves on quickly as her expression changes. ‘There is a difference to the way light plays on a young man’s skin and on an old man’s skin. Someone in pain… it is as if something has been leached from them. All artists understand about the subtleties of light and shadow, but the great artists know how to make it convey an entire state of mind – not just what is happening now, but what has happened before and what may be yet to come.’

  ‘And beyond flesh?’

  ‘We divine much from shifts in colour in the natural world. The time of day, the season, the advance of good or bad weather. A great artist can go beyond this and infuse those colours with a sense of danger, or hope, or…’

  He shrugs.

  ‘Yes, I believe I understand.’ Her voice is quiet. ‘And Mr West cannot do this?’

  ‘He is most skilful. Unlike the hyenas of the Academy I believe he deserves his position. But it is in the composition and detail of his paintings that he makes his mark. The face of the child that Ann Jemima painted lived… it lived in a way that I have never seen one of his figures live before.’

  He looks directly at her.

  ‘Then she should be celebrated.’

  ‘Indeed.’ He hesitates.

  ‘Then what is the problem?’

  He gets up and starts to pace around the room.

  ‘You will find this hard to credit. But it is she as much as anyone else who denies her ability. I complimented her considerably on the work. But she responded quite firmly that it is the method she and her father discovered that allow her to paint as she does.’

  ‘Do you think she believes that?’

  ‘I think it is easiest for her, and those around her, to believe that.’

  Mary’s eyes narrow.

  ‘You mean that it is more acceptable that she has discovered something extraordinary, rather than that she is something extraordinary?’

  ‘She stands to make considerably more money at this stage if the version of the story she and her father are choosing to tell is perceived as the correct one.’

  ‘So her desire is for independence.’

  ‘It is for the certainty that money may or may not offer her. What she then chooses to do with that, you may guess as well as I.’

  He comes and sits back opposite Mary.

  ‘I went to see her painting teacher, Mr Cosway, last night.’

  She looks at him archly. ‘You have been assiduous in your research indeed. It is a credit to you,’ she says out loud. Quietly she thinks to herself: and are you also a little in love with her? Opie returns her glance.

  ‘No, Mary. I am fascinated, but I am not in love with her,’ he replies acerbically as he reads her expression. ‘Though I hope you will not find me vain if I say I had the feeling that she desired me to be.’

  ‘I’m afraid I do find you vain in that observation,’ comes her response.

  ‘Let me be more clear – my sense was that she would have found it to her advantage had I been attracted to her. That is something else that troubles me.’

  He looks down for a moment.

  ‘How is the situation with Elizabeth Delfton?’ she asks.

  ‘There is no improvement,’ he replies curtly. ‘Let us talk not of it.’

  Her face hardly changes its expression, but a sense of her concern pervades the room.

  ‘What does Richard Cosway think?’

  ‘When I made my observations about Ann Jemima, he was somewhat derogatory about her painting abilities, but not about her cleverness. He said rather than dwelling on such concerns, we would be better off to give her and her father the money and see what we could gain from the method ourselves.’

  Mary looks at him closely.

  ‘Which means that he is either in collusion with the Provises to make as much money from this method as is possible. Or that he too is unnerved by her talent.’

  ‘Mr Cosway is a strange wounded fox. I know his wife – he belittled her for many years, was flagrantly unfaithful to her, and then proclaimed it was he who had suffered most when eventually she left him.’ Seeing the fire has almost burnt out, he picks up a fat fresh log with tongs, and throws it into the hearth where it spits aggressively for a few seconds. ‘His motivations are always questionable. He has no reason that I can comprehend for helping the Provises altruistically, so it is likely that he too finds it easier to praise the method than his pupil.’

  ‘In other words the lie is easier to believe than the truth.’

  ‘You are right, though
the degree of that depends very much on each individual concerned. To my mind it is the artists at the Academy who are least talented who seem to be most interested in this matter for the method itself.’ He looks down for a moment. ‘Benjamin West will never become a Titian, nor indeed will Rigaud or Farington. But it offers to them a chance as good as any of catching the Venetian light they all so desperately seek, and is therefore worth money – if not quite as much as they say.’

  She stares at him for a moment.

  ‘Something still further is worrying you. What is it?’

  He returns her gaze. ‘I had a sense that Ann Jemima was scared when she came to me.’ The word seems to surprise him even as he says it. ‘Yes, that’s right,’ he repeats softly, ‘scared. On the surface she was extremely elegant and composed. She impressed me. But I also had a strong sense of her fear.’

  Mary frowns.

  ‘Whatever the truth of the matter, she is a very young girl challenging an establishment supported by the King.’

  ‘Yes, but I felt that her fear went beyond that.’

  He looks at his friend’s puzzled face, and laughs ruefully.

  ‘This is a complex enough matter as it is already. But I feel there is more to be known about both the Provises and the method before the final judgement is made.’

  ‘Yet Mr West is inescapably at fault,’ Mary says, ‘What should be done about that?’

  ‘He should be allowed to account for his actions before any decision is taken.’

  ‘So on the one hand you want to stop West being torn limb from limb for reasons that you think are hypocritical, even though he is at fault. And on the other you think there are important questions to be answered about what exactly the Provises believe about their method.’

  ‘I think that sums it up.’ He rubs his eyes. ‘My intentions, I assure you, are good ones. I would like to see this situation brought to a conclusion that preserves honour on all sides. Though who knows if that will be possible?’

  She goes and sits down in her chair by the window again.

  ‘Shall we try again?’

  She puts on her black hat.

  He returns to his palette to mix his paint to evoke the precise shade of red in Mary’s cheeks. The bloom on her cheeks comes from somewhere profound – it gives a sense of troubles laid to rest, and an optimism of what is to come. It makes him smile to observe it.

  ‘I apologise for bringing these troubles to your door. You look more content than I have seen you in a long time, Mary.’

  Her dark eyes gleam.

  ‘Perhaps I should not be. I am, it seems, with child again.’

  Opie drops his brush in shock. Paint spatters across the carpet. She holds up a rebuking hand as he leaps down to wipe it with a rag. ‘The carpet is the least of my worries. As you can imagine this has made Mr Godwin rather nervous. I am discovering I need to tread carefully. We do not, after all, want to repeat my last experience.’

  ‘Mr Godwin is a good man. He will not abandon you like Mr Imlay did.’

  ‘It would be unfortunate if he did so.’ She smiles wryly. ‘But I have independent means, and Joseph Johnson is urging me to think of a subject for my next book.’

  There is an uncomfortable pause. Opie shakes his head.

  ‘I know not what to say.’

  ‘Then say nothing. As you observed, I am happier than I was a year ago.’ She looks at him directly. ‘It is strange, is it not – in this city every few seconds a new connection is formed, every few seconds a new possibility arises. One moment it can seem there is more confusion and misery than joy in the streets around you. Then suddenly the coin flips in your favour.’

  Silently he indicates that she should turn her head back so that she can resume her pose.

  ‘So many coins have been flung into the air in recent days. I know not what the sum of them will be when they finally land,’ he declares.

  ‘Then maybe you should cease to count them,’ she declares firmly. ‘There will be others of which you are not yet aware.’

  The winter sunlight plays on her face again – he tests his brush on the palette. The clock beats its metallic pulse, and for the next half hour there are no more words.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  A meeting at Wright’s Coffee House

  ‘For what avails it that the ingenious youth finds no difficulty, but rather an easy access to initiation in the advantage of a Royal Academy, that he labours there that he attains—if at last he finds a cold countenance his reward, the royal and gracious founder has done his part, he cannot do all, and the art must have the patronage of the many, to protect and support the plentiful crop of real genius that Britain abounds with, and the academy matures.’

  william williams,

  An Essay on the Mechanic of Oil Colours, 1787

  As ever at Wright’s Coffee House, the heat of debate could be felt from the moment a visitor walked in the door. Bodies swayed and hunched at wooden tables, coffee, conversation and smoke steamed up the windows, while the air was torn intermittently with shouts of derision or cries of assent. Here was an eternal blend not just of classes but of vice and virtue: clergymen could be found sparring with pimps, judges with fraudsters, and pickpockets with boot-menders. It was as if the coffee were a dark bitter oxygen for the nervous spark of ideas, which under its influence took little time to burst into flame.

  When Richard Westall, Robert Smirke and Joseph Farington entered, they believed they were the first of their party to arrive. Then they spied their fellow artists in the corner. Amid the jabber and holler of laughter all around, it was clear even from a distance that the men gathering there were prepared to debate something more exclusive. So far Stothard and Rigaud were present, along with a wan hollow-cheeked man whom Westall recognised as the artist John Hoppner. The men’s movements were guarded, their glances opaque. Their eyes animated by the strange staccato light that often indicates that something of significance is about to take place. Sneeringly Westall thought to himself it was as if the bare wooden table around which they sat had become a pagan altar awaiting a high priest to reveal secrets of the occult.

  It was the nature of the unremitting rivalry between the artists that none wished to discuss openly how preoccupied they were with the matter that had brought them to Wright’s. When Westall reached their table, he realised they were expressing their excitement in the manner of most Englishmen – by talking of other subjects. It was largely their hands that betrayed their true feelings: fingers tapped in agitation, beat out rough tattoos on coffee mugs, trespassed onto faces to stroke mouths or scratch noses. At certain points the whole table would fall silent, and the men would survey each other guardedly.

  ‘I heard a most unflattering report the other day about the prisoners the British have captured from the French navy.’ John Rigaud was sweating and slightly more red-faced than usual – the vulgar twitch of his mouth indicated that he was about to make a rare sideways leap into tittle-tattle. ‘It appears that they are often to be found stark naked.’

  The laughter of Westall and Farington was splintered, as if they had responded to the cue to laugh but did not know as they did so what sentiment they were approving.

  Smirke gazed at him as if slightly stunned by the observation. ‘What do you think that proves?’ he replied leaning forward across the table. ‘The barbarity of the French? Or the barbarity of the British that they keep them in such degrading conditions?’

  Rigaud looked at him, clearly surprised by the challenge. ‘Barbarity is not the word, Mr Smirke. And I am the last to denounce the true French – pray don’t forget that my own family originates from Lyon. But it seems that the appetite of the Republic’s soldiers for gambling is such that they are willing, quite literally, to sell the shirts off their backs to raise money for it!’

  Westall and Smirke exchanged glances. Farington watched them acutely, as if anticipating the nature of what was to come.

  ‘I do not know what I would do if I found myself in on
e of the hellhole ships that we currently use as prisons. Gambling is probably one of the more appealing vices in which to indulge,’ Smirke finally declared.

  Westall nodded. ‘It is either selling the shirt off your back or watching your shoes be gnawed away by the rats,’ he said. ‘The stench of human and rodent faeces is so great, I hear, that in the hot weather the putrid Thames smells by comparison like a perfume fit for Queen Charlotte.’

  ‘Your sympathy is impressive,’ Rigaud replied sarcastically. ‘Maybe you believe that we should be entertaining our Republican invaders at St James’s Palace. Word is that there will be another attempted invasion before the spring is out.’

  Farington, eager that there should be no more distractions from the matter for which they had gathered, rapped his hand on the table.

  ‘For whom are we waiting now?’ he asked.

  ‘Opie should be with us momentarily,’ replied Westall. ‘Though he has spent the afternoon being tamed by Mary Wollstonecraft, so it is possible he will be delayed.’

  ‘Most excellent,’ declared Farington drily. ‘Apart from that,’ he consulted his notebook, ‘we of course have Mr Provis. He informed me that he was going to see Mr Cosway just before he came here, and hopes to have him in attendance.’

  ‘And what of the daughter?’

  ‘She will not be attending this evening,’ said Farington, looking down. ‘She has gone with Mr Provis to see Mr Cosway, and then she is returning home. I worry that it was thoughtless of me to arrange this meeting at a coffee house. Obviously it is not a place for ladies who value their reputation.’

  ‘There was no need for her to take that view.’ Stothard’s disappointment blurted itself out more loudly than he had intended – he flushed and looked down.

  ‘On the contrary,’ said Farington firmly. ‘From the little I know of Miss Provis, she is a young lady of exceptional taste and dignity, and is wise to stay away. Whatever we decide, she will witness our signatures to the agreement.’

  It was not only Stothard who seemed to regret that Miss Provis was not in attendance. Sometimes disappointment can whisk its shadow across a group of people like a passing ghost. As the noise of conversation and eating clattered around them, that ghost seemed to touch all the gathered artists apart from Smirke, who signalled his amusement in a glance towards Farington. Farington, diplomatically, failed to observe it.