Does he believe the face was painted at one sitting? He cannot say, but the face is very beautifully done, and Velázquez is reputed to have been a rapid painter. Herrmann makes a fine observation. “He was that kind of painter that he could as beautifully depict a portrait in one hour as perhaps he might have done in three or four days. His idea was immediately conveyed to the canvas.”
Herrmann is repeatedly asked to put a price on the picture and repeatedly says that Velázquez is beyond price. But in the event he comes in at £6,000. He is much focused upon the unusual combination of Spanish style and English sitter. The defense lawyers have no questions for Herrmann, who is worryingly authoritative and cannot be tarred with the Soho brush since his business is in Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury, in the irreproachable purlieus of the British Museum.
The final witness for the claimant is the eminent engraver Henry Robinson, invited by Snare to make a print of the portrait. The testimony of a man who inches his way across a painting, to imitate it as precisely as possible with a burin on copper, is particularly telling; and, like Mesnard, he is dazzled by the face. He is also certain that the portrait is by Velázquez.
Robinson would have earned a sizeable 1,000 guineas if it hadn’t been for the Old Bond Street troubles, which interrupted the commission, followed by the seizure in Edinburgh. At which point he became leery. “I understood that the picture had been taken from Mr Snare by certain parties as having been stolen; and had he offered me the engraving of it at twice the amount I would not have taken it . . . I would have required proof that it was not stolen goods before I would have gone on with such an important engraving.” A huge source of income—engravings were exceptionally popular—was thus lost to both Snare and Robinson.
Robinson made no print of the painting, and neither did anyone else. No reproduction ever existed. With the exception of those who had actually laid eyes on it, all that anyone knew of the Velázquez was expressed in words—in the recollections, and misrecollections, of fallible people, in their exaggerations, understatements and subjective emphases, in the strength or weakness of their spoken reports. And in the fragile memories and haphazard descriptions of a picture that lived only in the mind’s eye, the Velázquez was different to each and all. It was becoming a picture in words.
It now falls to the defense to argue a case based upon a grotesque contradiction. The Trustees must somehow prove that the picture they were once so determined to wrest from Snare, because it was a priceless Velázquez, they now despise. The worth of the picture correlates directly with the scale of the damages, so they must establish that it is in fact worthless. Their behavior (and their argument) is two-faced: now that they have looked twice, so to speak, they have come to realize that the portrait is nothing but rubbish.
The Trustees’ star witness is Sir John Watson Gordon, an extremely successful Edinburgh portrait painter and president of the Royal Scottish Academy. He is so grand, in fact, that the trial has had to be rearranged to accommodate his congested schedule. But Sir John has managed to view the picture that morning and is distinctly unimpressed. “The armour is tolerably well painted, and the figures in the background are skilfully introduced, but the head and hands are not like Velázquez; they have neither his decision nor his force.” He thinks it is a finished portrait, nobody else involved and no touching-up later, probably by a Flemish painter.
His fellow Academician William Bonnar is more critical. “The colouring of the hands is remarkably bad.” He believes it has been retouched. “It is laboured with great care . . . it would appear that the artist had been working at it over a very long time.” Bonnar cannot remember seeing any globe, though he too saw the portrait only that morning, and when asked to characterize the art of Velázquez comes up with three adjectives that would not be high on many people’s lists: “firm, forceful, determined.”
Has he seen many paintings by Velázquez? Yes, four in Dulwich and several at the National Gallery. He has no recollection of The Boar Hunt; in fact he can’t remember what any of these pictures showed, even though he claims to be a devotee of the Spaniard’s manner. Young is incredulous:
Q. You cannot recall whether that manner was in the depiction of a dog or a tree, let us say?
A. No I cannot.
George Harvey, historical painter and Royal Academician, is well acquainted with the works of Velázquez. He has seen them in Naples. He doesn’t think much of the Spaniard’s portraits, vastly preferring his “landscapes.” He has been to the National Gallery in London, of course he has, but he can’t recall any works there by the Spaniard except for a close-up head of the old general. Young points out that this is by Van Dyck. No further questions.
An Edinburgh dealer, John Donaldson, then argues that the background is by a Dutchman, but the canvas is English, which he cannot quite explain. The face is too red for the ashen Charles. The drapery is the best thing in it. It turns out that Donaldson can’t remember what else is in the painting—possibly a field; certainly no globe. It has been barely four hours since he stood in front of the portrait.
William Donaldson, partner of the aforementioned John, thinks the picture was made in the eighteenth century. His reasons? The colors. He mockingly values the frame almost as highly as the picture: £25 with, £15 without.
Lastly, Charles Galli, an optician-turned-dealer, gives his opinion that the painting may be a copy of a Van Dyck, or perhaps a copy of a print by Van Dyck or some painter of the sixteenth century. Sandford asks his opinion of the value. “No idea, but I do not want it!”
The painting is finished; it is not. It is Velázquez; it is not. It is Charles; it may not be him at all. It is Spanish, Flemish, Dutch or English, or English with a touch of Flemish. It is sixteenth, seventeenth or even eighteenth century. The face is done once only in a virtuoso performance; no, the face is labored with great care, perhaps retouched by more than one hand. The experts eventually begin to wonder whether Velázquez was really any good at all. He may have had force and breadth, sneers William Bonnar, but he was incapable of making anything up.
Just as the London dealers and the Edinburgh advocates do not understand each other, so there is a gulf between the lawyers and the painters. Is the picture finished? Is the face sketchy? Is the painting “solid” or is it not? What should it look like? All these questions are of course peculiarly relevant to the art of Velázquez, but the painters are so various in their replies that the lawyers become exasperated. How are they to trust these experts who can’t come up with any useful words for Velázquez and don’t even seem to be using their eyes?
• • •
The paradox of the trial is that both sides need the picture to have belonged to the 2nd Earl, but one side has to show it belonged to the earl and is valuable, while the other has to show it belonged to the earl and is worthless. The only way to do this is to focus upon that most volatile and subjective of issues: personal reactions to the painting itself.
By deriding the picture, the Trustees seek to minimize their exposure to damages. But they still have to prove that the painting really did once belong to the 2nd Earl, otherwise they are guilty of wrongful seizure. And here they run into two difficulties. The first is that this insistence upon Fife’s proud ownership of the Velázquez is hardly compatible with decrying it as Flemish, or English, or copied or “a miserable daub.” The second is that the sole witness to its being in Fife House is now dead.
Mr. Forteath, sometime factor to the 2nd Earl, has only recently departed this life. But the Trustees believe they have overcome this apparently insuperable problem. Forteath is able to speak from beyond the grave through his son-in-law, and the doctor who attended him, to the effect that this picture definitely belonged to the 2nd Earl and was in Fife House at the time of his death.
It seems that Forteath was brought down to Edinburgh especially by the Trustees to examine the painting at Tait’s Hotel in 1849. It was forty years since he had last been in Fife House, but he noticed a special mark on the
canvas by which he thought he could identify the picture—not by the actual image itself, one notes. What was this mark? As a perfect climax to some almost comically incompetent testimony, the doctor says that they really have no idea, except that it wasn’t a brushmark.
• • •
As the trial proceeds, the lawyers are progressively grander for each side. It now falls to a very senior advocate, Sir George Deas, solicitor-general of Scotland, to present a closing argument on behalf of the Trustees. He opens with haughty disgust at the very suggestion that any of the earls—still less the spotless Trustees—might have flogged the picture to some London upholsterer. Perhaps it has taken rather a long time for the Trustees to notice that the picture was missing, but they are busy men who do not make it their business to count the pictures, any more than the teaspoons. As for their slowness to respond to the painting’s reappearance in London, and then Edinburgh, well, they do not trouble themselves with newspaper reports, even those in The Times, still less the screeds of a self-publishing printer.
Deas sneers at the tradesman’s ridiculous claim that he has a Velázquez in this daub, apparently without noticing that he is thereby damning the 2nd Earl as well. “Snare had a hobby for old portraits and pictures, and on purchasing this picture, he thought he had got the ‘Long Lost Velázquez,’ and he set off, riding on this hobby of his, between that period and this; and I am not surprised that, from the whole of his time being taken up with this hobby, he had ridden it to death; and I am not surprised at the result which has occurred, the ruin of his business.” What Deas blatantly sidesteps is the damage the Trustees inflicted on the reputation of the painting and the bookseller, quite apart from the collapse of the tour—the effect of disgrace on the Minster Street business.
The outrageous idea of sending West to Mr. Souter with a ticket to see what is effectively the Fife Trustees’ own painting appalls Deas—“well, I have heard of men putting their heads into the lion’s mouth and I can compare Snare’s conduct in this to nothing else.” As for the warrant, “My learned friend gave you an account of the seizure of the picture, and he did lay on the colouring with as free a hand, and as broad a brush as”—wait for it—“Velázquez himself!” The Trustees were entitled to repossess the painting, since they had Snare’s own evidence that it belonged to them. Deas concludes with a description of the picture from the book that he now flourishes triumphantly at the Edinburgh jury: The History and Pedigree of the Portrait of Prince Charles by Mr. John Snare!
• • •
The last word goes to John Inglis QC, future lord justice general of Scotland, the most senior lawyer in the land. He makes the closing argument for Snare and appeals directly to the common sense of the jury.
“What is the history of this matter, gentlemen? It is simple. Mr Snare comes from the other side of the Tweed, a foreigner in a foreign land and meets with this treatment at the hands of Scotch noblemen. The picture is torn down from the wall, and carried away through the streets and succeeded by petition after petition. I shall be surprised if you can recollect any instance of such an accumulation of oppressive legal proceedings by the trustees of an Earl against a humble tradesman.”
As for the picture’s history, the witnesses with the longest memories contradict each other directly. Jacob Wilson says he saw it in Marshall’s drawing room in 1804; Forteath says it was always in Whitehall. Not that he left any statement.
“It is a most remarkable circumstance, if true, that he was the only human being that could speak to the fact of that picture having been in the Earl’s house at the time of his death; and yet this man was allowed to go down to his grave without his deposition being taken. Is there no man alive,” Inglis asks, “who could speak to that picture being in Fife House?”
The Trustees never stir themselves to show that the painting was ever stolen, because they simply do not know that it was. Inglis takes General Sir Alexander Duff’s strange behavior as evidence.
“The General says ‘it is a very fine picture, but it is all humbug—Snare had better keep quiet.’ This is mysterious enough, and might puzzle the most acute critic. But I find one fact here—worth a whole apparatus criticus, for the mere purpose of discovering Sir Alexander’s meaning—Snare says, I have got the Velázquez that once belonged to the Earl of Fife, tell me all about it. One would think that the first thing Sir Alexander would do, if it were a stolen picture, would be to send for a policeman. He does not even warn Snare that he is dealing in stolen goods.”
The evidence of each witness turns the case like a kaleidoscope. Perhaps the 2nd Earl sold the picture to Marshall, in which case how can it be in his 1807 catalogue; indeed, why would he ever sell the pride of his collection? And if the dead Forteath is right and the picture was with his employer until his death in 1809, how then did it vanish? Is it possible that another Fife disposed of it? Perhaps General Duff knew the picture had been sold and wanted Snare to stop rummaging through the family business. Perhaps he had sold or surreptitiously abstracted it himself, without consulting the Trustees, to pay off his debts in London?
But then again, what if the Velázquez never left the earl’s collection and everyone is as confused about the painting as they are about the painter. Perhaps poor Snare—terrible thought, given his passionate faith—has a different picture altogether? He needs the earl’s belief in the painting to strengthen his own, otherwise the evidence weighs entirely upon his own humble opinion. But at least he now has the comfort of knowing two things for sure: that Forteath also believed the picture was in Fife House, and that even the experts cannot begin to agree on what is, or is not, a Velázquez.
“We had some gentlemen examined,” says Inglis, “of whose perfect respectability, and whose good taste, it would be presumptuous to say anything derogatory. I do not think that Mr Bonnar’s evidence is quite so intelligent as that of Sir John Watson Gordon; and I think some of them never saw a Velázquez till they saw mine. But take Sir John Watson Gordon. I do not think that he puts you in a position to find against our case. Do you think that this great strife could have been raging for years if there had been no doubt about the authenticity of this picture? While you put one set of gentlemen in the witness-box who tell you it is not a Velázquez, you will find others who give their evidence, as clearly and decidedly that it is.
“But gentlemen, fortunately this is not one of those cases in which the disagreeable duty is cast upon the jury of deciding on conflicting evidence. So long as any important section of the world of the fine arts speak of the picture as being a genuine Velázquez, so long will it continue to be a valuable acquisition for exhibition or for sale. There is a romance too attending this picture, the mystery of its origin, the peculiar history with which it is connected, the manner in which it found its way into the Fife Gallery, and the manner in which it found its way out, all these throw around this picture a certain charm . . . But be the picture better or worse, good or bad, it can make no difference to the case of the Trustees. If the subject is worthless, so much the more malignant and unjustifiable have been their proceedings.
“The Trustees say that the value of the picture is greatly enhanced by the defenders’ proceedings, that these prove, beyond doubt, the fact of the picture having been in the gallery of their predecessor, thirty-eight years before. Is this, then, the Velázquez? Is this the picture described in the Earl of Fife’s catalogue, painted by the greatest of all Spanish masters or is it not? In the defences to this action we are told that it is, and that these proceedings have proved it. Why, then, have the Trustees themselves been at such pains to prove that it is not the picture? One of their witnesses said ‘it is a miserable daub, and no more a Velázquez than I am.’ It is worth no more than £15, says Galli the picture dealer. What do these Trustees mean? They blow hot and cold alternately. But I take them at their word. Let it be that it is a delusion of the fifty-one periodicals that supported Mr Snare; let it be that the painters and picture-dealers in London are all wrong; that James Earl o
f Fife was a mooning idiot; and his Trustees out of their senses when struggling for the possession of such a piece of trash. What is the result? What do you think of the conduct of parties who, for a picture they try to prove not worth £15 would subject Snare to such persecution as they have done? How will they answer now for bearing down on this poor man with an unprecedented mass of oppressive litigation, and ultimately driving him into a state of insolvency, if the price for which they sacrificed Snare’s credit, and their own reputation, was a daub, worth no more than £15?
“I do not care,” continues Inglis, with remarkable daring, given the terrible tightness of Edinburgh’s professional circles, “I do not care for all the witnesses they have in the box. The main ground of damage is the injury done to Snare in his credit and reputation, and it is for this clear injury that I ask your verdict.”
• • •
The jury was out for less than half an hour. It found unanimously in favor of Snare, who was immediately awarded £1,000 in damages. But if he had ever been at the Edinburgh trial—and there is not the slightest hint of his presence in the court, or anywhere else in the city—the claimant was no longer there. John Snare had vanished.
12
The Escape
WE LOOK AT the world, wondering if we see what our forebears saw in the unreachable past, whether the colors remain the same, whether anything looks exactly as it once did beyond the trees, the clouds and the seas, whether anything of our world is just as they saw it.
In Madrid, nothing remains of the Alcázar where Velázquez lived and worked through his whole adult life, and very little is left of the Buen Retiro. There is a ballroom and one staircase, and the walls of the Hall of Realms where his huge equestrian portraits of the Hapsburgs, young and old, once hung. Everything else was destroyed by French troops occupying the building as a barracks during the Peninsular War. What survives of this palace life, this self-contained society, is in Velázquez’s paintings.
The Vanishing Velázquez Page 15