Luncheon of the Boating Party

by Susan Vreeland

  Raoul gave Fournaise a condescending look. “What I like about Menuet Hors d’Age is that the quality is always the same. You can depend on it.”

  “What a good definition of nothingness,” Fournaise said. “Isn’t variety one of the pleasures of life?”

  “With ladies, yes,” Raoul said with a silly grin.

  “With brandy too. You have country brandy once in a while, woody and nutty in flavor, and when you return to your expensive cognacs, they’re downright boring. You’ll see.”

  Fournaise pressed the spigot over a glass and held it aloft to show its deep copper color, then held it to Raoul’s nose. “Rich, non?”

  Raoul sniffed twice and then sipped. “Earthy.”

  “That’s the roasted sugar and spices.” He filled glasses all around.

  Auguste set his aside. The time was approaching. Anne, one of the servers, removed the plates and delivered a compote of figs and golden pears and purple grapes with burnished grape leaves still on the stems. Perfect.

  Alphonse fils came upstairs. “Where do you want me?”

  “Over here by the railing. Lean up against it. Look at Ellen.”

  Ellen raised her hand and wiggled her fingers. “Me.”

  Alphonse held out his arms awkwardly, not knowing what to do with them.

  “Put your hands on the railing.”

  Maggiolo stood up to stretch, leaned over Angèle to speak to her, and tried to take advantage of a bird’s-eye view down the front of her dress. He couldn’t see much. For all her raucous talk, Angèle was a modest dresser.

  Jules stepped back from the table at the far end with Paul and Pierre and lit his small white pipe. “All the world’s a terrace, and all the men and women merely models,” he said, obviously amusing himself. He turned to Pierre and Paul and pointed back and forth to each one. “And so, my excellent good friends, Rosencrantz and gentle Guildenstern, or is it Guildenstern and gentle Rosencrantz? Let us pose with panache.”

  Pierre chuckled, got in one last gulp of wine and one good scratch of his beard, and then stood still. Gustave lit a cigarette. Raoul stood next to Alphonsine who was bending forward with her elbow on the railing. It was a natural pose for her, but standing so long might be hard on Raoul’s leg.

  “Raoul, please, sit.”

  Veronese situated his figures symmetrically at a U-shaped table in The Marriage Feast at Cana. Today, the models themselves made an asymmetrical U around an array of bottles, glasses, a heel of bread, the fruit compote, Angèle’s heaped-up napkin. A still life worthy of Cézanne. The composition was close to perfect, but close wouldn’t do.

  “Stop, please. Don’t move.”

  He almost wished he didn’t have to stop them, they were so joyful.

  “Silence,” Alphonse boomed.

  Was he impatient to get back to the boats already?

  It was the moment.

  “Do—not—move,” Auguste said.

  “But I’m looking down at my plate,” Cécile-Louise whined. “Can’t I—”

  “Look at Antonio. No, at Gustave.”

  “Can’t I look at you? You know how I hate profiles.”

  She gazed at him so adoringly, making a purring sound, that he agreed just so he could start.

  He liked the way Angèle was leaning toward Gustave, as if she were flirting, which she was, always was, with everybody, young or old, rich or poor, just for the pleasure of it.

  “Angèle, drape your arm over the back of Antonio’s empty chair. Good. Now, Antonio, slide your hand down so that it almost touches hers.”

  Auguste stepped into his picture and tipped Angèle’s head more to the side and adjusted her white velvet toque. He lifted her chin and felt the bone under the skin. Touching the hollow behind it seemed an intimate thing. He stroked her neck.

  “You said I wouldn’t have to pose like a drunkard,” Ellen said into her wine glass tipped up to her lips.

  “You aren’t. It’s a coquettish gesture, ignoring a man gazing at you,” Auguste said.

  “Degas made me look lonely.”

  “You don’t look lonely in the least,” Gustave said. “Émile is adoring you.”

  “In that painting, Degas was presenting modern life as he saw it, being alone in a city of strangers,” Auguste said. “I have a different view, conviviality, so you don’t need to worry.”

  “Can you see my face?”

  “Yes. Through the glass. Sparkling.”

  A challenge to paint. He wasn’t sure if any painter had attempted it since Vermeer. Was he a fool to try?

  “My mother’s going to have a fit.”

  “Stop complaining, dollface,” Angèle said without moving. “Think of the rest of us, sitting here parched and dry all afternoon, dying while wine is untouchable right in front of us, and you can sneak little sips.”

  Gustave was sitting too formally considering his sleeveless singlet. “Gustave, turn your chair around, please.”

  Gustave straddled it and leaned back. It would be a torturous position to hold without a back support. He wouldn’t ask anyone else to do it, but Gustave knew instinctively what leaning back would convey, an instant of movement in time, an Impressionist ideal. God love him for offering that pose.

  “Good. Hold on to the chair to help you.”

  Gustave pushed back his flat-topped canotier rakishly and held on.

  “Perfect.”

  “Auguste,” Cécile-Louise said. “Pardon me, but looking this way at you, I can’t see anybody else.”

  “Then turn to Gustave like I asked you to.” He positioned her elbow on the table closer to her body so it would be a better support. He drew his hand over her wrist hinged by thin bones, and stretched out her fingers, one by one, which made her look up at him and bat her eyes. He turned her chin toward Gustave, but she turned back to face him. Did she even know what she wanted?

  Behind her, Alphonsine watched this little interplay with a look of amusement or judgment, he didn’t know which. Alphonsine, the Mona Lisa of the Maison Fournaise. He stepped toward her and stroked her forearm in order to connect with her. The pads of his fingers tingled as they passed over the downy hair. The minute movement of her mouth told him she enjoyed it.

  Moving among them to make slight adjustments was an exquisite pleasure. By God, those jurists would stand in line to walk around in this painting, touch the women’s cheeks, and sit down to join the party for a brandy. He would paint so prettily the pleasures and beauties of this age that the painting would topple the stodgy bastion that sat under that dark, gold-ribbed dome.

  Light bathed the models and the table with warmth and brilliance. He admired each one, and had to blink back his joy so it wouldn’t spill over. Alphonsine blinked too. She knew.

  “I’ll say one thing, and then let’s be quiet for a while.” He paused to swallow. “You’re all beautiful. Thank you.”

  “I have the urge—” Cécile-Louise said.

  “Here I am,” Pierre said, flinging his arms wide.

  “To go to the toilet.”

  Angèle rolled her eyes. “Squeeze it, princess, just like you know how to do. I’m sure you’re an expert.”

  People laughed, which changed the angle of some heads. That was all right for now. He didn’t need to be precise until a later sitting. But then what? How could he keep them all still? What had he gotten himself into? Some glorious insanity? The number of people was unmanageable. How could he expect them to be quiet, patient, cooperative, and immobile, when people come out to the river to be just the opposite?

  He nodded to Fournaise. Together they wheeled out the easel and clamped on the canvas, nearly two meters wide. Jules whistled at its size.

  “Why did you need one so blasted big?” Père Fournaise asked.

  “Because he thinks big,” Paul said.

  “Because it’s going to make a big splash at the Salon,” Auguste said. “Because it’s going to put to shame those monumental dead history paintings by Meissonier because this one will be liv
e history, history in the making. What happens right here every Sunday on your terrace.”

  He tried out several angles for the easel, settling on an orientation in line with the table edges. He chalked the position on the floor, and the positions of those standing as well.

  Alphonse was having a hard time not turning to look whenever he heard a boat bumping the dock, but soon the talking and shifting of feet stopped. Auguste could feel a recognition descending on them, the enormity of the project, the length of time it would take, the effort it would demand from all of them. Shouts of boaters across the water and an outburst of laughter from the arbor below rattled him. The models were surrounded by people who had no task before them except enjoyment of the day. What was he asking?

  He didn’t know where to put his palette and Bazille’s color box.

  “Papa, bring my bedside table,” Alphonsine said.

  Fournaise pulled back his chin at being commanded by his daughter in public, but hurried off and came back with a table of just the right height.

  Auguste opened the packet that Fionie Tanguy had wrapped and arranged the tubes by color. There, unmistakably, was Prussian blue, so strong in its effect it only came in very small tubes. It astonished him, seeing it there in his palm. Fionie, the sly Xantippe of Montmartre.

  “What’s wrong?” Père Fournaise asked.

  He cleared his throat. “Nothing. Everything is right.”

  He squeezed out paint onto the palette, small, lovely dollops shining in the sun. The shock of pure color worming out of the tubes made him feel flushed. He placed the lightest at the thumbhole and progressed to the darks around the perimeter of the rectangle. Very small amounts. To waste some at the end of the day would be a sin against Tanguy’s good will. The position of his arm in the cast did not allow him to hold the palette flat. Linseed oil would spill out from the tin cup attached. He’d have to use it from the table, an awkward movement to reach across his cast.

  “Can you move this to my left?”

  “Certainly, my friend.” Fournaise jumped to move the table. “May I stay here to watch the first stroke? This painting will make my restaurant famous.”

  Auguste nodded. “Time will tell.” His arms, legs, chest all felt tight, as though his veins suddenly had twice as much blood to pump.

  He bent the hog’s hair of his new broad flat to break the sizing and tried out the balance of it. Where to make the first stroke? How large to make the three foreground figures—Alphonse, Cécile, and Gustave? How small the grouping in back—Jules, Pierre, Paul? It was better not to think. Let instinct take over. Still, a dozen figures and no sketches to go by. No certainty that he had them positioned in the best way. No word from Charles or Jeanne. Should he leave space for them? Alphonse had to get back to the dock. The light might change. A dozen people waited for him to make the first stroke. People good enough to give up their Sundays for him.

  The blossomy, weedy smell of the oil, the solidity of the paint on the palette giving way to plasticity with his brand-new brush as tight and springy as a virgin, as lively as a whore. His pulse raced as though he were a raw novice.

  All were silent, all still. He breathed.

  Start.

  He slashed a diagonal for the railing with the palest, most watery ultramarine and rose madder diluted with linseed and turpentine. An upward stroke. Awkward with his left hand.

  “Bravo!” Fournaise shouted, and ducked downstairs. No one laughed.

  He laid down the awning supports, as transparent as watercolors in case he didn’t want them later. For now, they were good guidelines. He took a clean brush for the lightest areas, the front table edge. He couldn’t have the railing running parallel to the retreating table edge and achieve the foreshortened plunge. He’d have to fudge. There was nothing wrong with irregularity. Working foreground to background and left to right as usual felt awkward with his left hand. He set the lightest values, the sunlight on Alphonse’s back, Raoul’s shirt collar, Gustave’s singlet at his shoulder. Hm, an interesting gesture stroke. He wouldn’t have done that with his right hand.

  He worked in a mite of chrome yellow for a creamier white across Alphonsine’s back. She must be luxuriating in the sun’s warmth along her spine, enjoying it like a cat. She was catlike. Adorable. The same tint on Maggiolo’s jacket, Angèle’s hat. Positioning the straw hats with pure chrome yellow but still transparent. Pure joy to touch down here and there.

  “My elbow’s tingling,” Cécile-Louise said.

  His normal method of working on all parts of a painting simultaneously would try their patience, but he needed to set the positions and values over the whole canvas in this session. For Moulin he’d worked up two studies first. He had nothing to go by here except what was before his eyes. He’d like to see Zola try this!

  “You don’t need to hold your positions stiffly if you need to move. Just stay more or less in place. When I want to make sure of something, I’ll ask you individually to hold the pose.”

  He picked up vermilion and a pinch of ultramarine to tone it down, mixing them on the canvas for the chairs and Alphonse’s beard, adding a tinge of Veronese green for Jules’s jacket, just flecks to build color harmonies. The browns, a trace of rose madder for Pierre’s curly reddish beard, like a poodle’s coat, Raoul’s jacket and bowler, so juicy it ran. The sheer magic of alchemy took his breath away, as if he’d never seen or performed it before.

  Back to his cool tone brush with ultramarine for Cécile’s torso, Alphonsine’s skirt, Angèle’s bodice and sleeve, Ellen’s left shoulder, the grapes, the wine. Mere gesture strokes. No more than gauzy suggestions for a later time when he’d mix opaque blues on the canvas to create the shapes. Darker, but still transparent, that triangle of Gustave’s pant leg, Pierre’s bowler, Antonio’s cravat. Oh, he was loving this. His arm moved as if in a dream.

  “My elbow’s gone to sleep,” Cécile-Louise said. “How can a part of you go to sleep and the rest stay awake? Do we tingle like this when all parts of us are asleep only we don’t notice?”

  “A little longer, s’il vous plaît.”

  He wiped his light brush clean for the skin tones. Keep it going. No shapes, just dabs with the edge of his brush. The lightest first, Cécile’s, like ivory. Adding pale soft yellow for the brightest area of Angèle’s throat. Adding rose madder for Émile, more for Ellen and Pierre. Gustave, Angèle, and Paul still wore the sun on their cheeks from a morning on the river. Alphonse’s cheek and temple too. More tawny for the Italian. Eventually an infinitude of hues depending on what surrounded the face or arm or hand. No two places alike.

  The vanishing point. Upper right. Right about here.

  He added white to Veronese green and ultramarine, pale and watery, and flicked on suggestions of the foliage, but stopped. They were left-handed strokes, curved the wrong way. How much of this would be wrong when he could paint right-handed again?

  He heard footsteps on the stairs. Alphonsine’s expression changed. He turned to look.

  Jeanne!

  CHAPTER NINE

  Models, Friends, Lovers

  Jeanne.

  Her glittering, triumphant green eyes met his. If you have any feeling left for me, if only the fond remembrance of things past, come. She came. Wearing the hat he had drawn, with a chestnut curl dropping over her forehead. My little quail, he used to call her when she wore her hair like that.

  He said with his eyes, Je t’adore. With his mouth he said, “Thank you for coming.” The tic in his cheek went wild.

  In an instant he turned to ice. Thirteen. She was a blessing and a curse. This was more serious than a bad omen. Positioning thirteen figures around a dining table spelled carelessness, not long and thoughtful preparation. Zola would be right.

  How artfully her gaze slid over any mouths that might ask why she was so late. Her presence commanded, as though she were onstage, and he was in her thrall, she who found she could not love unless she was immortalized on canvas as the roles she played. If he had acqu
iesced, would she be loving him tonight? He tried to send his thought to her: Can you glimpse, even for a moment, that what we do here might immortalize you as well?

  She aimed a guarded smile at him, then looked back at the stairwell.

  More footsteps. A top hat emerged, then a black frock coat, white silk cravat, and ivory-tipped walking stick. The dandy he’d seen in her dressing room. Condescension oozed from his face like grease. Auguste’s hand cramped, resisting a handshake. How dare she rub salt into the wound! A sour taste rose in his mouth. Was she insinuating that he should put his own replacement in the painting? He’d rather heave the thing in the river.

  Jeanne glided toward the far table. Pierre thrust a glass of wine in her hand. A pictorial instant. A possibility.

  Auguste went to work whitewashing the position marks for Pierre and Paul in order to move them to the right and have them face Jeanne. Paul assumed his characteristic stance bending forward to see better. My God, was he going to lick her? That left Jules leaning against the back railing alone. Now he needed Charles all the more, to fill the space, to have Jules engaged, and to be the fourteenth. Ephrussi’s top hat right there would show the group to be a mix of classes. Here was a substitute, top-hatted and tall. Her companion, lover, gigolo, whatever he was, placed his hand on her waist and smirked in his direction, claiming her for all to see.

  No, he would not use this cocksure fop. Not in the center of his painting. That would be a bad omen too. He’d hold out for Charles.

  “Ah,” Paul said, squinting at the man. “So this is the lucky Monsieur Joseph-Paul Lagarde whom Le Temps reports as frequenting the Samary house on avenue Frochot. Un habitué? Let me tell you what people are saying.”

  “Oh, no, I refuse to listen.” She covered her ears with her fingers.

  “Are you wearing a ring beneath those pert black gloves?” Pierre asked. “A ring from this gentleman, perhaps?”

  “Take them off and let us see whether we must go drown ourselves out of despair,” Paul said.

  She let loose her shrill, infectious laugh climbing up the harmonic scale. Audiences loved it, but it had always grated on his ears. She touched her gloved index finger to Paul’s nose. “Drown yourself in wine?”