Page 11
Story: The Lost Masterpiece
SEVEN
C ornélie’s Tuesday soiree is in full swing, and conversation explodes throughout the drawing room.
How to respond to Emperor Napoleon III’s refusal to consider the republican demands for more democracy?
Are Emile Zola’s novels, portraying the harsh social conditions of the poor, appropriate to be read and discussed in polite society?
What to do about the increasing crime in Paris?
And then, as always, the Salon. Everyone has an opinion on everything.
From the noise level, it appears to Berthe that most of these views are in opposition to each other.
Manet crosses the room to her. “I have a proposition for you,” he says without prelude.
Berthe, as always, is startled at the power of his presence, by the way the heat of his body heats her own. A proposition? “This sounds dangerous.” She strains to keep her voice even.
“Only a little.” His smile is wide, irresistible.
“I have an idea for a painting. A balcony with three people standing and one sitting in the sunshine, a dim, recessed background behind them. A genre painting, like Goya’s Majas on a Balcony or Whistler’s Symphony in White , but this one will be mine, of our time, of our style, the present moment.
Two men, two women, the seated women deep and wistful, mysterious. What do you think?”
This can’t be categorized as a proposition, or not the sort Berthe imagined, and she’s first disappointed and then reassured. “It’s all in the execution, as you well know.”
“I saw the balcony scene on holiday and immediately envisaged the completed painting.”
Berthe touches his shoulder, her fingers lingering on the sleeve of his jacket. “This has happened to me too. Not often, but when it does, isn’t it magical?”
Their eyes connect for longer than her mother would consider appropriate, and he says, “We have much in common. As we spend more time together, which I truly hope we will do, I suspect we’ll discover these commonalities will only expand.”
An inexplicable but pleasurable warmth spreads outward from the center of her body. She moves a tad away from him, smooths her skirt.
“I’m planning to ask the painter Antoine Guillemet to be one of the male figures, and my godson Léon to be the other,” he tells her.
Berthe nods. Guillemet has a distinguished bearing, and Léon is one of édouard’s regular models. “Who are the women?”
“I believe you have met Fanny Claus, the violinist at the Saint Cecilia Quartet. The young woman with the extremely round face?” His eyes twinkle mischievously. “A striking contrast to your own.”
Confused, Berthe asks, “To mine?” But as soon as the words leave her lips, she understands where this conversation has been heading all along. Since the afternoon they were painting on the riverbank.
Manet bows. “Would you do me the honor of posing for me? It was you I saw sitting at the front of the composition, leaning against the edge of the balcony and pensively observing the street below.”
As nice as it would be to watch him work, to be with him for the many sittings necessary, she must refuse. For unless it were for a privately commissioned portrait, it is unacceptable for her to be an artist’s model. “You know as well as I do that my mother will never allow it.”
“Because of Victorine? Luncheon on the Grass ? All of that is in the past, and, of course, you would be fully clothed. And I daresay your mother seems quite comfortable, even happy, in her role as chaperone.”
“This is an entirely different situation. I wouldn’t be in your studio as a painter or as part of a group of artists working together.
” Almost all Parisian models are of lower social standing, many toiling as washerwomen or prostitutes, and the supposition that they are also the artists’ mistresses would raise questions of her virtue.
Something with which Cornélie is acutely concerned, and she supposes she is too.
“Perhaps I can approach my mother, who, if she’s willing, can approach your mother…”
Berthe is frustrated by his obliviousness, his inability to see the world from eyes other than his own. Just like his friend Degas. “I very much doubt this will be successful.”
“You may be correct, but I am going to try anyway.”
A WEEK LATER, Berthe stands in Manet’s studio along with Guillemet, Fanny, and Léon, ready to pose for The Balcony .
The two mothers are perched in their customary seats.
Berthe isn’t privy to the details surrounding this feat, but charming men do have a way of getting what they desire.
Which, if she’s wise, she will remember in her future dealings with édouard Manet.
He mutters to himself while fussing with their arrangement, a pencil behind his ear, then positions a chair in front of one of the few darkened areas of the room and orders Berthe to sit.
“Not like that,” he says. “Turn to your right.” When she does, he frowns at her as if she’s an exasperating child.
“Your upper body to the right, not the rest of you!”
Berthe throws a glance at the older women, hoping Cornélie or Antoinette will tell him to mind his manners.
But they are engrossed in their conversation, and neither is aware of anything else.
There will be no help coming from that quarter.
Berthe had hoped modeling for Manet would be an opportunity for them to get to know each other better, but if he’s going to be this high and mighty, concerned with nothing beyond himself and his painting, she wonders if this whole adventure is a mistake.
He starts barking at Fanny. “Stand to her left, arms down at your sides.” He grabs an umbrella from a corner and thrusts it at her. “Hold this. No, not that way, like you would hold a baby. Arms crossed over your chest.” Fanny doesn’t appear any happier with édouard’s behavior than Berthe is.
He treats Guillemet just as poorly, commanding him to one side of Fanny, then to the other, closer to Berthe, then farther away.
Manet positions Léon behind all of them, almost completely obscured.
Then he glares at the tableau, rearranges them, puts them back the way they were.
“Where’s the damn dog?” he bellows to no one.
Antoinette snaps her head around. “édouard!” she cries. “There are ladies present, including your mother. Your language is disgraceful. You bring shame to me and your family.”
His shoulders droop under his mother’s rebuke. “Sorry, Maman,” he says sheepishly.
Berthe is amused by this show of filial contrition, and sees that Cornélie is also. Her mother, who has clearly sensed Berthe’s interest in Manet, is more aware of what’s happening in the studio than she appears to be. Another thing Berthe would be wise to remember.
Manet glances at the others, bows slightly. “Apologies, Madame Morisot, Berthe, Fanny. I meant no disrespect.” He picks up the dog, who was sleeping under a table to his left, and places her at Berthe’s feet.
He drops a blank canvas on his easel and resettles the group a few more times but speaks in a more modulated voice.
At one point, he places an empty easel facing backward in front of Berthe.
“This will stand in for the balcony’s upper railing,” he explains.
“Rest your right arm on the canvas ledge here, as if it were the horizontal bar on the top.” Still an order, but in a less insufferable tone.
Then he leans down and whispers in her ear, “Mothers. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. ”
She’s amazed he would curse in front of her again, which is highly provocative, even disrespectful. And yet she feels included in his joke, a joke he would normally only share with another man, a confession of his feigned act of repentance.
Two hours later, Manet is growing more and more unhappy and marches them all out of the studio and over to his mother’s house to attempt a more realistic composition on her balcony.
After more hours of posing them in the spitting rain and chilly air, he returns from the street soaked through but seemingly satisfied with his efforts.
No one else is, though. He’s reverted to his earlier high-handedness, and Berthe grumbles about this with the others when he allows them back into the house at last.
Guillemet is particularly irate. “I am a painter, and I would never treat my models in this manner. I will speak to him about this, and if he’s not willing to listen, he will have to find someone to replace me.”
Léon is less strident, but also annoyed. “This is his way when he’s painting, but I don’t think he means to be insulting. I would speak to Suzanne, but my sister has little sway with him. Perhaps after you talk to him, Monsieur Guillemet, I can add a word of my own.”
“I will tell him my mind,” Berthe adds. “This is reprehensible behavior, and I will not stand for it either. If he isn’t willing to change his ways, I suggest we all mutiny.”
Fanny says nothing, not even goodbye. She just puts on her coat and slips out the door. The three of them stare after her.
THE NEXT TIME Manet gathers them at his studio, he’s in one of his expansive moods, exuberantly circling the large rooms, throwing his arms in the air and singing his favorite song from the operetta La Belle Hélène , “Au Mont Ida,” in his off-key baritone.
He stops at his canvas and cries, “This painting is going to be a masterpiece! I know it. I can feel it!”
Berthe clears her throat, struggling not to succumb to his infectious enthusiasm. “We have something to discuss with you,” she says, as they had agreed she would, based on Guillemet’s certainty that she’s the one who has the best chance of influencing him.
“Of course, my dark-haired beauty.” He bows deeply, oblivious to the coldness emanating from the models. “Discuss away.”
“This is serious,” she continues. “If you don’t hear us out, your masterpiece will never come to fruition.”
He scans the four somber faces. “Why would that be?”
Table of Contents
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