Page 9

SIX

I n the most unlikely of circumstances, it’s Manet’s mother, Antoinette, who comes to Berthe’s rescue.

Cornélie expected her friend to react negatively to Berthe joining Manet’s “bande,” but Antoinette embraces the idea, suggesting she and Cornélie chaperone together, drinking tea, eating pastries, and gossiping to their hearts’ delight while neglecting the management of their households to ensure Berthe’s honor.

Even before dates can be arranged, Berthe returns to her studio, which is in a small, sun-filled edifice across from their house’s private garden.

A studio she used to share with Edma, but now is, sadly, hers alone.

Their father had it built for them, finally bending to his wife’s entreaties to keep the girls at home and away from the possibility of coming in contact with undesirable men.

Berthe finds herself doing little more than shuffling through finished and half-finished canvases, rearranging paints and pastels, cleaning brushes, all the while missing Edma.

Manet’s proposition initially gave her confidence in her abilities and talent, but now as she contemplates her next piece, she’s overwhelmed by familiar insecurities.

How could she have boasted to her mother that she was as good an artist as Manet? As Degas and Renoir? What madness.

Manet is a notorious womanizer, and she has little doubt he harbors an interest in her that has nothing to do with her painting skills.

Could his invitation be an attempt at seduction, rather than an appreciation of the contribution she might bring to the group?

Heat rises to her cheeks at the thought of being seduced by a man as exciting and brilliant as he, so different from the bland suitors her mother is always thrusting upon her.

She allows herself a few seconds to contemplate the softness of his full lips on hers, their life together after he leaves Suzanne.

Then she rips herself from this flight of fancy. She is, indeed, mad.

She grabs a blank canvas and props it on an empty easel.

She has to prepare a number of paintings she won’t be ashamed to share with the bande.

But her imagination fails her, and she scours the room for inspiration.

Through the mullioned window, a riot of peonies raise their heads to the sky.

A rather mundane and undistinguished subject, but she’ll make it her own. Or at least try.

After fetching a vase from the dining room, Berthe cuts a half dozen flowers and plays with them in the glass vessel half filled with water.

A single peony or many? Three, she decides, and places the vase under plentiful sunlight.

A few petals fall on the table, and she brushes them to the floor.

She begins a series of pencil drawings in a sketchbook, lightly drafting the outlines of the composition she envisions.

The table slightly tilted, the vase a bit off-center.

She likes asymmetry, values the way it creates a sense of movement where there is none.

The peonies are a muted pink and need a contrasting background.

She takes a blue pastel stick, then a purple, making a series of drawings on many pages.

Using the long side of the sticks, she sweeps strokes of color that jaggedly outline the pencil drawing, loose and unfinished.

Too dark around the edges of the leaves.

A paler purple, a touch of yellow. She uses her fingers to blend the pastels, careful not to allow the blue and yellow to bleed into a green too similar to the flowers’ stems. The vase is left white for now, the table a deep brown.

Berthe walks across the room a number of times, returns to stare intensely at the flowers and vase, then just as intensely at the sketches.

She stands at her easel and begins. But transferred to canvas, the painting is too quiet, tiresome.

She snatches up a brown pastel and zigzags it along the front edge of the table, tapering off before the table does, injecting a disconcerting element into the picture.

Her hair falls to her forehead, and she pushes the curls back, too absorbed to notice she’s streaking her face with yellow and purple.

It’s not until the sunlight on the peonies fades that she realizes the day is easing into evening.

She hasn’t worked this hard or for this long in months, and she starts to call out to Edma to come see what’s she done.

She needs her sister to advise her, to suggest ways to make the painting better, as they have always done for each other.

But then she remembers that Edma is not there and all she can do is sit in a chair, rub her shoulders and lower back, try to imagine what Edma would have said.

It’s bad, lifeless. M. Corot taught her that light is the heart and soul of painting, that she must witness it closely, immerse herself in it, play with it, tame it to her purpose.

He was much impressed with her skills, lightheartedly warning Maman that his teaching would make Berthe a painter, not an amateur copyist. While another type of mother might have seen this as a possible catastrophe for her daughter, Cornélie had encouraged him to do that very thing.

A decision Maman now obviously regrets, although Berthe is forever indebted to her for it. Corot taught her to see.

He instructed her to study how light falls, how it skips and reflects, how it defines every surface in a singular way, each petal and leaf, each aspect of each petal and leaf.

And she’s failed to do any of this here.

She should destroy the painting, as she has done with so many of her other inadequate attempts, but she’s too exhausted to make the effort.

She leaves it where it is and returns to the house.

THE FOLLOWING WEEK, Degas comes to Cornélie’s soiree and corners Berthe. “I understand from your mother that you’ve started painting again. You must let me to see what you’ve accomplished.”

“What I’ve accomplished is not worthy of being seen.”

“My dear Berthe, this is what you always say about your work, and it’s never true.”

“And that isn’t true. You have seen many of my failures, labeled a number of my attempts as ‘rehearsals,’ if I remember correctly.”

Degas laughs delightedly. “But that was long ago, and now you’ve moved far beyond rehearsals. I demand you take me into your studio and show me what you have done!”

“Some other time, Edgar. I assure you I’m making the correct assessment in this case.”

“I do not accept that.” He points to the door that opens into the garden. “Lead the way!”

Antoinette Manet overhears their conversation, and, like her friend Cornélie, she must speak to the subject, even if it does not involve her.

“Oh, do go with him, Berthe. Once you are part of édouard’s bande and are painting in his studio, we will all be seeing your works in progress.

” She waves both her hands at them. “Shoo, shoo. I will keep a watch on you. Just leave the doors to the garden and the studio open, and let Monsieur Degas feast his eyes on the wondrous paintings I am sure you have created.”

Berthe has no choice but to do as commanded. Antoinette, also like Maman, is not one to be refused. Yet Berthe bristles at the indignity of once again being treated like a child, especially by a woman who is not a relative.

Degas follows her out the door with a smirk on his face. “She is a bossy old sort, even if this time it suits my purposes.”

“Why don’t we sit for a moment in the garden?” Berthe proposes, hoping to stall and possibly dissuade him. “I want to hear your latest thinking about the Salon.”

Degas’s smirk transforms into a grin. “Directness is one of your qualities I’m most fond of, and your attempts at misdirection don’t serve you well, as you do not know how to be anything but transparent.

I daresay you need to take note of the more coquettish in our circle and learn how to get a man to do your bidding. ”

“And you are all too pleased with yourself, Monsieur, which does not serve you well,” she counters. “In addition, you sound like my mother. And Madame Manet.”

“Anything but that.” He raises his hands in mock horror. “Please, anything but that.”

“You must admit you are a bit of a busybody.”

“And that is one of my many charms.” He pulls open the door of her studio, bows, and ushers her inside, leaving it open as Antoinette ordered. Then he strides toward the canvas of the peonies.

Berthe shifts uneasily as he silently scrutinizes the painting.

It’s not ready to be looked at this carefully.

It’s a dull subject painted dully, the main flower falling awkwardly forward.

A woman’s painting, and a poor one at that.

She was going to destroy it, but she had a dream Edma told her not to, so she reworked the original pastel in oil.

But this hasn’t achieved the luminosity she was hoping the oil would create.

It remains flat and conventional. She’s humiliated, and she wishes that Antoinette Manet had minded her own business.

“You’ve done a remarkable job with the translucence of the vase,” Degas finally says.

“And its reflection on the table. As for the central flower, well, all I can say is that it’s exquisite.

” He steps closer. “The rough brush strokes, the pink and white tones, so imprecise and yet instantly recognizable. The light leaping from one petal to another, yet no individual petals in sight.”

Berthe is astonished by his words. “What about the lack of depth and detail? I thought about adding dimension, but somehow this is how it felt to me.”

“And you were correct. The flatness is one of the painting’s strongest virtues. The flower is muscularly three-dimensional, while its surroundings are not. This, as well as the peony’s instability, throws the composition off-kilter, gives a sense of movement, of power.”