He went on to explain, with punctilious profanities, that to study the relation of that lamp to the piano-lid was enough for a picture; treated perfectly, there would be a poetry and mystery about it. Beauty, too, was only an affair of relations, and in “Carolina” he had been trying to get a beautiful relation between two ugly things, and an early Georgian feeling into a nineteenth-century interior, with a scientific accuracy of tones known only to modern French art.
Matt listened eagerly, wincing a little at the livelier oaths, but conscious of piquant perspectives, of novel artistic vision, which, if not quite intelligible, was in refreshing contrast with Tarmigan’s old-fashioned orthodoxy.
“But you had the same woman in your picture of the ‘Salvation Lass,’ ” persisted the poet.
Clinch explained that if writing chaps knew what it was to hunt for a satisfactory model, they’d thank their stars they didn’t know a palette from a planchette. A “swell woman” that really expressed your idea you couldn’t get to sit for you, and if you could get her you couldn’t swear at her. Besides, it was his ambition to create a new type of feminine beauty, and impose her on his period—une femme de Clinch! Wilfred Smith took mental notes, prepared henceforward to expound Clinch to an ignorant world.
“It’s about time he got a new model, anyway,” he said, when the repulsive-looking artist had moved off.
“Or painted her,” added Morrison, dryly.
Matt had a flash of resentment. The picture was to him a dainty dream of cool color and graceful form. Despite his association with Herbert, he did not yet understand the temperament that strides to Wit over Truth’s body.
“Isn’t it funny a man like that should draw such refined women?” he could not help remarking to his cicerone.
Matthew Strang assumed an oracular expression. “Art’s just a knack,” he said. “You’ve got to be born with it. I wasn’t, more’s the pity; but Herbert makes up for it, thank Heaven! Art’s got nothing to do with character. I’ve paid many a man to do me so many easel-pictures a year, and do you suppose I ever got them? The rogues get drunk or die or something, but they never come up to time.”
Matt was puzzled. If Art demanded anything, it seemed to him it was steadfastness and sobriety. The truth about it seemed to lie in those lines he had read in a volume of Matthew Arnold, borrowed from Herbert: