Tales of the Wonder Club, Volume II

by M. Y. Halidom

Helen then appeared in the doorway and was greeted enthusiastically by the whole club, in the midst of which the painter, after looking at his watch and ascertaining that it was yet early enough for a good sitting, left the room and made for his studio, where, having set his palette, he was joined shortly afterwards by his fair model. Having arranged his colours and placed his canvas on the easel, he sat contemplating the portrait he had commenced so recently. Alas! how flat and insipid his poor work looked after having gazed on the bright original! It was but the first painting, it is true, and we know that nothing really good can be done at once; but, then, what drawing he found to correct now that he looked at his work with a fresh eye! The awfulness of the difficulties in art now rose up in his mind to appal him, and he uttered a sigh.

"Can all the glazing and scumbling in the world," muttered he to himself, "ever advance this portrait one step towards the divine original?"

Thus musing, the painter seized the canvas in both hands and breathed over its surface. Immediately afterwards, mixing up some colour sparingly, he scumbled over the entire surface of the portrait. Helen, whose eye dwelt upon the artist's every movement, whether from curiosity, or from some mysterious sympathy she felt for the young painter, demanded of him why he breathed on the face of her picture.

"To breathe into it the breath of life, Helen," replied McGuilp, smilingly.

Helen opened her large blue eyes with an expression of half wonderment, half doubt, not knowing whether the painter spoke in jest, or whether an artist really had some occult power in his very breath that could vivify the canvas. How was she to know, poor innocent child! Village bred and born in an age, as our readers will recollect, before photography had rendered too familiar the representation of the human face even for the veriest peasant any longer to wonder at the art by which it is produced?

In the days we speak of the painter's art was the only mode of transfixing the lineaments of a dear friend or parent and rendering them immortal. Painters, too, were much less common then than now-a-days, for art was still in its infancy in plain matter-of-fact old England. The painter, or limner as he was then called, was a being of far greater interest than at the present day. He was patronised by royalty and nobility, and though the prices that he received for his works were considerably less than in our times, and he was nearly always a poor and needy individual, yet he met with a certain amount of respect from his patrons, as they knew that by his hand alone could they hope to become immortal. Everyone liked to see his own features represented upon canvas, or those of his wife and family. Oft times his favourite horse or dog. In order to secure the services of the limner therefore, it was necessary to court him, nor was this respect or appearance of such ever denied him, save perhaps by the pampered menial of some nobleman or wealthy squire, who looked superciliously down upon the itinerant painter as a being far inferior to himself. We will hope, however, for the honour of humanity that the number was comparatively small that measured the painter's respectability by the length of his purse.

Indeed, the titled and the wealthy seem to have prided themselves in doing everything in their power to set the example of respect towards a disciple of the fine arts. Among this class the painter had seldom anything to complain of; in fact, provided he were affable in manner, decent in appearance, could paint the ladies' hands and ears small enough to please them, their eyes sufficiently large and languishing, and, lastly—but which was of no small importance—could represent faithfully the texture of their silks and satins, their lace, velvet, fur, or swansdown, oh, then he was caressed, petted, and acknowledged by all as a most agreeable member of society and sure of making his fortune. But woe to him if he were above his business and attempted high art—we mean subject pictures that were not portraits. However much he might be gifted in that line, his friends would instantly desert him, and he might starve in a garret. His patrons knew nothing of high art and cared as little. All they wanted was to see their own effigies adorning the walls of their mansions, and as long as the limner was content to be of service to them they were willing to support him, but no longer. It was set down as an axiom that the human face divine—by which they meant their own faces—was the highest aim that a painter could aspire to. This was the sort of high art they wanted, and no other.

A painter must be content with the work his patrons set him to do and not indulge his own caprices. Well, well, admitting the range of the painter's art to have been cramped and limited, has any age or country the power to cramp the genius of an artist? Is high art only to be found in imaginative pictures? Does not a portrait become high art under a master hand? Can that be called a mechanical art that gives intellect or sentiment to the eye, firmness or softness to the lip, the natural bloom to the cheek, truth and beauty to the whole? Few, let us hope, even in this matter of fact age, but would rank the real artist before the photographic artisan who usurps his name. If, in the present age, now that we are accustomed to a much more rapid process of reproducing the human face, there are to be found those who honour the true artist, imagine how his art must have been held in honour when it was the only way of immortalising men! It need not be wondered at that among those classes where the appearance of a painter was less common, that the respect he inspired almost amounted to awe in certain instances. This was the case with our Helen, who never having set eyes before on a real artist, looked with awe and wonder on our painter as a species of magician who possessed an art not merely unknown in her humble sphere, but which she was sure that the worthy members of the club were alike ignorant of, however learned they might be in other respects. The painter's youth and good looks, together with his possessing this mysterious art at such an early age, elevated him at once into a hero in her eyes. Then there was the strange fact of his having seen and spoken to a ghost in the same house where she herself had been born and bred, the very ghost she had been frightened so often with in her childhood, but which was, nevertheless, so chary of its appearance that it had found no one for upwards of half a century worthy of revealing itself to until now, and had chosen for that purpose the young artist before her, and that, too, the very first night that he arrived at the Inn. What was there peculiar in the organisation of our painter, that he should have been selected before all others to gaze on the august presence of one risen from the dead? The haunted chamber had been repeatedly slept in by all the members of the club in turn, and by many strangers beside, for years back, and yet never before within the experience of our host had the headless lady vouchsafed a parley with any one of them. The preference, therefore, shewn towards our friend McGuilp by the tenant of the haunted chamber had raised him at once in the esteem of the whole club, and the marked respect with which he was treated by the other guests, all of them older men than himself, did not fail to escape the quick eye of Helen, who felt inwardly flattered that the man for whom she had conceived so warm a sympathy, should be so honoured among his better fellows.

Our artist and his model had been left together for upwards of three-quarters of an hour, during which time McGuilp had not opened his mouth to exchange a single word with his sitter, a habit of his when unusually engrossed in his work. He had glazed and scumbled, chopped and changed about his drawing, laid on impasto, worked upon the background, and so absorbed was he with his picture, the time had passed as if it had been five minutes. A considerable change, however, had taken place in the portrait. There was more life and vigour, the tints were more natural and the head now stood more out in relief. Helen never once attempted to break the silence, but remained modest and immovable in her position as a statue. Had she been a vain and foolish girl or a coquette, she might have been irritated by the painter's silence, misconstruing it into a sign of insensibility to her charms, but no such thought for a moment entered the head of our Helen. On the contrary, she looked with the deepest awe and reverence on the painter whose art required so much silence and concentration, and instead of calling away his attention from his work by some frivolous remark, she mentally resolved to aid him to the utmost by posing as patiently as it lay in her power.

Nevertheless, after a long sitting, a change is apt to come over the face of the sitter. The muscles become flaccid, the colour vanishes, the eye grows vacant, and an expression of languor and weariness takes the place of the bright healthy look that the sitter bore at the commencement. This is especially the case with young people, and so it was with Helen, who, spite of her laudable endeavours to do justice to her portrait painter, had unconsciously grown several shades paler, and had so altered in expression that our artist, finding it impossible to continue his work, deemed it advisable to give his model a little repose.