Restoration by Rose Tremain Read Free Book Online

admit, I looked more like a swine feeder than a Renaissance Man.
    The mixing of pigments was an activity to which I responded with great eagerness. If I have a visionary side, it is visions of colour and light that I see. Thus, I longed to dispense with drawing and dabble pure colour onto the virgin canvases. I was aware, however, than an artist must have a subject and the only subjects I could execute well with my charcoal were parts of the human anatomy – the very thing I has sworn to consign to oblivion, but found myself unable to forget.
    My first picture, then, was of a man's thigh and buttocks. The background, I had decided, would be ochre, suggesting a pastoral scene, in which the severed half of my man was striding through a field of corn. (I made a rather feeble attempt at drawing some stooks in the distance and a few single ears of wheat close to.)
    The musculature of the buttocks and thigh was, I think, reasonably well and accurately drawn but, such was its detail, that when I came at last, in a state of trembling excitement, to apply oil paint to it, I was all too aware that I had no idea whatsoever how to render shadow and light (and thus the third dimension) in this medium and, although I worked at it for hours and long into the night, my picture was an utter failure, resembling in the end a garish still-life of a plate of bacon and scrambled egg. I took off my floppy hat and smock and withdrew, this time to my bed, where I was forced to gnaw upon my sheet to stop myself shedding tears of frustration and rage.
    The next day, a brilliant idea came to me. If I could execute parts of the body quite competently, it would surely be within my power to draw a body in its entirety, particularly with the help of a model.
    After breakfast, I called for my horse, Danseuse (another gift from the King), and rode up the hill to the village of Bidnold and knocked on the door of the Jovial Rushcutters, a nice little inn I was in the habit of visiting from time to time, when in need of rough conversation and the smell of beer, tobacco and spittle.
    The barmaid of the Jovial Rushcutters was one Meg Storey who, in her manner and in the teasing fullness of her breasts, slightly resembled Rosie Pierpoint, and to whom, in consequence, I was involuntarily drawn. I now managed to flatter Meg Storey sufficiently – with praise and promise of silver -for her to agree to coming to my Studio to pose for me. Not, I assured her, naked, but prettily draped with scarves and sashes and wearing quite possibly a posy of geraniums in her hair, thus giving me access to my reds, which I had used to baleful excess in the man's thigh, but without which I could not imagine any picture of mine succeeding.
    She arrived on a rather chilly September morning. At the sight of me in my smock and hat, she let out a hoot of derisive laughter. I was further discomforted by her complaints, as she took off her cloak, about the cold and sunless nature of my Studio.
    "It faces, as it must, north," I said, beginning to sharpen my piece of charcoal. "Artists must work in a northerly light."
    "Why?" asked Meg Storey.
    I looked up. I did not wish to admit to this saucy tavern jade that I had not the least idea. "Because," I snapped, "a north light is cruel."
    After a great deal of shivering and protesting, Meg Storey agreed to remove everything but her drawers, sat down on a tall chair and allowed me to drape a magenta scarf around her neck to fall flatteringly over one of her large, bright-nippled breasts. I stood back. Her hair was sand-coloured, not unlike my own, but a deal finer and silkier. She looked exceedingly pretty. I felt my enthusiasm for my picture grow. Now I understand, I told myself, what the Flemish masters felt as they prepared to render their voluptuous Dianas, their fleshy shepherdesses…
    I began to sketch in Meg Storey's neck, shoulder and right breast. At her waist, the drawers began, but I ignored them. In my knowledge of the form of the