The Forgery of Venus by Michael Gruber Read Free Book Online

think that was his fault?”
    “I don’t know,” I said. “He’s been screwing nearly every woman and girl around this place since practically day one. That might have an effect on a woman’s self-esteem, might make her inclined to excessive eating and the use of drugs. Who knows, if you stay here long enough you might get to see what it’s like.”
    This produced a shrug that made me want to reach for the poker. She said, “He’s a great artist. Great artists play by different rules. If she couldn’t handle that…I mean, I’m sorry for her and all, but…”
    I said, “He’s not a great artist. He had a great talent. It’s not the same thing.”
    “That’s crazy—what’s the difference?”
    “Oh, you want an art lesson? Okay, Melanie, just wait here. I’ll be right back.”
    With that, I went to the racks in the lumber room where he kept all his old stuff, the salable and the unsalable carefully divided, and from the latter section I removed a portfolio and went back to the living room. I threw the portfolio open on the coffee table and fanned out the contents.
    I said, “When I was a little kid, starting from about age six through about age eleven, my father would take me out to our dock or down the beach, nearly every day when it wasn’t raining or freezing, with watercolor sets and portable easels and canvas chairs, and we would paint together. I had a set just like Dad’s, with Winsor and Newton colors and sable brushes, and we used expensive cold-pressed D’Arches watercolor blocks, twenty-four by eighteen. My father doesn’t believe in cheap materials, even for little kids. And we painted together, for an hour, two hours, depending on the light. We went down at different times of the day, so we could catch all the varieties of light and what the light did to the water and the sand and the rocks and the sky. In the warm weather we painted figures, people on the beach, and boats out on the Sound, and in the winter, we just painted the beach, the sea, and the sky, the same view, over and over again. It was our Mount St. Victoire, our Rouen Cathedral. Do you know what I’m talking about?”
    “Not really,” she said.
    “No. But anyway, what do you think of the paintings? These are his, by the way. I used to tear mine up afterward because it made me so mad that I couldn’t do what he did with a brush.”
    “They’re beautiful.”
    “Yes, they are. This one, for example, a fleshy woman and a child sitting on the beach, early in the morning. Look at the heft and presence of the figures, all done freehand with a loaded brush, ten strokes and there they are. And look at the sweep of the wet sand! That perfect color, and the white of the paper showing through just enough to make it shine. And this one: winter on the Sound, and three seagulls made out of the white of the paper, just chopped in against the gray sky, and they’re perfect and alive. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get those effects in aquarelle? This is not the kind of kitsch you buy in resort souvenir shops, it’s nearly as good as anything Winslow Homer or Edward Hopper ever did in the medium. You get that word, ‘nearly’? I use it because that’s the story of his life as an artist—‘nearly.’ He didn’t ever take it that extra foot into greatness. He checked at the fence. And it wasn’t just that he was an illustrator. Homer did illustration, Durer, for Christ’s sake, did illustration. No, there was something missing, or maybe, yeah, something stifled in him. That’s why he put these away, he doesn’t want to be reminded of how close he came. You need more than talent to be a painter. You have to take risks. You have to not give a shit. You have to be open to…I don’t know what it is—to life, God, truth, some kind of other stuff. It’s a business, art, but not just a business.
    “And you know what the really horrible thing is? He knows it. He knows it. He knows what kind of gift he threw away, and