Until the Colours Fade by Tim Jeal Read Free Book Online Page B

Magdalene by Titian, Rembrandt’s Head of a Jew ‚a group of classical figures by Poussin , and Canaletto’s Market place at Padua.
    When Mr Strickland was announced and entered, holding his hat nervously in his hands, Helen glanced briefly at him andmotioned him to be seated on a small upright chair next to an elegant card table near the centre of the room. His appearance gave her a shock which she was careful to conceal. She had somehow expected any artist employed by the Braithwaites to be of stolid and workmanlike mien, but here was a young man whose pale sensitive face and dark eyes would certainly fulfil any impressionable young lady’s ideal of what a romantic poet ought to look like. Without raising her eyes from the carpet, Helen asked pleasantly:
    ‘Tell me, Mr Strickland, how Mr Braithwaite came to give you the privilege of immortalising him?’
    ‘He saw some work of mine.’
    ‘Where?’
    ‘The Theatre Royal in Manchester.’
    ‘Pictures in a theatre, Mr Strickland?’
    Helen noticed that he seemed embarrassed and decided to devote more conversational attention to Joseph Braithwaite.
    ‘I painted the frieze over the proscenium arch, my lady. The choice of subject was provided. Shakespeare enthroned between two elephantine figures of Tragedy and Comedy.’
    He had spoken in such a matter-of-fact way that Helen could not decide whether he was being ironic; perhaps he disliked painting murals.
    ‘Need they have been … elephantine?’ she asked quietly.
    ‘The theatre manager has a fondness for draperies.’
    ‘A taste evidently shared by Mr Braithwaite.’ Helen could not help smiling. ‘Perhaps you are painting him in a toga?’
    Because of his previous seriousness, Helen was surprised when Strickland laughed.
    ‘He has enough draperies in his library. I painted three panels for him there: Truth, Temperance and Humility all in billowing folds.’
    ‘Is Mr Braithwaite’s portrait to be part of this sequence of virtues ? Representing Thrift perhaps?’ She had said this with no trace of amusement and was impressed when the artist replied in the same manner.
    ‘These are female figures, my lady. Mr Braithwaite would feel out of place. His will be a plain portrait.’
    She could guess from the movements of his hands as he held his hat on his knee that Strickland was nervous, but his answers had surprised her as much as his appearance had done. Nervous and yet assured: a strange combination. It occurred to her that unless she could lead him into making the gauche and boorishremarks she had expected, she would find it hard to send him away empty handed.
    ‘I suppose,’ she said, ‘painting a manufacturer must pose certain problems. Admirals can study their charts, statesmen flourish scrolls, but what can the mill-owner exhibit? A hank of cotton? Or should he be resting his hands on an operative’s head in the manner of prints of Wilberforce blessing a kneeling slave?’
    ‘Mr Braithwaite wishes to be painted in his park with his house behind him, just as many gentlemen of recent prosperity liked to have it done a century ago.’
    Although his tone had been pleasant, Helen felt reproved by it. She had attempted to ridicule Braithwaite and now she was placed in the wrong. There were plenty of pictures of Harry’s ancestors displaying their wealth, usually through their clothes. Ostentation had only recently become vulgar. Before the manufacturers had been able to be spend as much as the aristocracy, it had been quite respectable. The very room they sat in proved that point. Lady Goodchild decided on another approach.
    ‘I have heard it said that daguerreotypes will soon make portrait -painting a dead art. What is your opinion, Mr Strickland?’
    ‘If the rich decide to hang such things on their staircases and in their passages, your ladyship’s prophecy will come true.’
    She raised her eyebrows with feigned surprise.
    ‘Is custom all that keeps the art alive?’
    ‘If it is dying, what else