Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847

"These are mere trifles—done for amusement, in an idle moment—mere studies——"

"But do tell me your opinion of the portrait-painters of the present day? Isn't it true, that we have none at present like Titian? There's not that force of colouring, not that,——really, what a pity it is that I cannot express what I mean in Russian." The lady was passionately fond of painting, and had run, eye-glass in hand, over all the galleries in Italy. "Only, I must say, that Monsieur Dauberelli—ah, how he paints! What an extraordinary touch! I find more expression in his faces than even in Titian's. You know Monsieur Dauberelli?"

"Dauberelli! who is he?" asked the artist.

"Such talent! He painted my daughter when she was only twelve years old. You must come and see it, really you must. Lise, you shall show him your album. But I want another portrait of my daughter, and that is the motive of my visit. Can you begin at once?"

"Directly, madam, if you please." And in a moment he wheeled up his easel, with a canvass on it, ready stretched, took his palette in his hand and fixed his eyes on the pale childish features of the daughter. Young as she was, they already bore traces of late hours and dissipation. Expression they had little or none. But the artist saw in the complexion an almost china-like transparence, exquisitely adapted to his pencil; the neck was white and slender, the form elegant and aristocratic. And he prepared for a triumph; he intended to show the lightness and brilliancy of his touch, for the display of which he had hitherto lacked opportunities. He already began to fancy to himself how the pale but graceful little lady would come out upon the canvass.

"Do you know," said the mother, with a sentimental expression of face "I should like—you see she has a frock on now—well, I confess I should not like you to paint her in a frock, it's so commonplace; I should like her to be painted simply dressed, sitting in the shade of a thicket, with fields in the distance, and sheep or a forest in the back-ground—simplicity, the greatest simplicity, is what I should like."

Tchartkóff set to work, arranged the sitter in the attitude he required, endeavoured to fix the whole subject in his mind; waved his brush in the air before him, as if establishing the principal points; half-closed his eyes several times, retired back a step or two, examined his sitter from a distance, and in about an hour he finished drawing in the face. Satisfied with the effect, he now commenced painting, and his labour rapidly grew lighter. By this time he had forgotten he was in the presence of two ladies of high fashion, and began to fall into a few tricks of the painting-room, uttering half-aloud various inarticulate sounds, and at intervals humming a tune between his teeth. Without the slightest ceremony he from time to time signed, by a movement of his brush, to his sitter to raise her head. At last the young lady grew weary and restless.

"That's quite enough for the first sitting," said her mother.

"Another minute," cried the painter in an absent tone.

"Impossible! Lise, three o'clock!" said the lady, looking at her diminutive watch. "Oh, how late!"

"Only half a second," said Tchartkóff, in the wistful and beseeching voice of a child.

But the lady was disinclined to comply. She promised him a longer sitting another time.

"Horridly annoying!" said Tchartkóff to himself; "just as my hand was getting in." And he remembered that no one had ever interrupted him, when he worked in his painting-room in the Vasílievskü Ostrov. Nikíta would sit hour after hour without moving a muscle: you might paint him as much as you liked; he would go to sleep in the attitude he was fixed in. And the artist discontentedly laid his pencil and palette on a chair, and stood pensively before the canvass. He was aroused from his reverie by a compliment addressed to him by the fashionable lady. He darted towards the door to show out his visitors: on the stairs he received an invitation to dine with them the following week, and with a cheerful air he re-entered his rooms. The aristocratic style of his visitors had quite fascinated him. Up to this time he had held such beings unapproachable, born only to glide about in a splendid carriage with liveried footmen and a laced and bearded coachman, throwing a calm indifferent glance on the humble foot-passenger as he plodded by in a shabby cloak. And yet, here was one of these exquisite beings calling upon him: he was painting her portrait, and had received an invitation to dine with her. Intoxicated with vanity and delight, he treated himself to a splendid dinner, went to the theatre in the evening, and again, without the slightest occasion, drove about the town in a carriage.

For some days he did nothing but arrange his rooms and listen for the sound of his bell. At last the lady arrived, with her pale daughter. He made them sit down, wheeled up his easel with a strong affectation of fashionable manner, and began to paint. He saw in his delicate sitter much that, being cleverly caught, would give high value to the portrait: he perceived that he might produce something quite peculiar and characteristic, if he could render it with the same accuracy and completeness with which nature herself had placed it before him. His heart even felt a slight tremor when he found himself expressing what no one else perhaps had ever remarked. His attention became riveted on his canvass, and he again forgot the aristocratic descent of his sitter. Holding his breath from eagerness, he gradually saw the delicate features and transparent skin come out upon his canvass. He had caught every half-tint, even the slight ivory-like yellowness, the nearly imperceptible blueish tone under the eyes, and was just in the act of seizing a little mole upon the forehead, when he suddenly heard behind him the voice of the mother, crying—"Oh, never mind that! that is not necessary! I see, too, you have got a—here, for instance, and here, see!—a kind of yellowish—and here and there you have, as it were, little dark places." The artist explained that the dark and yellow tones relieved the face, and gave a delicacy to the flesh-tints. But the notion was scouted. He was informed that Lise had not slept well, that there was usually no yellowness at all in her face, which struck every body by its freshness of complexion. Sadly and reluctantly Tchartkóff began to efface what he had taken such pains to produce. With it there vanished of course much of the resemblance. He now began, with a feeling of indifference, to throw over the whole a more commonplace and hackneyed colouring, the red and white, devoid of vigour, which each daubster has at his command. The obnoxious tint was effaced, and the mamma was delighted. She only expressed her surprise that the work went on so slowly. She had heard, she said, that he could completely finish a portrait in two sittings. The ladies rose and prepared to go away. Tchartkóff laid down his pencil, conducted them to the door, and then, returning, stood for a while before his portrait, regretting the delicate lines, the half-tints and airy tones, so happily caught and pitilessly effaced. With these recollections vivid in his mind, he put aside the portrait, and looked for a study, which had been long abandoned, of a head of Psyche, an idea he had some time before thrown sketchily on the canvass. It was a pretty little countenance, cleverly and rapidly painted, but quite ideal, cold and hard, devoid of life and reality. Scarcely knowing why, he began to work at this, endeavouring to communicate to it all he could remember of the countenance of his aristocratic sitter. Psyche grew more and more animated; the type of the young fashionable lady's countenance was by degrees mingled with hers, at the same time acquiring an expression which gave it originality and character. Tchartkóff was able to avail himself, both in the details and in the general effect, of all that he had obtained from his sitter, and to incorporate it with his work. During several days he laboured hard at his Psyche. He was still busy with it when he was interrupted by the arrival of his former visitors. The picture was on the easel. Both ladies uttered a cry of admiration, and clapped their hands.

"Lise! Lise! Oh, how like! Superbe! Superbe! What an exquisite idea, to dress her in the Grecian costume! What a truly delicious surprise!"

The artist hardly knew how to undeceive the ladies in their agreeable mistake. He hung his head, and, with an apologetic air, said, in a low voice, "This is Psyche."

"Painted as Psyche! C'est charmant!" said the mother, with a smile, faithfully repeated by the daughter. "Don't you think so, Lise? it's just the thing for you. Painted as Pysche! Quelle idée délicieuse! But what a picture! Quite a Correggio! I have heard and read much about you, but I had not the least idea of your talent."

"What the deuce am I to do with them?" thought the artist. "Well, if they will have it so, Psyche shall go;" and he said aloud—"I must trouble you to give me a few minutes more—I should like to add a few touches."

"You cannot improve it. Pray leave it as it is."

The painter guessed that they apprehended some more yellow tones, and he hastened to remove their fears, saying that he was only going to increase the brilliancy and expression of the eyes. In reality he desired to give his picture a closer resemblance with the original—fearing, if he did not, that he should be taxed with unblushing flattery. In spite of the lady's reluctance, the pallid damsel's features began to come out more clearly amid the outlines of the Psyche.

"That will do," said the mother, less pleased by the picture as the resemblance grew closer. The artist was rewarded for his labour with smiles, money, compliments, a most affectionate squeeze of the hand, and a pressing invitation to dinner; in a word, he was overwhelmed with recompenses. The portrait made much noise in the town. The lady showed it to all her acquaintance. Every body admired the skill with which the painter had succeeded in preserving the resemblance, and at the same time in giving beauty to the original. The last remark, of course, was not made without a slight tinge of malice. Tchartkóff was besieged with commissions. The whole town was mad to be painted by him. His door-bell rang incessantly. Unfortunately his sitters were of the class most difficult to manage; either persons very much occupied, or fashionable people, who having in reality nothing to do, were, of course, far busier than anybody else, and hurried and impatient in the highest degree. Every body expected a good picture in less time than was necessary to do a slovenly one. The artist saw that high finish was quite out of the question, and that all he could do was to dazzle by the facility, rapidity, and smartness of his execution. He had to content himself with catching the general expression, neglecting the more delicate details, and not attempting to attain the individuality and reality of nature. Besides this, every sitter had some fresh fancy. The ladies required that only their sentiment and character should be represented in their portraits; that all the rest should be smoothed and softened; sharp angles rounded off; defects mitigated, and even, if possible, altogether concealed. They required, in short, to be made attractive in their portraits, whether nature had made them so or not. Consequently many, when they seated themselves in the painting chair, put on such looks and expressions as absolutely astounded the artist. One struggled to give her features an air of melancholy; another of sentimental abstraction; a third tried desperately to make her mouth small, and pursed it up till it resembled a round dot. And in spite of all this they expected striking resemblance, ease, and grace. Nor were the gentlemen more reasonable. One required to be painted with a strong energetic turn of the head; another with uplifted eyes, full of poetic inspiration; an ensign of the Guards declared that he should not be satisfied unless Mars was made visible in his countenance: a civilian delicately suggested that his face should be made as much as possible to express incorruptible probity, mingled with imposing dignity, and that he should be painted leaning his arm on a book, inscribed in legible characters, "I stand for right." At first all these requests frightened and annoyed our painter; there was so much to be harmonised, considered, and arranged, and all in a few hours. At last he began to understand the secret, and went on without troubling his head in the least. From the first two or three words spoken, he perceived how the sitter wished to be painted. The gentleman who wanted Mars was made a Mars of; he who aped Byron received a Byronic attitude. As to the ladies, whether they wished to be Corinnas, or Undines, or Aspasias, he was quite ready to accommodate them, and even added, from his own imagination, a universal air of distinction, which never does any harm, and which sometimes makes people excuse even want of resemblance. He soon began to be astonished at the wonderful rapidity and success of his execution. As to the sitters, they were in ecstasies, and proclaimed him every where a genius of the first water.

Tchartkóff became all the fashion. He drove out every day to dinner parties, escorted ladies to exhibitions and promenades, was a consummate puppy in his dress, and openly declared that an artist ought to be a man of the world; that it was his duty to maintain his dignity; that painters in general dressed like shoemakers; that their manners were excruciatingly vulgar, and that they were people of no education. His studio was a pattern of elegance; he kept a couple of magnificent footmen; took a number of dandified pupils; had his hair curled; dressed half-a-dozen times a-day in various fantastical costumes. He was perpetually rehearsing improvements in his way of receiving visitors; meditating on all possible means of beautifying his person, and of producing an agreeable impression on the ladies. In short, it soon became impossible to recognise in him the modest student who once laboured so fervently in his garret in the Vasílievskü Ostrov. Concerning art and artists he now rarely spoke; he asserted that the merit of the old masters had been outrageously overrated; that, before Raphael, their figures were rather like herrings than human beings; that it was the imagination of the spectator only that could find in their works that air of grandeur and dignity generally attributed to them. Raphael himself, he said, was very unequal, and many of his productions owed their glory only to tradition. Michael Angelo was a boaster, weakly vain of his knowledge of anatomy, and without a particle of grace. Real force of outline, grace of touch, and magic of colouring we must look for, he said, in the present age. Thence the conversation easily glided to his own pictures.

"I cannot conceive," he would say, "the obstinacy of people who drudge at their pictures. A fellow who hangs month after month over one piece of canvass is, in my opinion, an artisan, not an artist. Such a one has no genius, for genius creates boldly, rapidly. Now this portrait, for instance," he would say, "I painted in two days, this head in one day, this in a few hours, and that other in rather more than an hour. I don't call it art to go crawling on, line after line."

Thus he would chatter to his visitors, and the visitors would admire his dashing rapidity, and utter exclamations of wonder when they heard how quickly he worked; and then they would whisper to each other—"This is genius—real genius! How well he talks! What an extraordinary talent!"

Such praise as this the painter greedily drank in, and was as delighted as a child by the encomiums of the press, even when bought and paid for with his own money. His fame continued to spread, and his occupation to increase, till he grew weary of painting portraits and faces with the same tricks and attitudes that he knew by heart. Gradually he worked with less and less good-will, contenting himself with carelessly sketching in the head, and leaving all the rest to be finished by his pupils. Formerly he had taken trouble to seek new attitudes; to strike by novelty—by effect. Now he began to grow weary even of this labour. He entirely left off reflecting; he had neither power nor leisure for it. His dissipated mode of life, and the society in which he played the part of a man of fashion, severed him more and more from labour and from thought. His touch grew cold and dull, and he insensibly confined himself to stale, commonplace, worn-out forms. The stiff, monotonous countenances of officers and civilians, in their graceless modern costumes, were not very attractive subjects for the pencil. He forgot all—his graceful draping, his easy attitudes, his power of representing the passions. As to skilful grouping or dramatic effect in painting, all that was quite out of the question. He had nothing before his eyes but the eternal uniform, corset, or dress-coat—objects chilling to the artist, and affording little scope to imagination. By and by even the most ordinary merits disappeared, one by one, from his productions; and they still enjoyed the highest reputation, though real judges and artists only shrugged their shoulders as they looked at the work of his hand.

These mute but significant criticisms of the discerning few never reached the ears of the artist, intoxicated as he was with vanity and false fame. He already too approached the period of maturity in age and intellect, and was rapidly acquiring a respectable corpulence. He now met in the journals with such expressions as these:—"Our respectable Andréi Petróvitch—our veteran of the pencil, Andréi Petróvitch." He now received many honorary appointments in public institutions; was frequently invited to examinations and to committees. He began, as people infallibly do on reaching a certain age, to stand up sturdily for the old masters, not from any profound conviction of their wonderful merits, but in order to throw their names in the teeth of young artists. He did not hesitate to fly in the face of the doctrines he had advocated some years previously. According to him, labour was every thing, inspiration a mere name; and he affirmed that, in art, all things should be subjected to the severest rules.

Fame can give no satisfaction to one who has not earned, but stolen it. It produces a constant thrill only in the heart conscious of having deserved it. Tchartkóff no longer valued fame. All his feelings and desires were turned towards gold. Gold became his passion, his delight, the object of his being. Bank-notes filled his portfolios, piles of gold his coffers; but, like all avaricious men, he grew sour, selfish, inaccessible to every thing but money—cold-hearted and penurious. He was gradually sinking into an unhappy miser, when an event came to pass which gave his whole moral being a terrible and awakening shock.

Returning home one day, Tchartkóff found lying on his table a letter, in which the Academy of Arts invited him, as one of its most distinguished members, to give his opinion of a new picture just arrived from Italy, the work of a Russian artist who had long studied there. The painter, who had been a schoolfellow of Tchartkóff's, imbued, even as a boy, with a fervent passion for art, had early torn himself from home and friends, from all the pleasures and habits of his age and country, to toil and study in the renowned Italian city, whose very name thrills the painter's heart. There he condemned himself to solitude and uninterrupted labour. Men spoke of his eccentricity, of his ignorance of the world, of his neglect of all the customs of society, of the disgrace he cast on the artist's profession by his dress, which was beneath his station, and by his frugality, which was almost penury. He cared nothing for scoff and reproach. Regardless of the world's comments, he gave himself up to his art. Unweariedly did he haunt the galleries; hour after hour, day after day, he stood before the works of the great masters, striving to penetrate their secrets. He never finished a picture without comparing it many times with the productions of those mighty teachers, and reading in their creations silent but eloquent counsel. He engaged in no arguments or disputes, but accorded to every school the honour it deserved; and after aiming at acquiring what was most meritorious in each, at length addicted himself to the study of the immortal Raphael; like a student of letters, who, after reading and rereading the works of a multitude of authors, at last confines himself to the writings of one whom he conceives to unite the chief beauties of all the others, superadding graces none of them possess. After many years of persevering application and gradual progress, the artist left the schools, possessing pure and elevated ideas of composition, great powers of conception, and an execution that charmed alike by its delicacy and force. But, with the modesty of true genius, he still allowed a considerable time to elapse before he ventured to submit a picture to the verdict of his countrymen.

On entering the exhibition-room, Tchartkóff found it thronged with visitors, grouped before the painting. Silence, such as is rarely met with amongst a numerous collection of amateurs, reigned throughout the crowd. Assuming the knowing and supercilious look of an acknowledged connoisseur, he approached the picture, prepared to cavil and find fault, or, at best, to damn with faint praise. But the canting phrase of conventional criticism died away upon his lips at the sight he there beheld. Faultless, pure, gracious, and beautiful as some fair and virgin bride was the noble production of genius that met his astonished gaze. With wonder and admiration he recognised the work of a pencil that revived the glories of ancient art. A profound study of Raphael was manifest in the noble elevation of the attitudes; there was a something Correggian in the skilful handling and careful finish. But there was no servile imitation of any painter; the artist had sought and found in his own soul the divine spark that gave life to his creation. Not an object in the picture, however trifling, but had been the subject of a profound study; the law of its constitution had been analysed, and its internal organism investigated. And the painter had caught that flowing roundness of line which pervades all nature, but which no eye ever sees save that of the creator-artist—that roundness which the mere copyist degrades into points and angles. He had poetised, whilst faithfully representing, the commonest objects of external nature. A feeling of awe mingled with the admiration that kept the crowd profoundly silent. Not a whisper was heard, not a rustle or a sound, for some time after the arrival of Tchartkóff. All were absorbed in contemplation of the masterpiece; and in the eyes of the more enthusiastic tears of delight were seen to glisten. Tchartkóff himself stood open-mouthed and motionless before the wonderful painting, whose merits and beauties the spectators at last began to discuss. He was roused from abstraction by being appealed to for his opinion. In vain did he strive to resume his dignified air, and to give utterance to the musty commonplace of criticism. The contemptuous smile was chased from his features by the workings of emotion; his breast heaved with a convulsive sob, and after a moment's violent but ineffectual struggle, he burst into tears and rushed wildly from the hall.

A few minutes later he stood motionless, almost paralysed, in his own magnificent studio. The bandage had fallen from his eyes. He saw how he had squandered the best years of his youth; how he had trampled and stifled the spark of that fire once burning within him, which might have been fanned till it blazed up into grandeur and glory, and extorted tears of gratitude and admiration from a wondering world. All this he had sacrificed and thrown away, heedlessly, madly, brutally. There suddenly revived in his soul those enthusiastic aspirations he once had known. He caught up a pencil and approached a canvass. The sweat of eagerness stood upon his brow; his soul was filled with one passionate desire—one solitary thought burned in his brain. The zeal for art, the thirst for fame he once so strongly felt, had suddenly returned, evoked from their lurking-place by the mute voice of another's genius. And why, Tchartkóff thought, should not he also excel? His hand trembled with feverish impatience till he could scarcely hold the pencil. He took for his subject a fallen angel. The idea was in accordance with his frame of mind. But, alas! how soon he was convinced of the vanity of his efforts! His hand and imagination had been too long confined to one line and limit, and his fierce but impotent endeavour to overleap the barrier, to break his self-imposed fetters, had no result. He had despised and neglected the fundamental condition of future greatness—the long and fatiguing ladder of study and reflection. Maddened by disappointment, furious at the conviction of impotency, he ignominiously dismissed from his studio all his later and most esteemed productions, to which places of honour had been accorded—all his lifeless, senseless, fashionable portraits of hussars, ladies of fashion, and privy councillors. He then shut himself up, denied himself to all visitors, and sat down to work, patient and eager as a young student. For a while he laboured day and night. But how unsatisfactory, how cruelly ungrateful was all that grew under his pencil! Each moment he found himself checked and repulsed in the new path he fain would have trodden by the wretched mechanical tricks to which he had so long habituated himself. They stood on his road, an impassable barrier. In spite of himself he recurred to the old commonplace forms; the arms would arrange themselves in one graceless position; the head assume the old hackneyed attitude; the folds of dress refused to drape themselves otherwise than they had so long been wont to do in his hands. All this the unhappy artist plainly felt and saw. His eyes were opened to his heinous faults, but he lacked the power to correct them.

"Surely I had ability!" said he to himself; "or was it mere delusion? Could I not, under any circumstances, have done better than I have? Did the whispers of youthful vanity mislead me?" And, to settle this doubt, he hunted out some of his early pictures, which lay neglected in a corner of his painting-room—pictures he had laboured at long ago, when his heart was pure from avarice, and he dwelt in his poor garret in the lonely Vasílievskü Ostrov, far from the world, from luxury and covetousness. He examined them attentively, and the conviction forced itself upon him with irresistible strength, that he had sacrificed genius at the altar of Mammon. "I had it in me!" was his agonised exclamation. "Every where, in all of these, I behold traces and proofs of the power I have recklessly frittered away."

Covering his face with his hands, Tchartkóff stood silent, full of bitter thoughts, rapidly but minutely reviewing the whole of his past life. When he removed his hands he started, and a thrill passed over him, for he suddenly encountered the gaze of two piercing eyes glittering with a sombre lustre, and seeming to watch and enjoy his despair. A second glance showed him they belonged to the strange portrait which he had bought, many years before, in the Stchúkin Dvor. It had remained forgotten and concealed amidst a mass of old pictures, and he had long since forgotten its existence. Now that the gaudy, fashionable pictures and portraits had been removed from the studio, there it was, peering grimly out from amongst his early productions. Tchartkóff remembered that, in a certain sense, this hideous portrait had been the origin of the useless life he had so long led and now so deeply deplored; that the hoard of gold discovered in its frame had developed and fostered in him those worldly passions, that sensuality and love of luxury, which had been the bane of his genius. Calling his servants, he ordered the hateful picture to be taken from the room, and bestowed where he should never again behold it. Its departure, however, was insufficient to calm his agitation and quell the storm that raged within him. He was a prey to that rare moral torture sometimes witnessed when a feeble talent wrestles unsuccessfully to attain a development above its capacity—a furious endeavour which often conducts young and vigorous minds to great achievements, but whose result to old and enervated ones is more frequently despair and insanity. Tchartkóff, when convinced of the futility of his efforts, became possessed by the demon of envy, who soon monopolised and made him all his own. His complexion assumed a bilious yellow tint; he could not bear to hear an artist praised, or look with patience at any work of art that bore the impress of genius. On beholding such he would grind his teeth with fury, and the expression of his face became that of a maniac.

At last he conceived one of the most execrable projects the human mind ever engendered; and with an eagerness approaching to frenzy, he hastened to put it into execution. He bought up all the best pictures he could find in St Petersburg, and whose owners could be induced to part with them. The prices he gave to tempt sellers were often most extravagant. As soon as he had purchased a picture, and got it safely home, he would set upon it with demoniac fury, tearing, scratching, even biting it; and, when it was utterly defaced and rent into the smallest possible fragments, he would dance and trample on it, laughing like a fiend. The enormous fortune he had accumulated during his long and successful career as a fashionable portrait-painter, enabled him largely to indulge this infernal monomania. To this abominable end he, Tchartkóff, but a short time before so avaricious, became reckless in his expenditure. For this he untied the strings of his bags of gold, and scattered his rubles with lavish hand. All were surprised at the change, and at the rapidity with which he squandered his fortune, in his zeal, as it was supposed, to form a gallery of the noblest works of art. In the auction room, none cared to oppose him, for all were certain to be outbid. He was held to be mad, and certainly his conduct and appearance justified the presumption. His countenance, of a jaundiced hue, grew haggard and wrinkled; misanthropy and hatred of the world were plainly legible upon it. He resembled that horrid demon whom Pushkin has so ably conceived and portrayed. Save all occasional sarcasm, venomous and bitter, no word ever passed his lips, and at last he became universally avoided. His acquaintances, and even his oldest friends, shunned his presence, and would go a mile round to escape meeting him in the street. The mere sight of him, they said, was enough to cloud their whole day.