VERDOLAY--SKETCHING IN SPAIN
Sketching in Spain has inconveniences. In the summer the heat makes it
imperative that the painter should be up with the dawn, for between
eleven a.m. and four p.m. the heat and the brilliance of the light
impose too great a strain on the eyes and the endurance. Under any
circumstances we were almost forced to rise with the sun, for Milk and
Vegetables both called before six.
Verdolay was an excellent spot at which to begin an acquaintance with
Spanish scenery. There was a great variety of subject matter. The
village itself was full of vividly coloured houses, and at the back was
the wonderful old monastery of Santa Catalina. In the valley less than
half a mile away were the huertas, or irrigated gardens, full of rich
green. On the sides of the mountains were the olive terraces, which
traced the architecture of the hills in a way to delight the painter's
heart. Between the olives and the garden was the dusty cart road with
its intermittent traffic, and the small dusty strung-out villages, the
houses threaded on the road like beads on a necklace, especially that
one called El Angel--though anything more arid and less angelic could
hardly be imagined. In the hills themselves were fine ravines of
strangely coloured ferruginous earths, orange, purple and blue; and the
tops of the foothills were often crested with monasteries, like that of
La Luz, which gave the scene a most romantic atmosphere. I clung more or
less to the village, Jan wandered about the surrounding country or sat
in the insufficient shadow of the olive trees near El Angel.
[Illustration]
The first real inconvenience which we noted was that seldom did the best
view possess a suitable piece of shade from which to paint it. Thus the
artist's task was doubled; one had to find coincident scene and shadow.
The apparently aimless wander of the artist looking for a subject
usually excited the curiosity of the passers-by, so that either one was
irritated by a series of remarks or became possessed of a small
following of the curious. I use a square hole cut in a piece of
cardboard in order to test the view and judge whether it would frame as
satisfactorily as it promised to do. Whenever I placed this square to my
eye one of my followers bobbed up his head and stared back at me
through the hole, trying to fathom the mystery of my act. Once I had
begun work I would become the centre of an excited conversation.
[Illustration]
The first strokes of the brush aroused merriment. But often some
onlooker astonished me by perceiving the object of my sketch long before
the drawing was in any way clear. She (it was generally a she) would
then be eager to exhibit her superior knowledge to the others. She would
therefore dab her finger on to my painting to point out what she had
perceived. This nuisance I fought by covering intrusive fingers with oil
paint. By the time the overwise one had cleaned off the paint the
drawing would be far advanced enough for the others to see for
themselves what I was doing. As soon as I got well into the swing of
work questions would begin.
"Why do you do this? Is it to make picture postcards from? Why isn't
your husband with you? Are your father and mother alive? Do you like
Spanish food? Have you got any children? If you have no children, as we
have too many, would you like a baby to take away with you? Are you
doing this for the cinematograph? Do you like painting? How old are you?
Why haven't you put in So-and-so's house?" In this case the house in
question was usually behind me.
These questions were asked in Murcian Spanish not very easy to
understand with my small lack of acquaintance; and I had to take my
attention off my painting in order to find suitable Spanish answers. I
tried once not to answer, but my audience then demanded:
"Are you deaf? Can't you hear? Don't you understand what we say?"
All this was said with the most courteous of intentions, direct
questioning being permissible in Spain. Chairs were generally brought
out, one for me and others for the spectators. Nurse-maids with
half-nude babies formed a large proportion of my audiences. The Spanish
baby suffers from over nursing; it is carried remorselessly about from
six in the morning till twelve at night; it is as a rule fretful and
feverish both from the heat and from lack of sleep. Indeed Verdolay
always shrilled with wailing children.
At about nine o'clock the Spaniard takes a morning snack. This consists
of a slice of bread soaked with olive oil and a dried sardine, the smell
of which was almost paralysing. With the perfect courtesy which marked
all my peasant audiences, this would be offered to me before it was
chewed loudly in my ear. When the heat was very great I would abandon my
sketch as soon as the sardine stage arrived.
I was continually pestered by polite requests that So-and-so should be
painted in. This often led to a lecture on composition and on the
introduction of figures. If I did, however, paint in anybody the
enthusiasm was enormous. People would run down the road shouting in at
every cottage door:
"She has painted Enrico" (or Miguel or Maria) "into her picture."
Once while near the water-fountain I painted in the donkey of a
water-carrier. For days afterwards Paco, the donkey-boy, grasped the
passers-by and exclaimed with tears of joy in his voice:
"Ha pintado mi burro, _mi_ burro."[14]
The water-fountain was one of the gathering places of the village. It
was the end of a small iron pipe which writhed down from the hills.
There were generally three or four donkey-boys with cantaros, and a
crowd of women with amphoras waiting their turns to wedge their pots
beneath the small trickle which ran from the nozzle of the pipe. Old
Grumpy spent the best part of his day there, sitting with sour face in
the shadow of a small tree--his chief work was either waiting his turn
or leaving his pots to fill themselves. A tall bank of prickly pear
cactus made a background to the gay scene. Women came from dawn until
midnight, and even from the villages of the valley, for water was very
scarce and most of the water in the valley wells unfit for drinking.
With their heavy cantaros balanced on a projecting hip, these women
walked two miles or more beneath the sweltering sun; and they asked me
if I _liked_ painting.
Sometimes the ladies of the village stopped and made suitable remarks.
One, a summer visitor, told me that she knew a very good painter--"very
good indeed," she said with a gentle emphasis which revealed what she
thought of my work. "Why, he painted things five times as big as these
which you do."
As the sketch progressed my audiences were very eager to point out to me
anything which I seemed to have forgotten. At this moment somebody
always said that Uncle Pepe's or Aunt Conchas' house wasn't in the
sketch. These houses were invariably out of sight or behind my back. The
Spaniards had futuristic instincts. But once they knew me, my friends
would not have me criticized. One passer-by made some disparaging
remark about the painting.
[Illustration]
"We won't have our Doña abused," said the nurse-maids. "She is very
clever. She knows lots more than you do; and plays the piano as well."
Sometimes I accompanied Jan out into the country, in the direction of La
Luz or down into the huertas.
One day we were near La Luz and my interest was captured by a lemon and
vine garden which was cultivated on terraces down the side of a baking
ravine. The farmer's house with a red roof topped the hill. I sat down
to paint. Presently the farmer with his wife and family clambered down
into the ravine and climbed up the side to where I was sitting. Each
time I returned the family came back and in awed silence watched the
progress of the sketch.
It happened that the water of Verdolay was not very nice for drinking
purposes, being full of minerals and salts, while that of La Luz was
delicious. A poor woman, who did charing jobs for the farmer
above-mentioned, was delighted to be allowed to carry us heavy cantaros
full of La Luz water, a mile and a half, for the pay of fivepence a
cantaro. One day after the sketch was finished she came in with a look
of importance on her face.
"My Señora," she said, "is enamoured of the little painting which you
have done of her house and farm. She wishes to buy the sketch."
I had had some experience of Spanish prices, so I said:
"These paintings are made to exhibit in England. It is of no use to tell
you the price, because English prices and Spanish prices are different."
"But, Señora," said the woman, "my masters are very rich, excessively
rich. They will pay any price that you like to ask."
But I suspected her protestations. The sketch was one of the best I had
done in Spain. I was not very eager to part with it. But owing to her
entreaties, against my better judgment, fixing a low price because of
Spain, I said at last:
"Two hundred pesetas."[15]
Her mouth dropped open. For a moment she remained speechless with
amazement. Then hastily crossing herself she gasped out:
"Madre Maria Sanctissima!"
Being a woman I was often asked to paint female portraits, but
suspecting the monetary value which the people would put on paintings I
refused. Jan overheard a red-faced, wealthy looking farmer discussing
with his father on our doorstep the question of how much I was likely to
ask for a portrait of the farmer's daughter.
_Red Face_: "I think we might offer her ten pesetas."[16]
_The Grandfather_: "Well, she is foreign, she might demand fifteen."
_Red Face_: "Even if she wishes twenty we might yet consider it; or
perhaps twenty-five; but then we would have to think it carefully over."
Occasionally we would be asked into houses to examine pictures which the
peasants believed to have value. In one house, a room was set aside as a
small private chapel; it was full of painted plaster images covered with
false jewels and tinsel; on the walls were oleograph reproductions of
the Virgin by Spanish Old Masters, but one painting of the Murillo
School probably had a real value. In another house we found a picture of
Napoleon before which the inhabitants were burning a candle under the
impression that the print represented an unidentified Saint. Maybe
stranger personalities have been canonized before now.
Jan escaped from intimate touch with the people by making for the open
country. He thus had fewer adventures than did I. Often, however,
peasants spied him from the distance of a mile, and came to see what he
was doing.
Once, when he had been painting on the cart-road near El Angel and had
put a cart into his painting, a small boy followed him all the way home,
shouting out to every one that he passed:
"That is a painter! He painted a cart and horse; just as it went along;
all in a flash!"
We used to pin up our sketches on the wall of the house; because, as we
intended to travel, we wished the sketches to become as dry as we could
make them. This used to attract numbers of people, and usually the
grilled window of our front room was occupied by a crowd of faces
peering into the house. The fame of our picture exhibition spread over
the country-side. People came from some distance to see the pictures;
and if the front door was unlocked walked in, saluted us, and proceeded
to go the round of the walls. At first we found this disconcerting, but
with use much of our needless self-consciousness and desire for
unessential privacy began to wear off.
As we left our front window open during the night for air, we were many
times awakened by the voices of the picture-gazers who gathered at our
window as soon as the day broke.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 14: "She has painted my donkey, _my_ donkey."]
[Footnote 15: £8.]
[Footnote 16: 8_s._ 4_d._]