It is often said, not without a certain kind of truth, that the
likeness is precisely what matters least in a portrait. That is one of
the interesting heresies which Whistler did not learn from Velasquez.
Because a portrait which is a likeness, and nothing more than a
likeness, can often be done by a second-rate artist, by a kind of
sympathetic trick, it need not follow that likeness is in itself an
unimportant quality in a masterly portrait, nor will it be found that
likeness was ever disregarded by the greatest painters. But there are
many kinds of likenesses, among which we have to choose, as we have to
choose in all art which follows nature, between a realism of outward
circumstance and a realism of inner significance. Every individual face
has as many different expressions as the soul behind it has moods.
When we talk, currently, of a "good likeness," we mean, for the most
part, that a single, habitual expression, with which we are familiar,
as we are familiar with a frequently worn suit of clothes, has been
rendered; that we see a man as we imagine ourselves ordinarily to see
him. But, in the first place, most people see nothing with any sort of
precision; they cannot tell you the position and shape of the ears, or
the shape of the cheek-bones, of their most intimate friends. Their
mental vision is so feeble that they can call up only a blurred image,
a vague compromise between expressions, without any definite form at
all. Others have a mental vision so sharp, retentive, yet without
selection, that to think of a person is to call up a whole series
of precise images, each the image of a particular expression at a
particular moment; the whole series failing to coalesce into one really
typical likeness, the likeness of soul or body. Now it is the artist's
business to choose among these mental pictures; better still, to create
on paper, or on his canvas, the image which was none of these, but
which these helped to make in his own soul.
The Manet portrait of Charles Baudelaire, dated 1862, is exquisite,
ironical, subtle, enigmatical, astonishing; He has arrested the head
and shoulders of the poet in an instant's vision; the outlines are
definite, clear, severe, and simple. One sees the eager head thrust
forward, as if the man were actually walking; the fine and delicate
nose, voluptuously dilated in the nostrils, seems to breathe in vague
perfumes; the mouth, half-seen, has a touch of his malicious irony; the
right eye shines vividly in a fixed glance, those eyes that had the
colour of Spanish tobacco. Over the long, waving hair, that seems to
be swept backward by the wind, is placed, with unerring skill, at the
exact angle, that top-hat that Baudelaire had to have expressly made to
fit the size of his head. Around his long neck is just seen the white
soft collar of his shirt, with a twisted tie in front. In this picture
one sees the inspired poet, with distinct touches of this strong piece
of thinking flesh and blood. And Manet indicates, I think, that glimpse
of the soul which one needs in a perfect likeness.
In the one done in 1865, the pride of youth, the dandy, the vivid
profile, have disappeared. Here, as if in an eternal aspect, Baudelaire
is shown. There is his tragic mask; the glory of the eyes, that seem to
defy life, to defy death, seems enormous, almost monstrous. The lips
are closed tightly together, in their long, sinuous line, almost as if
Leonardo da Vinci had stamped them with his immortality. The genius
of Manet has shown the genius of Baudelaire in a gigantic shadow; the
whole face surging out of that dark shadow; and the soul is there!
In the portrait by Carjat, his face and his eyes are contorted as if
in a terrible rage; the whole face seems drawn upward and downward in
a kind of convulsion; and the aspect, one confesses, shows a degraded
type, as if all the vices he had never committed looked out of his eyes
in a wild revolt.
It is in the mask of Baudelaire done by Zachari Astruc that I find
almost the ethereal beauty, the sensitive nerves, the drawn lines, of
the death-mask of Keats; only, more tragic. It looks out on one as a
carved image, perfect in outline, implacable, restless, sensual; and,
in that agonized face, what imagination, what enormous vitality, what
strange subtlety, what devouring energy! It might be the face of a
Roman Emperor, refined, century by century, from the ghastly face of
Nero, the dissolute face of Caligula, to this most modern of poets.