By none of the numerous objects of interest in the busy city of St
Petersburg are the steps of the sauntering pedestrian more frequently
arrested than by the picture-shop in the Stchukin Dvor.[24] True it is
that the specimens of art there displayed are distinguished rather by
eccentricity of design, and rudeness of execution, than by striking
evidences of genius. The paintings are for the most part in oil, coated
with green varnish, and fitted into frames of dark yellow tinsel. A
winter-piece with white trees, a ferociously red sunset, like the glow
of a conflagration, a Flemish boor with a pipe and dislocated-looking
arm--resembling a turkey-cock in ruffles, rather than a human
being,--such are the ordinary subjects. Beside them hang a few
engravings: portraits of Khosrev-Mirza in his sheepskin bonnet, and of
truculent generals with cocked hats and crooked noses. Bundles of coarse
prints, on large paper broadsides, are suspended on either side the
door. Here we have the Princess Miliktris Kirbitierna;[25] yonder the
city of Jerusalem, its houses and churches smeared with vermilion, which
gaudy colour has also invaded a part of the ground and a brace of
Russian pilgrims in huge fur gloves. If these works of art find few
purchasers, they at least attract a throng of starers; drunken
ragamuffin lacqueys on their way from the cook's shop, bearing piles of
plates with their masters' dinners, which grow cold whilst they gape at
the pictures; great-coated Russian soldiers with penknives for sale;
Okhta pedlar-women with boxes of shoes. Each spectator expresses his
admiration in his own peculiar way: peasants point with their fingers;
soldiers gaze with stolid gravity; dirty foot-boys and blackguard
apprentices laugh and apply the caricatures to each other; old serving
men in frieze cloaks stand listless and agape, indulging their
propensity to utter idleness.
A number of persons answering to the above description were assembled
before the picture-shop, when they were joined by a young man in a
threadbare cloak and shabby garments. He was a painter, named
Tchartkoff, as enthusiastic in his art as he was needy in his
circumstances and careless of his dress. Pausing before the booth, he
smiled as he glanced at the wretched pictures there displayed. The next
moment the expression of mirthful contempt faded from his thin, ardent
features, and he fell a-thinking. The question had occurred to him,
amongst what class of people could those tawdry, worthless productions
find purchasers? That Russian _mujiks_ should gaze delightedly upon the
_Yeruslan Lazarevitches_, on pictures of _Phoma_ and _Yerema_, of the
heroes of their tales and legends, was quite natural; the objects
represented were adapted to popular taste and comprehension; but who
would buy those tawdry oil-paintings, those Flemish boors, those crimson
and azure landscapes, which, whilst pretending to a higher grade of art,
served but to prove its deep degradation? Not one redeeming touch could
be traced in the senseless caricatures, to whose authors' clumsy hands
the mason's trowel would assuredly have been better adapted than the
painter's pencil. It was the very dotage of incapacity. The colouring,
the treatment, the coarse obtrusive mechanical touch, seemed those of a
clumsily constructed automaton, rather than of a human painter. Thus
musing, our artist stood for some time before the vile daubs that
excited his disgust, gazing at them long after the train of his
reflections had led him far from them; whilst the master of the shop, a
little, gray, ill-shaven fellow in a frieze cloak, chattered and
chaffered and bargained as indefatigably as if the young man had
announced himself a purchaser.
"Well now," said he, "for these mujiks and the landscape, I'll take a
white note.[26] There's painting! It hurts your eye, it's so bright;
just received from the Exchange; varnish hardly dry. Take the
winter-piece. Fifteen rubles! Frame worth the money. There's a winter,
there's snow for you!"
Here the eager trader gave a slight fillip to the canvass, as if he
expected the snow to fall off.
"Take the three. I'll send them home at once. Where does your honour
live? Boy, a cord!"
"Not so fast, my friend," cried the artist, startled from his reverie,
and perceiving the brisk dealer about to tie up the three daubs. His
first impulse was to walk away, but he felt ashamed to purchase nothing
after standing so long before the shop, and causing the hungry-looking
old salesman so large an expenditure of breath. "Wait a little," he
said. "I will see if you have any thing to suit me." And, stooping down,
he turned over a number of battered dusty old pictures heaped like
lumber upon the ground. They were chiefly old-fashioned family
portraits, likenesses of unknown and insignificant faces, with torn
canvass, and frames that had lost their gilding. Nevertheless Tchartkoff
carefully examined them, thinking it possible he might pick up something
good. He had more than once heard stories of pictures of the great
masters being met with amongst the dust and trash of such shops as this.
The dealer, perceiving he had probably nailed a customer, ceased his
bustling importunity, resumed his station at the door, and recommenced
his appeals to the passengers. He shouted, chattered, and pointed to his
wares, but without success; then he had a long chat with an
old-clothesman, whose establishment was on the opposite side of the
alley; and at last, recollecting that, all this time there was a
customer in his shop, he turned his back upon the public and walked in.
"Have you chosen anything, sir?"
The artist stood immoveable before a large portrait, whose frame had
once been richly gilt, although it now scarcely retained a few tarnished
vestiges of its former splendour. The subject was an old man, his face
swarthy and bronzed, with furrowed brow and hollow temples, and sharp
high cheekbones; a physiognomy on which the ravages of time, and
climate, and suffering were plainly legible. The figure was draped in a
flowing Asiatic costume. Defaced and injured and grimed with dirt though
the portrait was, yet, when Tchartkoff had wiped the dust from the
countenance, he perceived evident traces of the touch of a great artist.
The picture seemed to have been scarcely finished, but the force of
treatment was immense. Its most extraordinary part was the eyes; in them
the artist had concentrated all the power of his pencil. There was
vitality in those dark and lustrous orbs, they looked out of the
portrait, and in some measure destroyed its harmony by their strange and
life-like expression. When Tchartkoff took the picture to the door, he
fancied the pupils dilated. The peculiarity of the painting at once
attracted the attention of the idlers without. Some uttered exclamations
of surprise, others fell back a pace as if in terror. A pale,
sickly-looking woman of the lower classes, who suddenly found herself
face to face with this singular portrait, screamed with alarm. "It's
looking at me!" she cried, and hurried away, casting nervous glances
over her shoulder. Tchartkoff himself experienced--he could not tell
why--a sort of disagreeable sensation, and he put the portrait on the
ground.
"D'ye buy?" said the picture-dealer.
"How much?" replied the artist.
"At a word--three _tchetvertaks_."[27]
Tchartkoff shook his head. "Too much. I will give you a dougrivennoi,"
he added, moving towards the door.
"A dougrivennoi for that picture! You are pleased to joke, sir. The
frame is worth twice the money. Bid me something more, if it be only
another grivennik. Come back, sir," he shouted, running after the
painter, and detaining him by his cloak-skirt; "come back, sir. You are
my first customer to-day, and I will take your offer, for luck's sake.
But the picture is given away."
On finding his offer thus unexpectedly accepted, Tchartkoff heartily
repented his temerity in making it. The dougrivennoi he paid the dealer
was his last in the world, and he was encumbered with a lumbering old
portrait for which he had no earthly use. Cursing his own imprudence, he
took up his purchase, and trudged away with it. Its weight and size
caused it to slip perpetually from under his arm, and rendered it a most
troublesome burthen. At last, tired to death and bathed in perspiration,
he reached the house, in the fifteenth line of the Vasilievskue Ostrow,
in which he occupied a modest lodging, ascended the uncleanly staircase,
and knocked impatiently at the door of his apartment. It was opened by a
slatternly lad in a blue shirt--his cook, model, colour-grinder and
floor-sweeper, who had to thank his godfathers for the harmonious name
of Nikita, and who united in his person the dirt incidental to three out
of his four occupations. Tchartkoff entered his ante-room, which felt
very chilly, as artists' ante-rooms usually are, and, without taking off
his cloak, walked on into his studio a square apartment, tolerably
spacious, but low in the ceiling, and with windows dimmed by the frost.
This room was littered with all kinds of artistical rubbish: fragments
of plaster of Paris, casts of hands, frames, stretched canvasses,
sketches begun and thrown aside, and drapery cast carelessly over the
chairs. Completely knocked up, Tchartkoff let his cloak fall, placed his
new purchase against the wall, and threw himself on a narrow meagre
little sofa, whose leathern cover, torn upon one side from the row of
brass nails that had formerly confined it, afforded Nikita a convenient
receptacle for dish-cloths, old clothes, dirty linen, and any other
miscellaneous matters he thought fit to cram under. The sun had set, and
the night grew each moment darker. Our artist ordered Nikita to bring a
candle.
"There are no candles," was Nikita's reply.
"How!--no candles?"
"There were none yesterday," said Nikita.
Tchartkoff remembered that there _had_ been none the night before, and
that his credit with the tallow-chandler was not such as to render it
probable a supply had been sent in that morning. So he held his tongue,
allowed Nikita to take off his coat, waistcoat, and cravat, and wrapped
himself up as warmly as he could in a dressing gown with tattered
elbows.
"I forgot to tell you," said Nikita, "the landlord has been here."
"For money, I suppose," said the artist, shrugging his shoulders.
"He had somebody with him. A Kvartalnue, I think.[28] He said something
about the rent not being paid."
"Well, what can they do?"
"Don't know," replied the imperturbable Nikita. "He said you must leave
the lodgings or pay. Will come again to-morrow."
"Let them come," said Tchartkoff gloomily. And he turned himself upon
the comfortless sofa with a feeling akin to desperation.
Tchartkoff was a young artist of considerable promise, and whose pencil
was at times remarked for its accuracy, and near approach to the
truthfulness of nature. But he had faults which procured him frequent
admonitions from the professor under whom he studied. "You have talent,"
he would say to him; "it will be a sin to ruin it by carelessness and by
pursuing erroneous ideas and principles. You are too impatient; too apt
to be fascinated by novelty, and to neglect rules hallowed by time and
experience, laws immutable as those of the Medes. Beware, lest you
become a mere fashionable painter. Your colours, I observe, are not
unfrequently selected in defiance of good taste; your drawing is often
feeble, sometimes positively incorrect; your outlines want clearness.
You run after a flashy kind of chiaro-scuro, the lighting up of your
picture is meant only to strike the eye at the first glance. And you
have a passion for the introduction of finery; a taste for dandified
costume. All this is dangerous, and may lead you into the fatal habit of
painting mere fashionable pictures, pretty portraits and the like, which
yield money, but can never give fame. Do that, and your talent is lost
and thrown away. Be patient, wait, reflect, chasten your taste by study,
and wean yourself from that hankering after prettiness and dandyism.
Leave such tricks to those who care but for gold, and propose yourself a
higher aim, the never-dying laurels of a Titian or an Angelo."
The professor meant well, and was right in the main. Tchartkoff was apt
to indulge in the flashy and the superficial. But he had sufficient
strength of mind to control this dangerous tendency, and a purer taste
was gradually but perceptibly developing itself in him. As yet he could
not quite appreciate all the depth of Raphael, but he was strongly
fascinated by the broad and rapid touch of Guido; he would stand
enchanted before Titian's portraits, and had a high appreciation of the
Flemish school. Yet the darkened and sober tone characterising old
pictures did not quite please or satisfy him; nor did he, in his
innermost mind, altogether agree with the professor, when the latter
expatiated to him on that mysterious power which places the old masters
at such immeasurable distance above the moderns. In some respects he
almost fancied them surpassed by the nineteenth century; that the
imitation of nature had somehow become, in modern times, more vivid, and
lively, and faithful: in a word, his mind was in that fluctuating
unsettled state in which the minds of young people are apt to be when
they have reached a particular point of proficiency in their art, and
feel a proud internal conviction of talent. Often was he filled with
rage when he saw some travelling French or German painter, by the mere
effect of trick and habit, by readiness of pencil and flashy colouring,
catching the multitude, and making a fortune. These impressions made
their way into his mind, not in moments when he was buried, body and
soul, in his work, and forgot food and drink and all outward things; but
when, as was often the case, necessity stared him in the face, and he
found himself without the means of buying brushes and colours, or even
bread, whilst the greedy and implacable landlord came ten times a-day to
dun him for his rent. Then his hunger-sharpened imagination would revert
to the different lot of the rich and fashionable painter; then darted
through his brain the thought that so often flits through the Russian
head, the idea of sending his art and all to the devil, and going to the
devil himself.
"Yes, wait! wait!" he exclaimed passionately; "but patience and waiting
must have an end. Wait, indeed! and where am I to seek to-morrow's
dinner? Borrowing is out of the question; and if I sell my pictures and
drawings, they will give me, perhaps, a _dougrivennoi_ for the whole
lot. They are useful to me; not one of them but was undertaken with an
object,--from each I have learned something. But what would be their
value to any body else? They are studies,--exercises; and studies and
exercises they will remain to the end of the chapter. And, besides, who
would buy them? I am unknown as an artist, and who wants studies from
the antique and sketches from the living model, or my unfinished Love
and Psyche, or the perspective sketch of my room, or my portrait of
Nikita, though it is really better than the portraits painted by any of
your fashionable fellows? And, after all, what do I gain by this? Why
should I work myself to death, and keep plodding like a schoolboy over
his A, B, C, when I might be as famous as any of them, and have as much
money in my pockets?" As he pronounced these words, the artist
involuntarily shuddered and turned pale. He saw, looking fixedly at him,
peeping out from the shadow of a tall canvass that stood against the
wall, a face seemingly torn by some convulsive agony. Two dreadful eyes
glared upon the young man, with a strange inexplicable expression; the
lips were curled with mingled scorn and suffering; the features were
haggard and distorted. Startled, almost terrified, Tchartkoff was on the
point of calling Nikita, who by this time sent forth from his ante-room
a Titanic snore, when he checked himself and burst into a laugh. The
object of alarm was the portrait he had bought, and which he had
completely forgotten. The bright moonbeams, streaming into the room,
partially illuminated the picture, and gave it a strange air of reality.
By the clear cold light Tchartkoff set to work to examine and clean his
purchase. When the coat of dust and filth that incrusted it was removed,
he hung the picture upon the wall, and, retiring to look at it, was more
than ever astounded at its extraordinary character and power. The
countenance seemed lighted up by the fierce and glittering eyes, which
looked out of the picture so wonderfully, and assumed, as it seemed to
him, such strange and varied and terrible expression, that he at last
involuntarily turned away his own, unable to support the gaze of the old
Asiatic. Then came into his mind a story he had once heard from his
professor, of a certain portrait of the famous Leonardo da Vinci, at
which the great master worked for many years, still counting it
unfinished, and which, nevertheless, according to Vasari, was
universally considered the most perfect and finished production of art.
But the most exquisitely finished part of it were the eyes, which
excited the wonder of all contemporaries; even the minute and almost
invisible veins were exactly rendered and put upon the canvass. But
here, on the other hand, in the portrait before him, there was something
strange and horrid. This was not art: the eyes absolutely destroyed the
harmony of the portrait. They were living, they were human eyes! They
seemed to have been cut out of a living man's face and stuck in the
picture. Instead of admiration, the portrait inspired a painful feeling
of oppression; the beholder was seized with a sort of waking nightmare,
weighing upon and overwhelming him like a moral and mysterious incubus.
Shaking off this feeling, Tchartkoff again approached the portrait, and
forced himself to gaze steadily upon its eyes. They were still fixed
upon him. He changed his place; the eyes followed him. To whatever part
of the room he removed, he met their deep malignant glance. They seemed
animated with the unnatural sort of life one might expect to find in the
eyes of a corpse, newly recalled to existence by the spell of some
potent sorcerer. In spite of his better reason, which reproached him for
his weakness, Tchartkoff felt an inexplicable impression, which made him
unwilling to remain alone in the room. He retired softly from the
portrait, turned his eyes in a different direction, and endeavoured to
forget its presence; yet, in spite of all his efforts, his eye, as
though of its own accord, kept glancing sideways at it. At last he
became even fearful to walk about; his excited imagination made him
fancy that as soon as he moved somebody was walking behind him,--at each
step he glanced timidly over his shoulder. He was naturally no coward;
but his nerves and imagination were painfully on the stretch, and he
could not control his absurd and involuntary fears. He sat down in the
corner; somebody, he thought, peeped stealthily over his shoulder into
his face. Even the loud snoring of Nikita, which resounded from the
ante-room, could not dispel his uneasiness and chase away the unreal
visions haunting him. At last he rose from his seat, timidly, without
lifting his eyes, went behind the screen and lay down on his bed.
Through the crevices in the screen he saw his room brightly illuminated
by the moon, and he beheld the portrait hanging on the wall. The eyes
were fixed upon him even more horribly and meaningly than before, and
seemed as if they would not look at any thing but him. Making a strong
effort, he got out of bed, took a sheet and hung it over the portrait.
This done, he again lay down, feeling more tranquil, and began to muse
upon his melancholy lot,--upon the thorns and difficulties that beset
the path of the friendless and aspiring artist. At intervals he
involuntarily glanced through the crevices of the screen at the shrouded
portrait. The bright moonlight increased the whiteness of the sheet, and
he at last fancied that he saw the horrible eyes shining through the
linen. He strained his sight to convince himself he was mistaken. The
contrary effect was produced. The old man's face became more and more
distinct;--there could no longer be any doubt: the sheet had
disappeared,--the grim portrait was completely uncovered, and the
infernal eyes stared straight at him, peering into his very soul. An icy
chill came over his heart. He looked again;--the old man had moved, and
stood with both hands leaning on the frame. In a few seconds he rose
upon his arms, put forth both legs and leaped out of the frame, which
was now seen empty through the crevice in the screen. A heavy footstep
was heard in the room. The poor artist's heart beat hard and fast.
Swallowing his breath for very fear, he awaited the sight of the old
man, who evidently approached his bed. And in another moment there he
was, peeping round the screen, with the same bronze-like countenance and
fixed glittering eyes. Tchartkoff made a violent effort to cry out, but
his voice was gone. He strove to stir his limbs,--they refused to obey
him. With open mouth and arrested breath he gazed upon the apparition.
It was that of a tall man in a wide Asiatic robe. The painter watched
its movements. Presently it sat down almost at his very feet, and drew
something from between the folds of its flowing dress. This was a bag.
The old man untied it, and, seizing it by the two ends, shook it: with a
dull heavy sound there fell on the floor a number of heavy packets, of a
long cylindrical shape. Their envelope was of dark blue paper, and on
each was inscribed, 1000 DUCATS. Extending his long lean hands from his
wide sleeves, the old man began unrolling the packets. There was a gleam
of gold. Great as Tchartkoff's terror was, he could not help staring
covetously at the coin, and looked on with profound attention as it
streamed rapidly through the spectre's bony hands, glittering and
clinking with a dull thin metallic sound, and was then rolled up anew.
Suddenly he remarked one packet which had rolled a little farther than
the rest, and stopped at the leg of the bedstead, near the head. By a
rapid and furtive motion he seized this packet, gazing the while at the
old man to see whether he remarked it. But he was too busy. He collected
the remaining packets, replaced them in the bag, and, without looking at
the artist, retired behind the screen. Tchartkoff's heart beat
vehemently when he heard his departing footsteps echoing through the
room. Congratulating himself on impunity, he joyfully grasped the
packet, and had almost ceased to tremble for its safety, when suddenly
the footsteps again approached the screen; the old man had evidently
discovered that one of his packets was wanting. Nearer he came, and
nearer, until once more his grim visage was seen peeping round the
screen. In an agony of terror the young man dropped the rouleau, made a
desperate effort to stir his limbs, uttered a great cry--and awoke. A
cold sweet streamed from every pore; his heart beat so violently that it
seemed about to burst; his breast felt as tight as if the last breath
were in the act of leaving it. Was it a dream? he said, pressing his
head between both hands; the vividness of the apparition made him doubt
it. Now, at any rate, he was unquestionably awake, yet he thought he saw
the old man moving as he settled himself in his frame, his hand sinking
by his side, and the border of his wide robe waving. His own hand
retained the sensation of having, but a moment before, held a weighty
substance. The moon still shone into the room, bringing out from its
dark corners here a canvass, there a lay figure, there again the drapery
thrown over a chair, or a plaster cast on its bracket on the wall.
Tchartkoff now perceived that he was not in bed, but on his feet,
opposite the portrait. How he got there--was a thing he could in no way
comprehend. What astounded him still more was the fact that the portrait
was completely uncovered. No vestige of a sheet was there, but the
living eyes staring fixedly at him. A cold sweat stood upon his brow; he
would fain have fled, but his feet were rooted to the ground. And then
he saw (of a certainty this was no dream) the old man's features move,
and his lips protruded as if about to utter words. With a shrill cry of
horror, and a despairing effort, Tchartkoff tore himself from the
spot--and awoke. It was still a dream. His heart beat as though it would
burst his bosom, but there was no cause for such agitation. He was in
bed, in the same attitude as when he fell asleep. Before him was the
screen: the chamber was filled with the watery moonbeams. Through the
crack in the screen, the portrait was visible, covered with the sheet he
had himself laid over it. Although thus convinced of the groundlessness
of his alarm, the palpitation of his heart increased in violence, until
it became painful and alarming; the oppression on his breast grew more
and more severe. He could not detach his eyes from the sheet, and
presently he distinctly saw it move, at first gently, then quickly and
violently, as though hands were struggling and groping behind it,
pulling and tearing, and striving, but in vain, to throw it aside. There
was something mysteriously awful in this struggle of an invisible power
against so flimsy an obstacle, which it yet was unable to overcome.
Tchartkoff felt his very soul chilled with fear. "Great God! what is
this?" he cried, crossing himself in an agony of terror. And once more
he awoke. For the third time he had dreamed a dream! He sprang from his
bed in utter bewilderment, his brain whirling and burning, and at first
could not make up his mind whether he had been favoured by a visit from
the _domovoi_,[29] or by that of a real apparition.
Approaching the window, he opened the _fortotchka_.[30] A sharp frosty
breeze brought refreshment to his heated frame. The moon's radiance
still lay broadly on the roofs and white walls of the houses, and small
floating clouds chased each other across the sky. All was still, save
when, from time to time, there fell faintly upon the ear the distant
jarring rattle of a lingering drojki, prowling in search of a belated
fare. For some time our young painter remained with his head out of
the fortotchka, and it was not until signs of approaching dawn were
visible in the heavens that he closed the pane, threw himself upon his
bed, and fell into a deep and dreamless slumber.
It was very late when he awoke with a violent headache. The room felt
close; a disagreeable dampness saturated the air, and made its way
through the crevices of the windows. Low-spirited, uncomfortable, and
cheerless as a drenched cock, he sat down on his dilapidated sofa, and
began to recall his dream of the previous night. So vivid was the
impression it had made, that he could hardly persuade himself it had
been a mere dream. Removing the sheet, he minutely examined the portrait
by the light of day. He was still struck with the extraordinary power
and expression of the eyes, but he found in them nothing peculiarly
terrific. Still an unpleasant impression remained upon his mind. He
could not divest himself of the conviction that a fragment of horrible
reality had mingled with his dream. In defiance of reason, he imagined
something peculiarly significant in the expression of the old man's
face; a something of the cautious stealthy look it had worn when he
crept round the screen, and counted his gold under the very nose of the
needy painter. And Tchartkoff still felt the print of the rouleau upon
his palm, as though it had but that instant left his grasp. Had he held
it but a little tighter, he thought, it must have remained in his hand
even after his awakening.
"Heavens!" he exclaimed, heaving a sorrowful sigh, "had I but the moiety
of that wealth!" And again in his mind's eye he saw the rouleaus
streaming from the sack. Again he read the attractive inscription,--1000
DUCATS; again they were unrolled, he heard the chink of metal, saw it
shine, burned to clutch it. But once more the blue paper was rolled
around it; and there he sat, motionless and entranced, straining his eyes
upon vacancy, powerless to divert their gaze from the imaginary
treasure--like a child gazing with watering mouth at a dish of
unattainable sweetmeats.
A knock at the door at last roused him from his reverie. It was promptly
followed by the entrance of his landlord, accompanied by the
_Nadziratel_, or police-inspector of the quarter--a gentleman whose
appearance is, if possible, more disagreeable to the poor than the face
of a petitioner is to the rich. The landlord of the small house in which
Tchartkoff lodged, was no bad type of the class of house-owners in such
quarters as the fifteenth line of the Vasilievskue Ostrov. In his youth,
he had been a captain in the army, where he was noted as a noisy
quarrelsome fellow; transferred thence to the civil service, he proved
himself a thorough master of the art of petty tyranny, a bustling
coxcomb and a blockhead. Age had done little to improve his character.
He had been some time a widower, had long retired from the service, was
less given to quarrels and coxcombry, but more trivial and teasing. His
chief happiness consisted in drinking tea, propagating scandal, and in
sauntering about his apartment, with hands behind his back. These
intellectual occupations were varied by an occasional inspection of the
roof of his house, by ferreting his _dvornik_, or porter, fifty times
a-day out of the kennel in which he oftener slept than watched, and by a
monthly attack upon his lodgers for their rent.
"Do me the favour to see about it yourself, Varukh Kusmitch," said the
landlord, to the Kvartalnue: "he won't pay his rent--he won't pay, sir."
"How can I, without money? Give me time, and I will pay."
"Time, my good sir! impossible! I can't hear of such a thing," said the
landlord in a rage, flourishing the key he held in his hand. "Perhaps
you don't know that Colonel Potogonkin lodges in my house--a colonel,
sir, and has lived here these seven years; and Anna Petrovna
Buchmisteroff--a lady of fortune, sir, who rents a coach-house, and a
two-stall stable, sir, and keeps three out-door servants: these are the
sort of lodgers I have. My house, I tell you plainly, is not one of
those establishments where people live who don't pay their rent. So I
will thank you to pay yours directly, and be off bag and baggage."
"You had better pay," said the Kvartalnue Nadziratel, with a slight but
significant shake of the head, sticking his forefinger through a
button-hole of his uniform.
"It's very easy to say pay, but where is the money? I have not a sous."
"In that case, you can satisfy Ivan Ivanovitch with goods, with the
produce of your profession," said the Kvartalnue; "he will probably agree
to take pictures."
"Not I, indeed! no pictures for me! It would be all very well to take
pictures with respectable subjects, such as a gentleman could hang on
his wall; a general with a star, or the likeness of Prince Kutuzoff;
but, here I see nothing but paintings of mujiks in their shirt-sleeves,
servants, and such like cattle--a mere waste of time and colours. He has
taken the likeness of that blackguard of his, whose bones I shall
assuredly break, for the thief has pulled the nails out of all my locks
and window-hasps--a scoundrel! Just look; there's a subject for you! a
picture of the room! It would have been all very well if he had drawn it
clean, neat, and orderly; but there he has got it full of filth and
rubbish, just as it is. Only see how he has bedevilled and dirtied my
room; pretty work, indeed, when I have had colonels for lodgers seven
years together, and Anna Petrovna Buchmisteroff! Truly there are no
worse lodgers than artists; they turn a drawing-room into a pigstye."
To all this, and much more, the poor painter was forced to listen
patiently. Meanwhile the Kvartalnue Nadziratel amused himself by looking
at the pictures and sketches, occasionally uttering a comment or
question.
"Not bad!" said he, pausing before a female figure: "pretty woman,
really! But what's the meaning of that black, there, under her nose? is
it snuff, or what?"
"That's the shadow," replied Tchartkoff surlily, without turning towards
him.
"You would have done better to have put it somewhere else. It is too
remarkable just under the nose," said the critical Argus. "But, whose
portrait is this?" continued he, approaching the picture that had
occasioned Tchartkoff so restless a night. "What an ugly old heathen!
And what eyes! They might belong to Belzebub himself. I must have a look
at this."
And without asking permission, or thinking it necessary to use much
ceremony with a poor devil of a painter who could not pay his rent, the
agent of the law lifted the portrait from the nails on which it hung, to
carry it to the window, and examine it at his leisure. But his hands
were stiff and clumsy, and he had miscalculated the weight of the
picture. It slipped through his fingers, and fell to the ground with a
heavy thump and slight crashing noise, upsetting some lumber that stood
against the wall, and raising a cloud of dust, which caused the man of
manacles to step back and rub his eyes. With a muttered curse on the
meddlesome official, Tchartkoff sprang forward to raise the picture. As
he did so, a small board, forming one of the sides of the frame, and
which had been cracked by the fall, gave way altogether under the
pressure of his hand, and part of it fell out. The fragment was followed
by a rouleau of dark blue paper, which emitted a dull chink as it struck
the ground. Tchartkoff's eye glanced upon an inscription; it was--1000
DUCATS. To snatch up the packet, and thrust it into his pocket, was the
work of an instant.
"Surely, I heard the sound of coin," said the Kvartalnue, who, owing to
the dust, and to the rapidity of the painter's movement, had not caught
sight of the rouleau.
"And what business of yours is it, to know what I have in my room?"
"It's my business to tell you, that you must pay the landlord his rent;
it's my business to tell you, that I know you have money, and yet you
won't pay--that's my business, my fine fellow!"
"Well, I will pay him to-day."
"And, why did you not pay at once, without giving trouble to the
landlord, and disturbing the police?"
"Because I didn't intend to touch this money. But I will pay him this
evening, and leave his lodgings at once. I will live no longer in his
paltry garret."
"He will pay you, Ivan Ivanovitch," said the Kvartalnue to the landlord.
"If you neglect to do so by this evening, why then you must excuse me,
Mr Painter, if we use severer means." And resuming his cocked hat, he
departed, followed by the landlord, who hung his head, and looked
exceedingly small.
"The devil go with them!" said Tchartkoff, as he heard the outer door
shut. He looked into the ante-room, sent Nikita out, in order to be
quite alone, locked himself in, and, with a violent palpitation of the
heart, opened his packet. It contained exactly a thousand ducats, almost
all of them quite new, and sparkling like the sun. Its appearance was
precisely the same as those he had seen in his dream. Almost frantic
with delight, he sat with the pile of gold before him, asking himself
whether he did not still dream. Long did he handle and tell the gold
before he could believe that it was real, and that he himself was awake
and in his right mind.
He then curiously and carefully examined the frame. In one side of it a
kind of cavity had been hollowed out, and afterwards closed with a
board, so neatly that if the loutish hand of the Kvartalnue Nadziratel
had not let the frame drop, the ducats might have remained for centuries
undisturbed. It was with gratitude and complacency, rather than
aversion, that the painter now contemplated the peculiar features and
remarkable eyes of the old Asiatic.
"Whoever you are, my old boy," said Tchartkoff to himself, "I'll put you
under glass, and give you a splendid frame for this."
At this moment his hand happened to touch the heap of gold, and the
contact made his heart beat as violently as ever. "What shall I do with
it?" he thought, fixing his eyes upon the money. "Now I am at my ease
for three years at least, I can shut myself in my studio, and work. I
can buy colours, pay for a comfortable lodging and good food. I have
enough for every thing; nobody can tease or badger me now. I'll get a
first-rate lay-figure, order a plaster torso, model feet, buy a Venus,
have engravings of all the great masters. And if I work steadily for
three years, quietly, without hurry, without being obliged to sell my
pictures for my daily bread, I shall astonish the world and achieve
fame."
Such was the artist's soliloquy, prompted by conscious talent and
honourable ambition. A far different counsel was given by his twenty-two
summers and heat of youth. He now had at his command all that he had
hitherto gazed at from afar with envying eyes. How his heart bounded and
swelled within him, as he thought of the luxuries he could now command!
how he longed to exchange rags for purple and fine linen, and fare
sumptuously after his long fast, to dwell in a splendid lodging, to
visit the theatre, the cafe, the ball!
Seizing his money, the young man was in the street in a moment. His
first visit was to a tailor's shop, where he dressed himself from top to
toe, and walked down the street looking at himself in every window. He
bought a huge quantity of trinkets and perfumes, an opera-glass, and a
mountain of brilliant cravats; took, without a word of bargaining, the
first lodging that he saw, a magnificent set of rooms in the Nevsku
perspective, with immense mirrors, and each window glazed with a single
pane; had his hair curled at a coiffeur's, hired a carriage, and drove
twice, without the slightest object, from one end of the town to the
other, crammed himself with bon-bons at a confectioner's, and went to a
French _restaurant_, about which he had hitherto heard only vague and
uncertain rumours, such as one hears of the Chinese empire. There he
dined, assuming the while a haughty and supercilious air, and
incessantly arranging his well-curled locks. There, too, he drank a
bottle of champagne; a liquid he had hitherto known only by reputation.
His head full of wine, he went out into the street, gay, bold, ready for
any thing--able to face the devil, as the Russians say. On the bridge he
met his former professor, and pushed coolly past him, as if he did not
observe him, leaving the poor man motionless with astonishment, a mark
of interrogation visibly printed in his countenance. All that he
possessed in the world, easels, canvasses, pictures, Tchartkoff
transported that very evening to his new and splendid lodgings. He
arranged his best pictures in the most visible situations, cast those he
thought less of into corners, and perambulated his splendid rooms,
looking at himself each minute in the mirrors. Then there arose in his
mind a restless desire to take fame by storm, instantly, without delay,
and to compel, by whatever means, the applause of the multitude. Already
the cry rang in his ears, "Tchartkoff, Tchartkoff! haven't you seen
Tchartkoff's picture? What a rapid pencil Tchartkoff has! Tchartkoff has
immense talent!" Musing, and castle-building, he paced his apartment
till a late hour of the night, and when in bed, could not sleep for
ruminating his ambitious projects.
The next morning he took a dozen ducats, and drove to the editor of a
fashionable newspaper. The introduction was efficacious. The journalist
praised his genius, professed the most ardent desire to serve him,
loaded him with compliments, shook him fervently by both hands, and
accompanied him obsequiously to the door, making minute inquiries as to
his name, his style of painting, his place of residence.
The very next day there appeared in the newspaper, immediately after an
advertisement of newly discovered candles, warranted to burn without
wicks, an article headed,
EXTRAORDINARY TALENT OF TCHARTKOFF.
"We hasten to congratulate the inhabitants of this polite metropolis on
what may be styled a _discovery_ of the most splendid and useful
nature. We refer to the sudden appearance of an artist of consummate
skill, possessing all the qualifications that can render a painter
worthy to transfer to the magic canvass the faces of the many beautiful
women and handsome men who adorn the cultivated circles of St
Petersburg. Ladies may now confidently rely on being transmitted to
posterity without diminution of their graces, with all their delicate
loveliness, enchanting symmetry of form, and exquisite expression of
feature--graces ephemeral, alas! as the existence of the butterfly that
hovers over the vernal flowers. Parents, ere they leave this vale of
tears, may bequeath to their sorrowing children their exact resemblance.
The warrior, the statesman, the poet, all classes of men, in short, will
pursue their career with fresh zeal and ardour, now that the brilliant
pencil of a Tchartkoff enables them to transmit to posterity their
visible features, as well as their imperishable renown. Let all hasten,
then, abandoning promenade, and party, opera, ball, and theatre, to the
splendid and luxurious studio of our artist, (Nevsku Perspective,
No.--). It is hung with portraits, the produce of his pencil, worthy a
Vandyke or a Titian. The happy connoisseur knows not what to admire most
in these exquisite works, their exact resemblance to the original, or
the extraordinary brilliancy and freshness of their handling. They must
be seen to be even imperfectly appreciated; the artist has truly drawn a
prize in the lottery of genius. Success to you, Andrei Petrovitch! (the
journalist was evidently fond of the familiar style). _Macte nova
virtute_, and immortalise yourself and us. Glory, fortune, crowds of
sitters, in spite of the feeble and envious efforts of certain
contemporary prints, will be your speedy and unfailing reward!"
His face beaming with contentment, our artist perused this puff. He saw
his name in print,--a thing which was to him a complete novelty; and he
could not help reading the lines at least a dozen times. He was
particularly tickled with the comparison of his works to Vandyke and
Titian. The use of his baptismal name, Andrei Petrovitch, also gratified
him not a little. To be mentioned in this delightfully familiar way in
print, was to him an honour as gratifying as it was new. He could not
remain quiet a moment. Now he sat down in a chair, then threw himself
picturesquely on a sofa, rehearsing the way he would receive his
sitters; then he went to his easel, and gave a bold dashing stroke of
the brush, studying at the same time a graceful mode of wielding it.
Thus he got through the day.
The next morning, soon after breakfast, his bell rang. He hurried to the
door; a lady entered, preceded by a footman in a furred livery cloak,
and accompanied by a young girl of eighteen, her daughter.
"Monsieur Tchartkoff, I believe?" said the lady. The painter bowed.
"I have seen your name in the papers; your portraits, they say, are
incomparable." With these words the lady put her glass to her eye, and
glanced round the walls, which were bare. "But where are all your
portraits?"
"They are not arrived," said the artist, a little confused; "I have just
removed into these rooms, the pictures are still on the road--they will
soon be here."
"You have been in Italy?" said the lady, turning her eye-glass on the
painter in the absence of the paintings.
"No, I have not been there exactly--I intend to go--I have been
compelled to put it off; but pray do me the honour to sit down; you must
be tired."
"You are very kind, but I have been sitting--in my carriage. Ah, at
last, I see some of your works!" said the lady, running up to the
opposite side of the room, and levelling her glass at some canvasses
placed on the floor, studies, sketches, interiors, and portraits.
"_C'est charmant! Lise, Lise! venez ici_: there's an interior in the
manner of Teniers, see: all is in disorder, higgledy-piggledy, a table
with a bust upon it, a hand, a palette; and the dust, look how well the
dust is painted! _c'est charmant!_ And there is another canvass, a woman
washing her face--_quelle jolie figure!_ Oh, and there's a _mujik_!
Lise, Lise! a _mujik_ in a Russian shirt! look, do look--_a mujik_! So
you don't paint portraits only?"
"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."
Tchartkoff 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 Tchartkoff, 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 Tchartkoff 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 Vasilievskue Ostrov. Nikita
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 Tchartkoff
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.
Tchartkoff 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. Tchartkoff 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 idee delicieuse!_ 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. Tchartkoff 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.
Tchartkoff 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 Vasilievskue 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
Andrei Petrovitch--our veteran of the pencil, Andrei Petrovitch." 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. Tchartkoff 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, Tchartkoff 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 Tchartkoff'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, Tchartkoff 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
Tchartkoff. All were absorbed in contemplation of the masterpiece; and
in the eyes of the more enthusiastic tears of delight were seen to
glisten. Tchartkoff 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,
Tchartkoff 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 Vasilievskue 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, Tchartkoff 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 Stchukin 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.
Tchartkoff 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. Tchartkoff, 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,
Tchartkoff, 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.
Fortunately for society and for art, such an unnatural and agitated
existence as this could not long endure. Tchartkoff's mental excitement
was too violent for his physical strength. A burning fever and furious
delirium ravaged his frame, and in a few days he was but the ghost of
his former self. The delirium augmented, and became a permanent and
incurable mania, in some of whose paroxysms it was necessary to bind him
to his couch. He fancied he saw continually before him the singular old
portrait from the Stchukin Dvor! This was the more strange, because
since the day he had turned it out of his studio, it had never once met
his sight. But now he raved of its terrible living eyes, which haunted
him unceasingly, and when this fancy came over him, his madness was
something terrific. All the persons who approached his bed he imagined
to be horrible portraits; copies, repeated again and again, of the old
man with the fiendish eyes. The image multiplied itself perpetually; the
ceiling, the walls, the floor, were all covered with portraits, staring
sternly and fixedly at him with living eyes. The room extended and
stretched out to a vast and interminable gallery, to afford room for
millions of repetitions of the ghastly picture. In vain did numerous
physicians seek to discover, with a view to the alleviation of the poor
wretch's sufferings, some secret connexion between the incidents of his
past life and the strange phantom that thus eternally haunted him. No
explanation or clue could be obtained from the patient, who continued to
apostrophise the portrait in disconnected phrase, and to utter howls of
agony and lamentation. At last his existence terminated in one last
horrible paroxysm. His corpse was frightful to behold; of his once
comely form, a yellow shrivelled skeleton was all that remained. A few
thousand rubles were the sole residue of his wealth; and his
disappointed heirs, beholding numerous drawers and closets full of torn
fragments that had once composed noble pictures, understood and cursed
the odious use to which their relative had applied his princely fortune.