Eva
Something about the artist’s nature resolves. Iso would have been shy of attention and happiest on the periphery. An observer who was occasionally overlooked.
‘Come and look,’ she says to the curator.
The curator knows it well. She used the artist’s descriptions in her catalogue. It made her job easier.
‘Go on,’ the curator says.
Eva is grateful. She takes a breath.
‘Iso was making a record,’ she says. ‘She wasn’t just making art in her spare time or drawing subjects that were accessible. She was recording the war as deliberately as a journalist might.’
The curator is listening.
‘That’s probably obvious, but she was selfless about it,’ Eva continues.
‘As good as some of them are, her drawings of the camp are not up to the standard of the oils she had been painting before the war – they would not have been hung in the Paris Salon, and Iso was hung in the Paris Salon. She was not thinking of her reputation when she made these drawings, she was thinking of what should be recorded.’
‘Is that what you will write?’ the curator asks.
Eva takes a breath and thinks. Someone had said no to Iso – the war is not yours to paint; it is not your story to tell – but Iso had done it anyway. She smiles. ‘It’s worth exploring, don’t you think?’