Chapter Six #3
Every Tuesday at four o’clock, instead of attending the scheduled lesson at school, she walked to his narrow slice of a house in Stafford Street, a short distance away, where with four other girls she studied figure and portrait drawing and painting.
It was a tremendous honour to be chosen, and Tuesday afternoons were the high point of her week.
Bron, who claimed not to be envious of the extra attention and scrutiny, the extra opportunities to fail, nevertheless asked her rather wistfully what it was like. ‘Do you enjoy it?’
‘It’s hard work. An hour and a half of instruction, practice and intense concentration,’ Alice told her. ‘Being under Mr Wentworth’s eye with nowhere to hide one’s faults is terrifying.’ She grinned. ‘Of course I enjoy it! I wouldn’t give it up for anything.’
‘Well, you can’t be doing too badly, since he hasn’t dropped you,’ Bron said. ‘I heard Miss Sanger was in his class last year and was dropped after three weeks. She was terribly upset. She left the school and went home.’
Alice had feared the same was going to happen to her when at the end of the last lesson before Easter he had asked Alice to remain behind.
The other girls filed out, giving her curious looks, and she knew that as soon as they were out of earshot their heads would come together and they would be canvassing her downfall.
Wentworth had carried on clearing up his own table until she had wondered if he had forgotten her, and cleared her throat politely.
He turned, gave her a considering look, and said, ‘When we resume after Easter, you will not come to me at four on Tuesdays. You will join the other girls in Miss Deeks’s class at that time. ’
For just a moment her stomach had fallen away sickeningly with disappointment. How could she have thought her abilities were in any way out of the ordinary? He had found her out in her mediocrity.
But it was only a single heartbeat before he resumed. ‘You will come to me at five on Wednesdays instead. That is all.’
Now, on the first Wednesday of the new term, full of relief, gratitude and good intentions, she arrived promptly in his studio and found no-one there but him.
‘Ah, Miss Tallant. You are punctual – good. We shall begin.’
‘Won’t we wait for the others?’ she asked tentatively.
‘There are no others,’ he said. ‘I have made this class for you. I shall teach you one to one.’ She was too surprised to say anything, and he added, ‘You show promise, Miss Tallant. I think you have it in you to be an artist, not just another capable painter. I wish to give you special instruction and nurture the qualities I see.’
She had only been able to stammer thank you. This was Mr Wentworth – the Ivor Wentworth, famous, lauded, practically a god – and he thought she had promise? He thought she might become an artist, like him? She found her hands trembling as she took off her coat and hat and hung them up.
She was about to put on her smock when he raised a hand and said, ‘You won’t need that.
No grubbing today. Our sessions last term were all about technique, but to progress you need to study theory and philosophy as well.
’ An easel was set up in the middle of the room, on which a clean sheet of paper was concealing what was underneath.
‘We shall consider today the fine line between art and eroticism.’ He flipped the cover up and over, revealing a photograph, mounted on another sheet, of a statue.
‘You remember, I am sure, that we looked at this marble at Lord Leven’s house. ’
The Tuesday sessions had mostly been spent in his studio studying and copying the works of great masters such as Holbein, Reynolds, Gainsborough, Lely and Van Gogh.
But they had also made visits to galleries, including the Leven Collection, to look at the real thing.
Among his many treasures, Lord Leven had a full-sized copy of the Lely Venus, a Roman-era marble statue of a naked woman crouching, as if washing herself in a pool.
Alice remembered how Mr Wentworth had used his pointer to run over the various sinuous curves, to indicate the muscle structure.
When the pointer had caressed the perfect globes of the buttocks, it had caused Miss Henderson to giggle, which had made Wentworth angry.
He had told her that if she couldn’t appreciate pure form she had better leave the class, which had sobered the poor girl instantly.
It was a beautiful statue. Of course, a photograph did not do it justice, but she recalled it perfectly.
Wentworth seemed about to speak again, then frowned and said, ‘Do you know what “erotic” means?’
Alice felt herself blush. ‘Um – not – not entirely,’ she said. He waited, looking at her. ‘Is it to do with—’
‘Yes?’ he urged impatiently.
She looked at her feet. ‘To do with love. Physical love,’ she managed.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘The erotic is that which evokes, or provokes, sexual feelings in the viewer. The word “sexual” is going to come up frequently over the weeks, Miss Tallant. I know you are a well-brought-up young lady, but no-one in this room is going to judge you on drawing-room shibboleths. You must harden yourself and cast off false modesty if you are to be an artist. Art – and in this context I mean not just fine art but literature and to an extent music as well – art has a very close relationship with sex. They are the two most powerful driving forces in life. And sex is what enables art to rouse strong feelings in us. You, I think – please look at me, Miss Tallant.’ She raised her head and looked at him, focusing on the bridge of his nose, so as not to meet his eyes, which would have been impossible.
‘You, I think,’ he continued, ‘are not a stranger to sexual feelings. Am I right?’
She thought instantly of Axe Brandom, and she saw in Wentworth’s face that he had somehow fathomed it.
How did he know? He had looked through her sketching-book once and seen a drawing – she had been sketching Wentworth’s own three-quarter back view, but the figure had somehow turned into Axe without her intending it.
He had asked her pointedly who it was meant to be. Could he really tell, just from that?
She saw that he was going to make her answer. ‘I think so, yes,’ she whispered.
He nodded, and said, ‘Don’t be ashamed. It’s natural and good – and necessary if you are to be an artist. You have experienced sexual feelings, but society wishes you, as a female, to deny them.
Through art you will be able to express them.
’ To her relief, he turned back to the easel.
‘So – Lely’s Venus. Remember her, hold her in your mind, and now look at this.
’ He turned over the sheet and revealed the next subject.
‘This is Olympe, by édouard Manet. Look at it, please. It caused shock and controversy when it was first exhibited in Paris in 1865. Some called it vulgar, some immoral. There were calls for it to be destroyed, burned. Why do you think that was?’
A woman reclined on a chaise longue, her face turned towards the viewer.
The ‘lighting’ in the picture was hard and bright, so that the woman’s body stood out very white.
She had one hand covering her pudenda, but the rest of her was naked.
No, actually, not quite: she had a black ribbon tied in a bow round her neck, a bracelet on one wrist, and a little pair of silken high-heeled slippers, one of which had fallen off her foot onto the chaise.
Looking at the picture made Alice feel uncomfortable: she experienced a sensation of heat behind her eyes, as though her brain were blushing.
‘Well?’ Wentworth said. ‘In recent weeks we have looked at a great many depictions of naked women, on canvas and in marble. Classical art is full of them. Why is this different?’
The heat was fading. Now she had got used to looking at it, the initial shock was gone, and she could study it impassively – almost. Manet was a famous painter from the previous century, one of the great ones, so there could not be anything wrong in her studying it, could there?
Wentworth had said it had shocked when it was first exhibited so presumably it was accepted now.
So, what was it about the white body that was unsettling?
‘I think it’s the face,’ she said at last. The woman in the painting was not classically beautiful, though she had a certain cat-like prettiness, but she seemed very much a real person, not an allegorical figure.
And she was gazing straight at the viewer, a hard stare, not exactly defiant, but brooking no criticism. ‘It’s the way she’s staring.’
Wentworth smiled. ‘Yes, well done! This is no goddess, no remote figure from the myths of Greece and Rome. This is a real flesh-and-blood woman from our own times. And she displays no shyness or modesty.’ He flipped the sheet back.
‘Remember Lely’s Venus – her eyes lowered, her face turned away, covering herself with her arms. Nude women from the classical period generally have draperies concealing various parts, and they never stare.
But Miss Olympia’ – he flipped the sheet and the white naked body was exposed again – ‘has nothing to hide. Here she is on display, like fruit on a market stall, and she wants you to look at her. I have to tell you, in context, that various elements in the picture suggest that she is a prostitute.’
An hour ago Alice would have gasped at the word, but she had hardened a little. Besides, she was too interested to yield to embarrassment.
‘I think…’ she began, saw his encouraging nod, and continued ‘…I think the ribbon round her neck and the bracelet and slippers somehow make her look even more naked than if she were wearing nothing.’ By decorating only her extremities, the subject seemed to be emphasising what lay between.