Читать книгу: «Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844», страница 16

SITTING FOR A PORTRAIT

What could induce you, my dear Eusebius, to commit yourself into the hands of a portrait-painter? And so, you ask me to go with you. Are you afraid, that you want me to keep you in countenance, where I shall be sure to put you out? You ask too petitioningly, as if you suspected I should refuse to attend your execution; for you are going to be be-headed, and soon will it be circulated through your village, that you have had your head taken off: I will not go with you—it would spoil all. You are afraid to trust the painter. You think he may be a physiognomist, and will hit some characteristic which you would quietly let slip his notice; and you flatter yourself that I might help to mislead him. Are you afraid of being made too amiable, or too plain? No, no! You are not vain. Whence comes this vagary?—well, we shall all know in good time. Were I to be with you, I should talk—perhaps maliciously—on purpose to see how your features would unsettle and shift themselves to the vagrant humour, that though one would know another from habit, and their old acquaintanceship, the painter would never be able to keep them steadily together. I should laugh to see every lineament "going ahead," and art "non compos."

I will, however, venture to put down some plain directions how you are to sit. First, let me tell you how you are not to sit. Don't, in your horror of a sentimental amiable look, put on yourself the air of a Diogenes, or you will be like nothing human—and if you shun Diogenes, you may put on the likeness of a still greater fool. No man living can look more wise than you; but if you fall out with wisdom, or would in your whim throw contempt on it, no one can better play the fool. You are the laughing or crying Philosopher at pleasure—but sit as neither, for in either character you will set the painter's house in a roar. I fear the very plaster figures in it will set you off—to see yourself in such motley company, with Bacchus and Hercules, and Jupiter and Saturn, with his marble children to devour. You will look Homer and Socrates in the face; and I know will make antics, throw out, and show fight to the Gladiator. This may be, if your painter, as many of them do, affect the antique; but if he be another sort of guess person, it may be worse still with you. You may not have to make your bow to a Venus Anadyomene—but how will you be able to face the whole Muggletonian synod? Imagine the "Complete Body," from the Evangelical Magazine, framed and glazed, round the walls, and all looking at you in the condemned cell. Against this you must prepare; for many country artists prefer this line to the antique. It is their connexion—and should you make a mistake and go to the wrong man, you will most assuredly be added to the Convocation, if not put to head a controversy as frontispiece. It will be in vain for you to say, "Fronti nulla fides;" "[Greek: gnothi seauton]" before you get there, or nobody will know you. Take care lest your physiognomy be canvassed by many more besides the painter. Are you prepared to have your every lineament scrutinized by every body? to hear behind a screen the disparagement of your lips, your eyes thought deceitful, and, in addition, a sentence of general ugliness passed upon you? So you must stoop to paint-pots, have daubs of reds, and yellows, and greys perked up against your nose for comparison. Your man may be a fancy mesmerizer, or mesmerize you, now that it is flying about like an epidemic, without knowing it. If he can, he will surely do it, to keep you still: that is the way to get a good sitter. Eusebius in a coma! answering all comers, like one of the heads in the play of Macbeth! But I was to tell you how to sit—that is the way, get into a coma—that will be the painter's best chance of having you; or, when he has been working for hours, he may find you a Proteus, and that you have slipped through his fingers after all his toil to catch you. I will tell you what happened to a painter of my acquaintance. A dentist sat to him two days—the third the painter worked away very hard—looked at the picture, then at his sitter. "Why, sir," said he; "I find I have been all wrong—what can it be? Why, sir, your mouth is not at all like what it was yesterday." "Ah! ah! I will tell you vat it ees," replied the French dentist; "ah! good—my mouse is not de same—no indeed—yesterday I did have my jaw in, but I did lend it out to a lady this day." Don't you think of this now while you are sitting. You know the trick Garrick played the painter, who, foiled in his attempt, started up, and said—"You must be Garrick or the d——!" Then as to attitude, 'tis ten to one but you will be put into one which will be quite uncomfortable to you. One, perhaps, after a pattern. I should advise you to resist this—and sit easy—if you can. Don't put your hand in your waistcoat, and one arm akimbo, like a Captain Macheath, however he may entreat you; and don't be made looking up, like a martyr, which some wonderfully affect; and don't be made turn your head round, as if it was in disgust with the body; and don't let your stomach be more conspicuous than the head, like a cucumber running to seed. Don't let him put your arm up, as in command, or accompanied with a rapt look as if you were listening to the music of the spheres; don't thrust out your foot conspicuously, as if you meant to advertise the blacking. Some artists are given to fancy attitudes such as best set off the coats, they are but nature's journeymen at the faces; don't fancy that the cut, colour, or cloth of your coat will exempt you from the penalty of their practice. Why, Eusebius, they have lay-figures, and dress them just as you see them at the tailor's or perfumer's; and one of these things will be put up for you—a mannikin for Eusebius! In such hands the coat is by far the best piece of work, you may be sure your own won't be taken for a pattern. You will despise it when you see it, and it will be one you can never change—it will defy vamping. You may be at any time new varnished whenever after generations shall wish to see how like a dancing-master the old gentleman must have looked. It is enough to make you a dancing bear now to think of it. Others, again, equip you with fur and make you look as if you were in the Hudson's Bay Company. Luckily for you, flowered dressing-gowns are out, or you might have been represented a Mantelini. What can you be doing! It is difficult to put you in your positions. There are some that will turn you about and about a half an hour or more before they begin, as they would a horse at the fair—ay, and look in your mouth too. If they cannot get you otherwise into an attitude, they will shampoo you into one. And, remember, all this they will do, because they have not the skill to paint any one sitting quite easy. Don't have a roll in your hand—that always signifies a member of Parliament. Don't have your finger on a book—that would be a pedantry you could not endure. I cannot imagine what you will do with your hands. Ten to one, however, but the painter leaves then out or copies them out of some print when you are gone. This will be picking and stealing that you will have no hand in. What to do with any one's hands is a most difficult thing to say—too many do not know what to do with them themselves; and, under the suffering of sitting, I think you will be one of them. If there is a child in the room, you will be making rabbits with your fingers. Then you are at the mercy of the painter's privilege—the foreground and background. If you have the common fate, your head will be stuck upon a red curtain, a watered pattern. If your man has used up his carmine, you will be standing in a fine colonnade, waiting with the utmost patience for the burst of a thunder cloud that makes the marble column stand out conspicuously, and there will be a distant park scene; and thus you will represent the landed interest: or you will perhaps have your glove in your hand—a device adopted by some, to intimate that they are hand and glove with all the neighbouring gentry. And it is a common thing to have a new hat and a walking-cane upon a marble table. This shows the sitter has the use of his legs, which otherwise might be doubted, and is therefore judicious. If you are supposed to be in the open air, you will not know at first sight that you are so represented, until you have learned the painter's hieroglyphic for trees. You will find them to be angular sorts of sticks, with red and yellow flag-rags flapping about; and ten to one but you have a murky sky, and no hat on your head; but as to such a country as you ever walked in, or ever saw, don't expect to see such a one as a background to your picture, and you will readily console yourself that you are turning your back upon it. If you are painted in a library, books are cheap—so that the artist can afford to throw you in a silver inkstand into the bargain, and a pen—such a pen! the goose wouldn't know it that bred it—and perhaps an open letter to answer, with your name on the cover. If you are made answering the letter, that will never be like you—perhaps it would be more like if the letter should be unopened. Now, do not flatter yourself; Eusebius, that all these things are matters of choice with you. "Non omnia possumus omnes," is the regular rule of the profession; some stick to the curtain all their lives, from sheer inability to set it—to draw it aside. You remember the sign-painter that went about painting red lions, and his reply to a refractory landlord who insisted upon a white lamb. "You may have a white lamb if you please, but when all is said and done, it will be a great deal more like a red lion." And I am sorry to say, the faces too, are not unfrequently in this predicament, for they have a wonderful family likeness, and these run much by counties. A painter has often been known totally to fail, by quitting his beat. There is certainly an advantage in this; for if any gentleman should be so unfortunate as to have no ancestors, he may pick up at random, in any given county in England, a number that will very well match, and all look like blood-relations. There is an instance where this resemblance was greatly improved, by the advice of an itinerant of the profession, who, at a very moderate price, put wigs on all the Vandyks. And there you see some danger, Eusebius, that—be represented how you may—you are not sure of keeping your condition ten years; you may have, by that time, a hussar cap put upon your unconscious head. But portraits fare far worse than that.

I remember, when a boy, walking with an elderly gentleman, and passing a broker's stall, there was the portrait of a fine florid gentleman in regimentals; he stopped to look at it—he might have bought it for a few shillings. After we had gone away,—"that," said he, "is the portrait of my wife's great uncle—member for the county, and colonel of militia: you see how he is degraded to these steps." "Why do you not rescue him?" said I. "Because he left me nothing," was the reply. A relative of mine, an old lady, hit upon a happy device; the example is worth following. Her husband was the last of his race, for she had no children. She took all the family portraits out of their frames, rolled up all the pictures, and put them in the coffin with the deceased. No one was more honourably accompanied to the grave—and so he slept with his fathers. It has not, to be sure, Eusebius, much to do with your portrait, but thinking of these family portraits, one is led on to think of their persons, &c.; so I must tell you what struck me as a singular instance of the 'sic nos non nobis.' I went with a cousin, upon a sort of pilgrimage at some distance, to visit some family monuments. There was one large handsome marble one in the chancel. You will never guess how it had been treated. A vicar's wife had died, and the disconsolate widower had caused a square marble tablet, with the inscription of his wife's virtues, to be actually inserted in the Very centre of our family monument: and yet you, by sitting for your portrait, hope to be handed down unmutilated to generations to come,—yes, they will come, and you will be a mark for the boys to shoot peas at—that is, if you remain at all in the family—you may be transferred to the wench's garret, or the public-house, and have a pipe popped through the canvass into your mouth, to make you look ridiculous. I really think you have a chance of being purchased, to be hung up in the club parlour as pictorial president of the Odd-Fellows. Why should you be exempt from what kings are subject to? The "king's head" is a sign in many a highway, to countenance ill-living. You too, will be bought at a broker's—have your name changed without your consent—and be adopted into a family whereof you would heartily despise the whole kith and kin. If pride has not a fall in the portraits of the great and noble, where shall we find it?"

A painter once told me, that he assisted one of the meanest of low rich men, to collect some family portraits; he recommended to him a fine Velasquez. "Velasquez!—who's he?" said the head of his family. "It is a superb picture, sir—a genuine portrait by the Spaniard, and doubtless, of some Spanish nobleman. "Then," said he, "I won't have it; I'll have no Spanish blood contaminate my family, sir." "Spanish blood," rejected by the plebeian! I have known better men than you, Eusebius—excuse the comparison—vamped up and engraved upon the spur of the moment, for celebrated highwaymen or bloody murderers. But this digression won't help you out in your sitting. Let me see what the learned say upon the subject—what advice shall we get from the man of academies. Here we have him, Gerrard Larresse; you may be sure that he treats of portrait-painting, and with importance enough too. Here it is—"Of Portraiture." But that is far too plan. We must have an emblem:—

 
"Emblem touching the handling of portraits."
 

"Nature with her many breasts, is in a sitting posture. Near her stands a little child, lifting her garment off her shoulders. On the other side stands Truth, holding a mirror before her, wherein she views herself down to the middle, and is seemingly surprised at it. On the frame of this glass, are seen a gilt pallet and pencils. Truth has a book and palm branch in her hand." What do you think of that, Eusebius, for a position? But why Nature or Truth should be surprised at viewing herself down to the middle, I cannot imagine. It evidently won't do to surprise you in that manner. Poor Gerrard, I see, thinks it a great condescension in him to speak of portrait-painting at all; he calls it, "departing from the essence of art, and subjecting (the painter) to all the defects of nature." Hear that, Eusebius! you are to sit to be a specimen of the defects of nature. He is indignant that "such great masters as Vandyke, Lely, Van Loo, the old and young Bakker, and others," possessed of great talents, postponed what is noble and beautiful to what is more ordinary. There you are again, Eusebius, with your ordinary visage, unworthy such men as the old and young Bakker, whoever they were. But since there must be portraits, he could endure the method of the ancients, who, "used to cause those from whom the commonwealth had received extraordinary benefits, either in war or civil affairs, or for eminence in religion, to be represented in marble or metal, or in a picture, that the sight of them, by those honours, might be a spur to posterity to emulate the same virtues. This honour was first begun with their deities; afterwards it was paid to heroes, and of consequence to philosophers, orators, religious men, and others, not only to perpetuate their virtues, but also to embalm their names and memories. But now it goes further; a person of any condition whatsoever, have he but as much money as the painter asks, must sit for his picture. This is a great abuse, and sprung from as laudable a cause."

Are you not ashamed to sit after that? He is not, however, without his indulgences. He will allow something to a lover and a husband.

"Has a citizen's wife but an only babe? he is drawn at half a year old; at ten years old he sits again; and for the last time in his twenty-fifth year, in order to show her tender folly: and then she stands wondering how a man can so alter in that time. Is not this a weighty reason? a reprovable custom, if painters did not gain by it. But again, portraits are allowable, when a lover is absent from his mistress, that they may send each other their pictures, to cherish and increase their loves; a man and wife parted so may do the same." You undertake, you perceive, a matter of some responsibility—you must account to your conscience for the act of sitting for your picture. Then there is a chapter upon defects, which, as I suppose he presumes people don't know themselves, he catalogues pretty fully, till you are quite out of humour with poor human nature. The defects are "natural ones—accidental ones—usual ones." Natural—"a wry face, squint eyes, wry mouth, nose," &c. Accidental. "Loss of an eye, a cut on the cheek, or other part of the face, pits of the small-pox and the like." Usual. "Contraction of the eyes and mouth, or closing or gaping of the latter, or drawing it in somewhat to this or that side, upwards or downwards," &c. As for other bodily infirmities, how many have wry necks, hunchbacks, bandy legs—withered or short arms, or one shorter than another; dead or lame hands or fingers." Now, are you so sure of the absence of all these defects, that you venture? You must think yourself an Adonis, and not think that you are to be flattered, by having any very considerable number of your defects hid. "The necessary ones ought to be seen, because they help the likeness; such as a wry face, squint eyes, low forehead, thinness, and fatness; a wry neck, too short or too long a nose; wrinkles between the eyes; ruddiness or paleness of the cheeks, or lips; pimples or warts about the mouth; and such like." After this, it is right you should know that "Nature abhors deformity." Nay, that we always endeavour to hide our own—and which do you mean to hide, or do you intend to come out perfect? I daresay you can discover some little habits of your own, Eusebius, free from vanity as you are, that tend to these little concealments! Do you remember how a foolish man lost a considerable sum of money once, by forgetting this human propensity? He had lost some money to little K—— of Bath, the deformed gambler—and being netted at his loss, thought to pique the winner. "I'll wager," said he, "£50, I'll point out the worst leg in company."—"Done," said K—— to his astonishment. "The man does not know himself," thought he, for there sat K—— crouched up all shapes by the fireside. The wagerer, to win his bet, at once cried, "Why, that," pointing to K——'s leg, which was extended towards the grate. "No," said K—— quietly unfolding the other from beneath the chair, and showing it, "that's worse." By which you may learn the fact—that every man puts his best leg foremost. But we must not quit our friend Gerard yet. I like his grave conceit. I rejoice to find him giving the painters a rap over their knuckles. He says, Eusebius, that they are fond of having "smutty pictures" in their rooms; and roundly tells them, that though fine pictures are necessary, there is no need of their having such subjects as "Mars and Venus, and Joseph and Potiphar's Wife." Now, though I do not think our moderns offend much in this respect—the hint is good—and some exhibit studies from models about their rooms, that evidently sat without their stays. Gerard was the man for contrivances—here is a capital one. He does not quite approve of painting a wooden leg; but if it be to be done, see with what skill even that in the hands of a Gerard may be dignified—and the painter absolved, "lege solutus." "But if the hero insist upon the introducing of such a leg, on a supposition that 'tis an honour to have lost a limb in his country's service, the painter must then comply with his desires; or else contrive it lying on a table covered with red velvet." But capital as this is, it is not all. He quite revels in contrivances; "if he desire it after the antique manner, it must be contrived in a bas-relief, wherein the occasion of it may be represented; or it may hang near him on a wall, with its buckles and straps, as is done in hunting equipages; or else it may be placed among the ornaments of architecture, to be more in view." You see he scorns to hide it—has worked up his imagination to conceive all possible ways of showing it; depend upon it he longed to paint a wooden leg, to which the face should be the appendage, the leg the portrait. "Hoc ligno," not "hoc signo vinces." But here Gerard bounces—giving an instance of a gentleman "who, being drawn in little, and comparing the smallness of the eyes with his own, asked the painter whether he had such? However, in complaisance, and for his pleasure, he desired that one eye at least might be as big as his own, the other to remain as it was." Fie, Gerard! you have spoiled your emblem by taking the mirror out of truth's hand.

He is particular about postures and backgrounds. "It will not be improper to treat also about easiness and sedateness in posture, opposed to stir and bustle, and the contrary—namely, that the picture of a gentlewoman of repute, who, in a grave and sedate manner, turns towards that of her husband, hanging near it, gets a great decorum by moving and stirring hind-works, whether by means of waving trees, or crossing architecture of stone and wood, or any thing else that the master thinks will best contrast, or oppose, the sedate posture of his principal figure." Here you see Eusebius, how hind-works tend to keep up a bustle! "And because these are things of consequence, and may not be plainly apprehended by every one," he explains himself by ten figures in one plate—and such figures! As a sitter, he would place you very much above the eye—that is, technically speaking, adopt a low horizon; "because—the because is a because—because it's certain that when we see any painted figure, or object, in a place where the life can be expected, as standing on the ground, leaning over a balcony or balustrade, or out at a window, &c., it deceives the eye, and by being seen unawares, (though expected,) causes sometimes a pleasing mistake; or it frightens and surprises others, when they meet with it unexpectedly, at such places as aforesaid, and where there is any likelihood for it." Your artist will probably put you on an inverted box, and sitting in a great chair, probably covered with red morocco leather, in which you will not be at home, and in any manner comfortable. We see this deal box sometimes converted into a marble step, as a step to a throne, and such it is in one of the pictures of the Queen; but it is so ill coloured, that it looks for all the world like a great cheese; it should be sent to the farmers who made the Queen the cheese present, to show the pride of England walking upon the "fat of the land." He presents us with many methods of showing the different characters of persons to be painted, some of which will be novel to you. For instance, you would not expect directions to represent a secretary of state with the accompaniments of a goose. "With a secretary the statue of Harpocrates, and in tapestry or bas-relief, the story of Alexander shutting Hephæstion's mouth with a seal-ring; also the emblem of fidelity, or a goose with a stone in its bill." Methinks the director, or governor, of the East India Company, must look very small beside his bedizened accessory, meant to represent Company. "She is to be an heroine with a scollop of mother-of-pearl on her head, in the nature of an helmet, and thereon a coral branch; a breast ornament of scales; pearls and corals about her neck; buskins on her legs, with two dolphins conjoined head to head, adorned with sea-shells; two large shells on her shoulders, a trident in her hand, and her clothing a long mantle; a landskip behind her of an Indian prospect, with palm and cocoa trees, some figures of blacks, and elephant's teeth. This figure also suits an admiral, or commander at sea, when a sea-fight is introduced instead of a landskip." Such a figure may, indeed, be more at home at sea, and such a one may have been that famous lady, whose captain so "very much applauded her," and

 
"Made her the first lieutenant
Of the gallant Thunder Bomb."
 

Not a painter of the present day, it seems, knows how to paint the clergy. Mr Pickersgill has done quite common things, and simply shown the cloth and the band—that is poor device. See how Gerard would have it done. Every clergyman should be a Dr Beattie. "With a divine agrees the statue of truth, represented in a Christian-like manner, or else this same emblem in one of his hands, and his other on his breast, besides tapestries, bas-reliefs, or paintings, and some Christian emblems of the true faith; and representation of the Old and New Testament—in the offskip a temple." All the portraits of the great duke are defective, inasmuch as none of them have "Mars in a niche," or Victory sitting on a trophy, or a statue of Hercules. You probably have no idea what a great personage is a "sea-insurer." He is accompanied by Arion on a dolphin; and in a picture a sea-haven, with a ship under sail making towards it; on the shore the figure of Fortune, and (who are, think you, the "supercargoes?") over the cargo "Castor and Pollux." In this mode of portrait-painting it would be absolutely necessary to go back to the old plan of putting the names underneath the personages; and even then, though you write under such, this is Castor, this Pollux, and this the sea-insurer, it will ever puzzle the whole ship's crew to conjecture how they came there together. Gerard admits we cannot paint what we have not seen, and by example rather condemns his own recommendations. Fewer have seen Castor and Pollux, than have seen a lion, and he says men cannot paint what they have not seen. "As was the case of a certain Westphalian, who, representing Daniel in the lions' den, and having never seen a lion, he painted hogs instead of lions, and wrote underneath, 'These should be lions.'"

By this time, Eusebius, you ought to know how to sit, if you have not made up your mind not to sit at all. You need not, however, be much alarmed about the emblems—modern masters cut all that matter short. They won't throw in any superfluous work, you may be sure of that, unless you should sit to Landseer, and he will paint your dog, and throw in your superfluous self for nothing. You would be like Mercury with the statuary, mortified to find his own image thrown into the bargain.

Besides your own defects, you have to encounter the painter's. His unsteady, uncertain hand, may add an inch to your nose before you are aware of it. It is quite notorious that few painters paint both eyes of the same size; and after your utmost efforts to look straight in his face, he may make you squint for ever, and not see that he has done so. Unless he be himself a sensible man, he will be sure to make you look like a fool. Then, what is like to-day will be unlike to-morrow. His megillups will change, so that in six months you may look like a copper Indian; or the colours may fade, and leave you the ghost of what you were. Again, he may paint you lamentably like, odiously like, yet give you a sinister expression, or at least an unpleasant one. Then, if you remonstrate, he is offended; if you refuse to take it, he writes you word that if not paid for and removed by next Tuesday, he will add a tail to it, and dispose of it to Mr Polito. Did not Hogarth do something of this kind? If he please himself he may not satisfy you, and if you are satisfied, none of your friends are, who take an opportunity of the portrait to say sarcastic things of you. For in that respect you may be most like your picture, or it most like you, for every body will have some fault to find with it. Why, don't you remember but last year some friends poked out the eye from a portrait, even after it had been on the exhibition walls. Then, what with the cleaning and varnishing, you have to go through as many disorders as when you were a child. You will have the picture-cleaner's measles. It was not long ago, I saw a picture in a most extraordinary state; and, on enquiry, I found that the cook of the house had rubbed it over with fat of bacon to make it bear out, and that she had learned it at a great house, where there is a fine collection, which are thus bacon'd twice every year. You are sure not to keep even your present good looks, but will become smoked and dirty. Then must you be cleaned, and there is an even chance that in doing it they put out at least one of your eyes, (I saw both eyes taken out of a Correggio,) and the new one to be put in will never match the other. The ills that flesh is heir to, are nothing to the ills its representative is heir to. At best, the very change of fashion in dress will make you look quizzical in a few years. For you are going to sit when dress is most unbecoming, and it is only by custom that the eye is reconciled to it, so that all the painted present generation must look ridiculous in the eyes of posterity. Don't have your name put on the canvass; then you may console yourself that, in all these mortal chances and changes, whatever happens to it, you will not be known. I have one before me now with the name and all particulars in large gilt letters. Happily this ostentation is out; you may therefore hope, when the evil day comes, fallere, to escape notice. I hope the painter will give you that bold audacious look which may stare the beholder in the face, and deny your own identity; no small advantage, for doubtless the "[Greek: sêmata lugra]" of Bellerophon was but his portrait, which, by a hang-look expression, intimatd death. Your painter may be ignorant of phrenology, and, without knowing it, may give you some detestable bumps; and your picture may be borrowed to lecture upon, at inns and institutions, and anecdotes rummaged up or forged, to match the painter's doing—the bumps he has given you.