The Artist

London, 1956

A woman. A painting. The sense of greeting an old friend.

The woman has travelled a long way to stand here, in a cavernous room of the National Gallery. Crowds ebb like shoals of fish around her, heels flitting against the marble floor, but the woman does not move. She stands straight and still, a folded raincoat over one arm.

She does not take her eyes from the painting.

It is a large canvas, wide and tall with an ornate golden frame. The colours are vivid. The paint is thick like glue. She could reach out a hand and run her fingertip over the cragged surface if she wanted to, but she does not.

Her eyes shift to a plaque affixed to the wall.

Édouard Tartuffe, 1859-1924

Le Festin (The Feast), 1920

Oil on canvas

Le Festin depicts a table laden with food, some untouched, some half-eaten, but nobody present. The colours are characteristic of Tartuffe’s bright, luminous palette, and the painting showcases the distinctive brushwork which earned him the name ‘Master of Light’. Particular skill is shown in the reflections in the wine glasses and the smear of butter on a silver knife. The table is laid for thirteen, which has led some to suggest it is an allegory of the Last Supper. The uneaten feast can be seen to represent the futility of decadence after the First World War, as well as lives interrupted and pleasure wasted. Le Festin is the only painting to survive the fire that destroyed Tartuffe’s studio in 1920.

A smile flickers across the woman’s face. She remembers the fire. She remembers the stacks of paintings curling amongst leaping amber flames. She remembers the acrid smell of melting varnish and dense smoke. She remembers a wall of heat. Paint evaporating into fumes.

She remembers this painting, too. She remembers Le Festin cracking down the middle, fire lapping at its edges, black tendrils enveloping it like a shroud. She remembers little orange tongues eating at the canvas until wine glasses and melon halves and slices of ham were reduced to nothing but dry black curlicues on the studio floor. She remembers the fire swallowing the feast whole.

And most of all, she remembers setting the blaze.

Saint-Auguste-de-Provence, 1920

Joseph

A stranger comes to town. He walks along a dusty road, fields of lavender on one side, a placid green river on the other. The sun beats down on his bare head and he carries only a battered knapsack over one shoulder. He is young, barely twenty, and walks tall and straight like a ballet dancer, or a soldier who has never seen war. The town is a sleepy hamlet in the south of France. The stranger is Joseph Adelaide.

He clutches a letter in his hand. He has read it over and over but it contains only one word:

Venez.

Come.

Beneath that is a signature. The letter is from someone Joseph has never met but he knows the signature intimately. It is a signature most often found in the corner of paintings. It is scrawled in the corner of Joseph’s favourite painting at the National Gallery: Bathers at Arles. It appears on paintings in glinting frames at Sotheby’s and the Knoedler. And it is at the bottom of a letter addressed to him.

Joseph had been apprehensive about sending his request at first. He had rewritten and reworked it, crossing out his puny phrases and feeble wording. He had gone through draft after draft until one day, after months of agonising, his sister had snatched the letter from his hand and taken it to the post office herself.

There had followed months of silence. Joseph put the letter out of his mind; he had been foolish to think he would get a response. Arrogant, even. He buried his head in his hands whenever he thought of it.

But then… this. In early June a single sheet of paper had arrived bearing the word: Come.

He had not needed the return address to know who the letter was from. He had not needed the cluster of foreign stamps or the blue-inked marks of the French postal service. The signature had told him everything. He packed his bags that very morning, sent a telegram to his editor to let him know that yes, it was happening, yes, he had received a reply, and yes, he was going. He did not know when he would be back.

Joseph had caught a bustling train to Charing Cross, then another to Dover and talked his way onto a steamer bound for Calais. A further train had taken him to Paris where he had spent an uncomfortable night in a rickety boarding house, before catching the morning train to Avignon. From there, wandering the white-washed streets and the dry yellow fields, he had flagged down a milk cart and hitched a ride to Saint-Auguste, where he has been deposited on the side of the road.

He is dusty. He is sweaty, and nearly blinded by the hot, white light of the Mediterranean sun.

A crinkled woman in the village tobacconist has given him directions: go down the empty road, keeping the river on your left. Go past the tumble-down church until you come to a donkey track. If you reach the caves you have gone too far. Turn left off the road and follow the donkey track. You will see no one. Keep walking past the ruined buildings, and just when you think you have gone the wrong way you will come to an old farmhouse. Good luck.

Joseph looks about himself now, at the dry, flat countryside and the trees that rise like columns of smoke. He rubs a lavender stalk between finger and thumb, its scent tangy and fresh. He has his letter of introduction: a telegram from his editor, hastily sent to the Paris boarding house where he had tossed and turned the night before. And most importantly, he has that one scribbled word: Come.

His feet feel ungainly in his brother’s too-big boots, and he tries to focus on the steady in and out of his breath as he walks. He is not sure what he will find at the end of this path. He passes what looks like a sheep pen, and beyond that a dilapidated structure that could be a shepherd’s hut. Or an ice store? He knows nothing of life in the countryside. He passes rows of twisted olive trees, steps beneath the speckled shadows of peeling plane trees and then, finally, he sees it: a low, rambling farmhouse. It is made of soft yellow stones turned golden in the afternoon light. The roof is an assortment of earthen tiles in a lattice of vines. The windows are small to keep out the heat.

Joseph takes a deep breath and walks up to the front door. It is painted egg-yolk yellow and the knocker is browned with rust. He knocks.

There is no answer.

He knocks again. He presses his ear to the door but there is no sound from within. ‘Hello?’ he calls, his voice hoarse and crackling, but the only response is the dull hum of crickets, and the steady thump of his heart.

Something twinges in his stomach. A thin sheen of moisture coats his body. He feels at odds with his surroundings; he is too pale, too English, to be here. He takes off his glasses and wipes them on the corner of his shirt. Perhaps this is a sign. The empty road, the deserted house: perhaps it is a warning that he should turn around, hurry back up the dusty path, go back home to what he knows. He has the curious sensation that he is being watched.

He shifts the knapsack onto his shoulder and walks around the edge of the house, stumbling over a fallen roof tile. Loose stones are scattered as if the house is dissolving into its surroundings. Sun-bleached grass grows right up to the walls but there are footstep-trodden paths snaking this way and that. A wheelbarrow lies rusting in the sun, but its belly is full of freshly-cut flowers.

Somebody is here.

Joseph rounds the back of the house and comes to a stone terrace which gives way to a long, undulating field. Down at the bottom he can see a copse of trees and what might be a river, slipping darkly through green bushes.

Joseph steps onto the terrace and his heart catches in his chest. There is a man in an old wicker chair. He is leaning back with a cigar in one hand, the index finger of the other resting in a jar of honey. Joseph watches as he takes his finger from the honey and sucks it, slowly, before returning it to the jar. He takes a long drag of the cigar.

Here is the man Joseph has travelled days and miles to see. The Master. Édouard Tartuffe.

Joseph’s knapsack falls to the ground with a thunk. The man looks up. He is about sixty or so. Robust, full-faced and wide about the middle, with a frothy grey beard spreading down his front as if he has spilt it. He has one milky eye. The other is quite sharp, but the one he turns on Joseph now is clouded and ghostly.

Tartuffe removes his finger from the honey. ‘Who,' he asks in thick, gravelled French, 'are you?’

Joseph steps forward, fumbling for the letter of introduction in his knapsack. ‘My name is Joseph Adelaide,’ he says hastily, pulling out the telegram from his editor. ‘I am a journalist. I wrote to you several months ago and you did me the kindness of replying.’ Joseph’s French is good but it still feels strange to him, like he is wearing another man’s clothes. ‘You invited me here,’ he holds out the telegram. ‘You invited me here… and now I have come.’

The old man sucks honey from his finger and stares at Joseph with his eerie, mismatched eyes. He is wearing a loose smock stained like a butcher’s apron, and his fingers are rimed with colour. With a grunt, he holds out a hand for the telegram. Joseph stumbles forward to give it to him.

Tartuffe squints. Then frowns. ‘I cannot read this,’ he says gruffly, and tosses the paper to the ground.

Joseph is startled for a moment. And then he realises: the telegram is in English. ‘I’m sorry,’ he stammers, the sweat beneath his armpits growing warm and sour. ‘It is a letter from my editor, explaining why I am here,’ he stoops to pick up the crumpled telegram. ‘You see, I have come to write an article about you.’

Tartuffe gives no sign of recognition so Joseph fumbles about himself once more. ‘I have come—to profile you. Here—’ he holds out a second piece of paper which Tartuffe takes with a look of distrust. It is the letter in the painter’s own hand, bearing only the word: Come.

Tartuffe frowns again, his sticky hand trembling as he looks at the letter’s front and back. Then up at Joseph. ‘I do not know what this is.’

‘But… you wrote it.’

Suddenly it is as if a blood vessel has burst. As if a dam has broken and the old man’s patience can be tested no longer. ‘I do not have time to write my own letters!’ he barks, waving his cigar in the air. ‘I do not know what this is! Sylvette!’ he shouts. ‘Sylvette!’ He is agitated, twisting in his chair and calling over his shoulder. ‘Sylvette! I cannot have strange men coming to the house on a Tuesday! I cannot be disturbed when I am working!’

Joseph takes a step back, tripping over his knapsack. He had been warned about this. He has heard the stories. The woman’s eyes in the tobacconist had widened when he told her where he was going. She had asked him to repeat the name of the person he sought, as if giving him a chance to provide a different answer. But he had said the name again and her lips had tightened. When she gave him directions it had been with a small, warning shake of her head as if to say: do not disturb the slumbering bear.

‘A recluse,’ is what Joseph’s editor had called Tartuffe. ‘Misanthrope’ was one word slung about, as was ‘miser’, and even ‘tyrant’.

But so was ‘genius’. Here was the man who could create beauty from nothing, who had supped with Van Gogh and argued with Cézanne. Here was the man who had made Joseph see the world anew. And so he was prepared to expose himself to all the slings and arrows, the tirades and the tempests, just to meet the man sitting before him.

‘Sylvette!’ Tartuffe bellows again. ‘Sylvette!’

And suddenly a young woman is there. She appears at the end of the terrace, wiping her hands on a thin cotton apron.

‘My niece,’ Tartuffe grumbles by way of introduction, not looking at her. The woman has large brown eyes and her skin is dappled with freckles. Her hair is cropped short in the latest fashion, but here it looks more practical than chic. Tartuffe hands her the letter over his shoulder. ‘Explain.’

Sylvette unsticks the paper and squints at it. She has a girlish face but her hands are rough and worn. She wears a slim cigarette tucked behind one ear.

Joseph itches in the long, hot silence as Sylvette reads the only word on that piece of paper. Then she looks up, and says simply, ‘Here is your Young Man with Orange.’

Joseph glances from Sylvette to Tartuffe. Either he has misunderstood or mistranslated, but the old man shows no confusion. Instead he turns his gummy eye to Joseph and stares as if seeing him for the first time. He gets up, wiping his honeyed finger on his trousers and walks around him. Appraising him. He tucks a thumb under Joseph’s chin and turns his head from left to right.

‘Ettie, fetch me an orange,’ he says without taking his eyes from Joseph’s face. Sylvette disappears into the house and returns a moment later clutching a small waxy orange.

Tartuffe holds it up to Joseph’s cheek, as if to see how the colour works against the pale English face. ‘Yes,’ he murmurs. ‘Yes.’

He puts the orange into Joseph’s palm and takes a step back to see the effect: the weary, dust-shrouded traveller and the bright fruit. Then he inches forward and, gently, with both hands, slides the glasses from Joseph’s face. He looks at him for a long minute, then slides them back. ‘Alright,’ he says, wiping his hands on the corner of his smock. ‘Alright. Listen to me very carefully,’ he says as he sits back down. ‘I have no interest in your work, Monsieur Adelaide. I do not wish to be the subject of any article or feature. I do not give interviews. I do not care what you are writing…’ He dips a finger into the honey and leans back. ‘But I am in need of a model.’

The hum of crickets dies down. The twitch of a breeze that was troubling the terrace wraps itself up into nothing. There is total stillness as Joseph feels the hair on his neck stand on end. ‘A model?’ he asks.

‘Can you stand very still?’ Tartuffe presses. ‘Can you be absolutely silent? Can you promise not to interrupt me, not to touch anything, not distract me? Can you live as a shadow except when I need you to be a young man holding an orange?’

Joseph’s heart is beating very fast. This is not how the scene was meant to go. He has promised his editor an interview. He has gathered all the money he owns, he has slammed the door in his father’s face, he has travelled for days through dust and smog and heat. He came here to write an article that no one has written before. ‘I… I am not a model,’ he says. ‘I came here to write about you. To—’

‘If you will not sit for me then you can turn around and leave right now,’ Tartuffe says briskly, taking a drag of his cigar. ‘But if you sit for me, and let me paint you… then you may stay. Write whatever you want. I do not care. I will not read it. I just need you to sit still… can you do that?’

Joseph’s mouth has gone very dry. He feels two halves of himself straining in different directions. This is not what he came here for. He is no model; he is too awkward, too self-conscious. Too aware of his own discomfort in his body.

But then again… he is here. He is standing in front of the greatest painter of the age. Joseph feels the balance of the scales hanging on his answer. On one side is the admission that no, this was wrong, it wasn’t for me. A quick shuffle home and an apology to his father, a note to his editor explaining his mistake. But on the other side… a hazy, golden chance. The opportunity to stare into those marble eyes and crack the man behind them.

Joseph meets Tartuffe’s gaze. With a voice that comes from deep in his chest he says, ‘Yes. I can do that.’

‘Good,’ Tartuffe claps his hands together, beard scrunching into a grin. ‘You may stay until I finish the painting. Write what you want. When I am done, you leave.’

‘Yes,’ Joseph stammers, ‘yes, alright, thank you.’ But Tartuffe waves his hand. He is already turning to his niece again. ‘Ettie,’ he says, ‘find the boy somewhere to sleep.’

The deal is struck. The stage is set.