Leaving Van Gogh (11 page)

“Never mind,” Vincent said, “I can set up my palette.” He set to work, squeezing colors from tubes in what seemed like fantastic amounts, glossy coils of crimson lake and lead white and yellow ocher and emerald green. Finally Marguerite’s skirt rustled down the stairs, and she entered the room with as much self-effacement as is possible in a woman three men have waited for. She avoided looking us in the eye and cast her gaze to the floor, murmuring an apology for the delay. Without any direction, she sat on the piano stool.

“Excellent!” Vincent exclaimed, looking at her. “Mademoiselle, this will be a beautiful painting.” He screwed the cap on his tube of Prussian blue and tossed it back into his box, then gently set the loaded palette onto the stool I’d brought down from the studio.

“Now, as for the pose.” Marguerite looked up at him, blushing. My children were keyed up this morning, it seemed. Vincent moved over to Marguerite and opened the lid of the keyboard. “Could you sit just as you did on Sunday, when you so kindly played for us? Perhaps play a chord or two?”

She complied, resting her fingers on the keys. I was struck by what a pleasing sight she made, silhouetted against the wall as Vincent wanted, her slender figure all gentle curves against the black-lacquered angles of the little piano. Her small foot tapped the pedal, her fingers lifted from the keys, and Vincent said, “Lovely. Do you think you can stay in this position, mademoiselle? Will you be comfortable?”

Until then Marguerite had not addressed a word to him. She turned and said, “Yes, monsieur, thank you,” in her quiet voice. I noticed for the first time how very blue her eyes were. She was really quite attractive. It was one of those strange moments when you see a familiar person with new eyes; in this case, with Vincent’s eyes. I felt a rush of affection for my daughter.

Vincent had placed a tall rectangular canvas on his easel, and he stood hesitating for a moment, glancing back and forth between Marguerite and the canvas. He usually painted with apparent fearlessness and spontaneity, but today he first took a small notebook from his jacket pocket and roughly sketched his subject, establishing the positions of the piano, Marguerite, the wall, and the floor. Once he had done this, however, I did not see him refer back to it.

He stepped back, took up a brush, began to blend the red and the white paint, then put down his palette. He stepped over to Marguerite and placed a hand under each elbow. “Like so, mademoiselle, if you can,” he said, moving them forward. “Will this tire you?”

“No, not at all,” Marguerite whispered to the keyboard. Her face was flaming. I knew why, or thought I did. Vincent’s hands on her elbows, his voice in her ear, the heat of his body against her back—all of these sensations were utterly new to her. No man besides me had ever touched my daughter. I was not sure what I thought about this.

Clearly Vincent thought nothing of it. Moving back to his palette, he took up the brush and began to outline her figure swiftly, laying down a thick layer of pigment that he would then shape with his brush, stroking brighter or darker colors into the pale pink. To him, Marguerite was a set of shapes and textures to be rendered in his own remarkable combination of colors. When he had his painter’s eye on me, I found it to be both searching and impersonal. Now I looked at him as he frowned at my daughter. No. There was nothing in his gaze beyond the calculation of the artist, considering, selecting, eliminating. A streak of gray-blue defined the billow of Marguerite’s sleeve. Lightened, it slid down her bust. Another touch marked the cuff. There was nothing to worry about.

Vincent normally enjoyed having someone to talk to while he painted, but he was so quiet as he painted Marguerite that I went into my study to take care of the mail that always accumulated during the days when I was in Paris. During the course of the morning, I went about my business, cutting some verbena from the garden to dry, discussing household accounts with Madame Chevalier. Once as I walked by the open window, I saw that Marguerite was sitting in an armchair while Vincent said, “Lean back and rest, mademoiselle, you have been a remarkable model.” At one point I heard the opening bars of a waltz coming from the music room. By the time we gathered for luncheon, the whole figure had been laid out and a few lines of dark violet paint indicated the piano. Paul had been attempting to draw his sister, too, but so badly that I sent him up to the studio after luncheon to get a pair of vases out of the cupboard for us to draw together. If he was so intent on sketching, I thought, I could at least share with him some of the fundamental principles that I had learned so long ago in Lille.

Marguerite must indeed have been a patient model, for by the time Vincent had finished working that evening, he had all but completed her figure. Once again, I was awestruck by his skill as a portraitist. But this time his painting exhibited an adaptability that was new to me. On his canvas Marguerite’s dress was a beautiful arrangement of the most delicate hues, ranging from the deep rose of her sash to cream to slate in the folds. Vincent had painted the gown with vertical strokes that curved around the hem of the skirt. It was true that the paint did not look in the least like the crisp folds of muslin or batiste or whatever it was that Marguerite was wearing. Yet at the same time, Vincent had created an image of delicate femininity with the sculpted application of oil paint on canvas.

Vincent stayed for dinner that night. Marguerite went upstairs to rest for a while and eventually came down in her everyday brown calico to help Madame Chevalier in the kitchen. Once I had showed Paul the rudiments of using light and dark to model volume, he was fascinated, so he prowled around the house looking for simple shapes to draw. Every now and then he would show me the result. When I saw what he’d made of a cylindrical jug, I resolved that perspective would be the next lesson.

Vincent told us that he would not need Marguerite for most of the next day, so she was in the yard when he arrived on Monday morning. When the bell for the street door clanged, Paul’s light footsteps sounded on the gravel as he dashed to the gate to let Vincent in. I came to the door of the salon to greet the painter, who entered the house carrying a loose bunch of flowers that I assumed he had gathered to paint.

“Shall we put those in a vase?” I asked, gesturing toward the poppies and daisies in his hand.

“Perhaps, but they are actually for Mademoiselle Marguerite,” he answered. “To thank her for posing so generously yesterday. She was a wonderful model, so patient and still. I hope it did not tire her. I cut these in the fields this morning.”

First a portrait, now flowers! Marguerite would not know what to think of this. Still, it was a kind gesture, and I could not reasonably prevent Vincent from giving my daughter the nosegay. “She is in the courtyard gathering eggs,” I said. “The flowers will please her.” Vincent went out the back door to find her, and I returned to my desk, slightly disturbed. It struck me as significant that the blossoms did not appear on the luncheon table. Evidently Marguerite had taken the little bouquet up to her bedroom.

The portrait progressed. Although the wall behind Marguerite was, in real life, hung with numerous paintings, Vincent chose to paint it in a vivid apple green, covered with tiny orange dots. This, he explained, would emphasize the pink of Marguerite’s dress. Also contrary to fact, he painted the carpet crimson stippled with vertical green dashes, which made for a strange recession that surged upward to meet the wall. Our mahogany piano stool was also painted apple green. The dots and the dashes took Vincent well into the afternoon.

“Doctor, might I request Mademoiselle Marguerite’s presence again?” he said, standing at the door of the studio. I was making a list of supplies to bring back from Paris, so the cupboard doors were all open. Even the paintings were in disarray, since I had used many of them to demonstrate the lessons of modeling and perspective to Paul. My pretty Guillaumin nude was lying flat on the floor, and Vincent picked it up. “This should have a frame, don’t you think?” he said, examining it closely. “Look, the stretcher is none too sturdy.”

“You are quite right, I will order one this week. Here,” I said, passing over a folding ruler. “Would you mind telling me the measurements?”

“Forty-nine centimeters by …” He paused, measuring the width. “Sixty-five. I admire the way the curtains frame her, and the delicacy of her skin.”

I agreed with him. The model in the painting had that kind of skin that is often described as “pearly,” with blue and pink lights swimming beneath the pale surface. Vincent went on, “If Mademoiselle Marguerite can spare me another hour or so, I believe I can finish the picture.”

“Of course,” I said. “Let me call her. You would like her in the pink dress again?”

“Yes, Doctor, that would be best. Just to retouch the color a little if it’s needed.”

So Marguerite was summoned, and she resumed her pose with her hands on the keys. I stood behind Vincent, admiring the painting. “Yes, excellent. The arms are perfect,” he said. “But the angle of your head—could you look down a little bit more?” Vincent stepped to her and corrected her position. He put a hand on the top of my daughter’s head, and gently tipped her chin with two fingers of the other hand. Marguerite barely breathed. He came back to the canvas, concentrating this time on the knot of hair. He picked up a brush to add a few flecks of citron. Then he moved back to her and said, “If I may—your hair is not exactly as it was yesterday. May I …?” Marguerite only nodded. She must have felt too shy to speak at that moment. Vincent loosened a few locks at the back of her neck, then pulled forward the little curl that, in the painting, hangs above her forehead. It seemed to me to be an immensely intimate moment. I imagined Marguerite must have felt that as well. Of course he was simply adjusting the pose of the model. Marguerite as a person—whom he had acknowledged that morning with the little nosegay—was again merely a subject. I only hoped that my daughter would grasp this.

An hour later, Paul knocked on the door of the salon where I worked. “He’s finished, Papa. Come and see.”

In the music room Vincent was crouched by his paint box, attempting to tidy up. His palette lay next to him, having been wiped in a cursory fashion with a rag that left tiny smears of orange and green on our floor. They are there to this day. He glanced from time to time at the easel, where Marguerite in her pink dress played the piano. Captured. Just like that, a twenty-one-year-old girl in all the freshness of her youth, sharing her accomplishments. The girl herself stood to one side, barely able to look fully at the painting. She would cast a glance at it, then her eyes would dart away. Madame Chevalier was planted before the picture with her feet apart, arms folded, beaming.

“Congratulations, Van Gogh,” I said. “It is very beautiful.”

He stood up. “Thank you. I am very happy with it. Perhaps someday soon we could do a companion piece with Mademoiselle at the parlor organ; a kind of musical diptych. You can see how the vertical canvas would lend itself to such a format—two of them side by side?”

“Indeed,” I agreed. “But for now I am content to admire this painting.”

“With your permission, Doctor, I would like to give the canvas to Mademoiselle Gachet,” Van Gogh said.

Marguerite gasped, and her hands flew to her face. Her blue eyes met mine.

“That would be more than kind, if you think Monsieur Theo would agree,” I said. “More than generous. I certainly cannot stand between Marguerite and such a kind gesture.”

Then Vincent gingerly lifted the canvas from the easel, hooking his fingers beneath the stretcher at the top. “Here it is,” he addressed my daughter.
“Mademoiselle Gachet au piano.”
He turned to me. “Shall I take it up to the studio to dry?”

“Could it not dry in my bedroom?” Marguerite asked, as loudly as I had ever heard her speak.

“It could,” Vincent conceded. “But the odor of the paint may trouble you.”

She shook her head, eyes shining.

“Is there a hook in the wall?” Vincent asked.

“I’ll go check,” Paul offered and was out of the room in a moment.

“Doctor, you have wire upstairs? And the eyes to thread it through?”

“Of course,” I said, feeling that the situation had somehow moved beyond my control.

He replaced the canvas on the easel. “Might I find them in the studio?”

I could only nod. “In the drawer nearest the window. The wire cutters are there as well.” I wondered what the drawer would look like when I saw it next.

It was a delicate operation, and foolhardy. If the face of the canvas touched anything, it would smear disastrously. Paul held it, with his arms rigid, while Vincent screwed the hooks into the stretcher and strung wire through them. Then, strangest of all, we all trooped up into Marguerite’s bedroom.

Perhaps some fathers frequent their daughters’ bedrooms. That was not our way. Marguerite was always a reserved child, and her bedroom somehow seemed to be protected by her natural requirement for privacy. Yet here we were, Paul and Madame Chevalier and Marguerite and I and Vincent van Gogh. We crowded into the small, austere chamber on the second floor. Marguerite, who always closed the door of the room as she left it, did not seem at all perturbed. In fact, there was no reason why she should be. The room was orderly and immaculate.

Paul and Vincent argued a little bit about where the painting should go. The hook was here, the picture should hang there, could we hammer in another hook, could the wire be tightened, did Mademoiselle like the arrangement? Marguerite was speechless, hands clasped at her chest, alight with excitement. At last the painting was hung on the wall opposite her bed, displacing an admittedly banal engraving after Fragonard. As I had seen so often with Vincent’s pictures, it brought air and light into the small room, making everything else look faded or shabby. Except, perhaps, for Vincent’s bright nosegay, carefully placed in the center of Marguerite’s dressing table.

“Now you must be very, very careful, mademoiselle,” Vincent said, standing in the doorway. “The surface will not be dry for several weeks. Even the lightest touch will disturb it. And after that, the impasto, in the skirt for instance, will be malleable for months. Eventually the doctor should have it framed.”