“But also without knowledge,” Clinch replied, goaded. He pointed out brutally that to learn painting meant to learn a new set of symbols. “If you wanted to paint that lamp,” he said, “you’d probably put down a---- line to get that edge, and so lose all the---- softness. A real line wouldn’t look a---- bit like the real thing. Same with color; real red wouldn’t give red. Painting is all subterfuge, optical illusion. Color and form are only an affair of relations.”
He went on to explain, with punctilious profanities, that to study the relation of that lamp to the piano-lid was enough for a picture; treated perfectly, there would be a poetry and mystery about it. Beauty, too, was only an affair of relations, and in “Carolina” he had been trying to get a beautiful relation between two ugly things, and an early Georgian feeling into a nineteenth-century interior, with a scientific accuracy of tones known only to modern French art.
Matt listened eagerly, wincing a little at the livelier oaths, but conscious of piquant perspectives, of novel artistic vision, which, if not quite intelligible, was in refreshing contrast with Tarmigan’s old-fashioned orthodoxy.
“But you had the same woman in your picture of the ‘Salvation Lass,’” persisted the poet.
Clinch explained that if writing chaps knew what it was to hunt for a satisfactory model, they’d thank their stars they didn’t know a palette from a planchette. A “swell woman” that really expressed your idea you couldn’t get to sit for you, and if you could get her you couldn’t swear at her. Besides, it was his ambition to create a new type of feminine beauty, and impose her on his period--_une femme de Clinch_! Wilfred Smith took mental notes, prepared henceforward to expound Clinch to an ignorant world.
“It’s about time he got a new model, anyway,” he said, when the repulsive-looking artist had moved off.
Matt had a flash of resentment. The picture was to him a dainty dream of cool color and graceful form. Despite his association with Herbert, he did not yet understand the temperament that strides to Wit over Truth’s body.
“Isn’t it funny a man like that should draw such refined women?” he could not help remarking to his cicerone.