Having arranged his
colours and placed his canvas on the easel, he sat contemplating the
portrait he had commenced so recently. Alas! how flat and insipid his
poor work looked after having gazed on the bright original! It was but
the first painting, it is true, and we know that nothing really good can
be done at once; but, then, what drawing he found to correct now that he
looked at his work with a fresh eye! The awfulness of the difficulties
in art now rose up in his mind to appal him, and he uttered a sigh. "Can all the glazing and scumbling in the world," muttered he to
himself, "ever advance this portrait one step towards the divine
original?" Thus musing, the painter seized the canvas in both hands and breathed
over its surface. Immediately afterwards, mixing up some colour
sparingly, he scumbled over the entire surface of the portrait. Helen,
whose eye dwelt upon the artist's every movement, whether from
curiosity, or from some mysterious sympathy she felt for the young
painter, demanded of him why he breathed on the face of her picture. "To breathe into it the breath of life, Helen," replied McGuilp,
smilingly. Helen opened her large blue eyes with an expression of half wonderment,
half doubt, not knowing whether the painter spoke in jest, or whether an
artist really had some occult power in his very breath that could vivify
the canvas. How was she to know, poor innocent child! Village bred and
born in an age, as our readers will recollect, before photography had
rendered too familiar the representation of the human face even for the
veriest peasant any longer to wonder at the art by which it is produced? In the days we speak of the painter's art was the only mode of
transfixing the lineaments of a dear friend or parent and rendering them
immortal. Painters, too, were much less common then than now-a-days, for
art was still in its infancy in plain matter-of-fact old England. The
painter, or limner as he was then called, was a being of far greater
interest than at the present day. He was patronised by royalty and
nobility, and though the prices that he received for his works were
considerably less than in our times, and he was nearly always a poor and
needy individual, yet he met with a certain amount of respect from his
patrons, as they knew that by his hand alone could they hope to become
immortal. Everyone liked to see his own features represented upon
canvas, or those of his wife and family. Oft times his favourite horse
or dog. In order to secure the services of the limner therefore, it was
necessary to court him, nor was this respect or appearance of such ever
denied him, save perhaps by the pampered menial of some nobleman or
wealthy squire, who looked superciliously down upon the itinerant
painter as a being far inferior to himself. We will hope, however, for
the honour of humanity that the number was comparatively small that
measured the painter's respectability by the length of his purse. Indeed, the titled and the wealthy seem to have prided themselves in
doing everything in their power to set the example of respect towards a
disciple of the fine arts. Among this class the painter had seldom
anything to complain of; in fact, provided he were affable in manner,
decent in appearance, could paint the ladies' hands and ears small
enough to please them, their eyes sufficiently large and languishing,
and, lastly--but which was of no small importance--could represent
faithfully the texture of their silks and satins, their lace, velvet,
fur, or swansdown, oh, then he was caressed, petted, and acknowledged by
all as a most agreeable member of society and sure of making his
fortune. But woe to him if he were above his business and attempted high
art--we mean subject pictures that were not portraits. However much he
might be gifted in that line, his friends would instantly desert him,
and he might starve in a garret. His patrons knew nothing of high art
and cared as little. All they wanted was to see their own effigies
adorning the walls of their mansions, and as long as the limner was
content to be of service to them they were willing to support him, but
no longer. It was set down as an axiom that the human _face_ divine--by
which they meant their own faces--was the highest aim that a painter
could aspire to. This was the sort of high art they wanted, and no
other. A painter must be content with the work his patrons set him to do and
not indulge his own caprices. Well, well, admitting the range of the
painter's art to have been cramped and limited, has any age or country
the power to cramp the genius of an artist? Is high art only to be found
in imaginative pictures? Does not a portrait become high art under a
master hand? Can that be called a mechanical art that gives intellect or
sentiment to the eye, firmness or softness to the lip, the natural bloom
to the cheek, truth and beauty to the whole? Few, let us hope, even in
this matter of fact age, but would rank the real artist before the
photographic artisan who usurps his name. If, in the present age, now
that we are accustomed to a much more rapid process of reproducing the
human face, there are to be found those who honour the true artist,
imagine how his art must have been held in honour when it was the only
way of immortalising men! It need not be wondered at that among those
classes where the appearance of a painter was less common, that the
respect he inspired almost amounted to awe in certain instances. This
was the case with our Helen, who never having set eyes before on a real
artist, looked with awe and wonder on our painter as a species of
magician who possessed an art not merely unknown in her humble sphere,
but which she was sure that the worthy members of the club were alike
ignorant of, however learned they might be in other respects. The
painter's youth and good looks, together with his possessing this
mysterious art at such an early age, elevated him at once into a hero in
her eyes. Then there was the strange fact of his having seen and spoken
to a ghost in the same house where she herself had been born and bred,
the very ghost she had been frightened so often with in her childhood,
but which was, nevertheless, so chary of its appearance that it had
found no one for upwards of half a century worthy of revealing itself to
until now, and had chosen for that purpose the young artist before her,
and that, too, the very first night that he arrived at the Inn. What was
there peculiar in the organisation of our painter, that he should have
been selected before all others to gaze on the august presence of one
risen from the dead? The haunted chamber had been repeatedly slept in by
all the members of the club in turn, and by many strangers beside, for
years back, and yet never before within the experience of our host had
the headless lady vouchsafed a parley with any one of them.