The Painter Read online

  WILL DAVENPORT

  The Painter

  This book is dedicated to the memory of the remarkable Plymouth painter Robert Lenkiewicz who was a source of insight and inspiration to me.

  Contents

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  EPILOGUE

  AFTERWORD

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to thank Sam Boyce, Joy Chamberlain and Nick Sayers for their creative patience. Many people helped with my research. Mark, Paul and Tina Riley of Coombe Farm Studios in Dittisham, Devon arranged for my portrait to be painted or drawn by three diverse artists, Robert Lenkiewicz, Xanthe Mosley and Simon Drew, They were all generous and helpful with their explanations. Robert Lenkiewicz's deep insights into Rembrandt as a man and as a painter were inspirational; his death, just as the book was finished, leaves a huge gap. The Hull Local Studies Library enabled me to search for Rembrandt's faint footsteps in their archives while Ann Bukantas, at the Ferens Gallery, opened up her own surprising collection of material on the subject. Among Rembrandt's many biographers, I would particularly like to acknowledge Christopher White and Gary Schwartz. George Speake always sems to be expert on any subject I write about and this is no exception. Pippa Collin and Ralph de Rijke helped me navigate through seventeenth century Dutch expressions. My wife Annie kept my spirits and body alive throughout the long and sometimes testing process.

  ONE

  Tuesday, January 7th, 1662

  (January 27th in the United Provinces)

  I paint what I see.

  If people don't like that they can shove their eyes up their arses. So long as they pay.

  I must say, in mitigation of the circumstances I now find myself in, that on a number of occasions in the past forty years, I have been described by men who love art as one of the greatest painters of all, and it is not for me to disagree with such experts.

  Honesty is everything. I paint what I see and I paint it in the only way I can. If my style has gone out of fashion, then that is fashion's fault, not mine. A rich client tests the honesty of any painter. To the world, the man in the chair may look like a frost-nipped turnip but what is he to himself? When he looks in the glass, does a demi-god look back? I don't paint to flatter. I paint to infect the canvas with the exact humanity of my vision, turnip or no turnip.

  There is a lesson in this. Paint too many honest turnips and your studio will soon fill up with orphan, unwanted canvases. That way lies the road to starvation and the wary sideways look-out for the money-lender's men and that is the way my own life has gone in the last five years. Riches to rags.

  I had been slow with that wary sideways look, so now I was at sea for the first time in my entire life and I could not bear to look at the waves.

  When I see something fresh, I always start to mix its colours in my head, squinting to see the highlights of its truest form. I have no choice.

  People are bad enough. They twitch and sneeze and move and cough and try as hard as they may to distract you from seeing them properly but that undisciplined moon-lit sea was worse. It was never the same for an eye-blink.

  Just when I thought I could find composition, some new convulsion would utterly change it. I tried to freeze it by closing my eyes and opening them for the merest moment but there was too much of it. A team of painters might have done it, a team arrayed on a scaffold each charged with just a foot of canvas, ready to paint it on a count of 'three, two, one, GO', That sea was the worst sitter I have ever seen. I decided to ignore it. I could not ignore the seaman who had me by the arm and who kept tugging me along.

  'Don't keep the boss waiting,' he said in bad Dutch.

  The captain was standing near the wheel and my eyes fed on his face as soon as I saw him. His hand rested on the compass housing and the lantern light reflecting from the brass ring around it warmed the colour of his wrist so the skin shone against his dense black sleeve.

  He looked at me with distaste and addressed me in English. I have heard it often but I have never seen any reason to know such things, not, until now, being one of the travelling fraternity.

  The seaman pulled at me. 'He says who are you?'

  'My name is van Rijn.'

  'He says do you make a habit of stowing away?'

  'I did not stow away.'

  'You were hiding on board when we cast off. What would you rather call it?'

  I spoke directly to the captain, drawing myself up to my full height which was still far short of his, ignoring the minion.

  'I am a gentleman,' I said. 'I wish to be treated as a gentleman.'

  His gaze ran up and down me and his lip curled. I looked down myself: my shirt of the best silk, one of a dozen given to me by the Cloth-Makers Guild in the forlorn hope their commission might jump the queue, A little stained with paint certainly, a little torn and stitched here and there but the quality was undeniable. My trousers of the finest Flemish cloth, bought with Don Antonio's gold from the philosopher's portrait. I hadn't noticed until now how suddenly they had begun to age and fray. My cloak best of all, a noble velvet gown bought for a great deal of money at auction and said to have belonged to the King of Bohemia. Where was my cloak? Was it still in the bowels of the ship? Had I lost it during the evening's chase?

  'I have no wish to be in your ship,' I said to deflect that unnerving, unimpressed eye. 'It is a mistake. Can you please turn round and take me back?'

  It was translated and all at once he was Neptune and I was some ignorant mollusc. I could tell his tone was incredulous and the seaman preserved that tone in his interpretation.

  'The captain says you know sweet sodding nothing of ships if you think he will turn round and miss this tide. He says you are coming with us, you damned van Rijn, and you can damned well pay for your passage as well as the bottle of his good claret wine you drank before we found you.'

  'I am a bankrupt,' I said, playing with the word as I said it. It was still a new idea to me and whereas before the event it had seemed like a nightmare, now it rang out and surrounded me in chain-mail.

  The captain frowned and barked at his man, 'An Amsterdam bankrupt?' the seaman said. 'The captain says we will see how well that stands you in Hull.'

  'Where is Hull?' I asked.

  TWO

  Sunday, April 8th, 2001

  Amy Dale had made it a guiding principle of her life that she should never go to Hull but she abandoned that principle the moment she saw the hitchhiker. At twenty-five, Amy believed that you were always closer to where you wanted to be by being on the move. She was driving south with no particular destination in mind, her sweater still caked in drying paint, wondering if the castanet rattle from the Ford's ancient engine mattered. Her car was more of a hindrance than a help to travel, but assistance was never far away because Amy had slim blonde helplessness down to a fine art when it suited her. For brief periods and specific purposes only.

  Amy aspired to be rootless, not liking her roots at all. To push herself in that direction, she had taken to self-invented auguries. Five miles back, she had decided that if one of the next ten trucks sh
e saw was yellow she would sleep somewhere comfortable tonight. If not, she would sleep in the car. Her decision to head south on the main road had been settled by seeing a cow before she saw a sheep though, not wanting to head north, she might well have looked the other way if the wrong animal had appeared first.

  Eight trucks, all the wrong colour, had come and gone, when a flash of yellow up ahead caught her eye. It wasn't a truck, it was a yellow plastic duck. An old man was standing beside the road, juggling three ducks, sticking his thumb out for a moment at a time then whipping it back just in time to catch the next descending duck. The cardboard sign propped against his bag said 'HULL (or thereabouts)' in big blue letters and she suddenly thought well, why not?

  'Didn't your mother tell you not to pick up strange men?' he said when he stuck his head in the door.

  'For God's sake leave my mother out of it,' said Amy. 'Anyway, you're too old to be dangerous.'

  'Don't say that,' he said. 'That's cruel. I'm well dangerous, me.'

  'Get in,' she said, 'but if you dare mention my mother again, you're straight out, got it?'

  'Fine woman,' he said, sliding his bag into the back and trying to strap himself in. 'My lips are sealed. Have you been storing cheese in this car by any chance?'

  She looked at him, considering. He was a shocking sixty or a reasonable seventy or anywhere on the sliding scale in between. Silver hair, moustache stained nicotine-yellow and a spectacular twinkle in both eyes. 'Yes, I have,' she said. 'You have to tie the seat belt round the buckle.'

  'Fair dos. I didn't want to live much longer anyway. What are you going to Hull for?'

  'I'm taking you there, aren't I?'

  'Apart from that.'

  'Nothing. I'm just … wandering. Hull's as good a place as any.'

  'That's a funny thing to say about Hull. You might just about say it's as good a place as Goole or even as good as Scunthorpe if you were pushing your luck but it's not a patch on anywhere else.'

  'I wouldn't know,' she said. 'I've never been there yet.'

  'So what's this wandering for then? Man trouble?'

  'Balls, Job trouble that's all, leading to no-job trouble.'

  'Get sacked, did you?'

  'I quit.'

  'When?'

  'So recently I'd have to check my watch to tell you for certain.'

  He snickered. 'What was the job?'

  'I'm a painter.'

  'House painter?'

  'Houses, portraits. You name it. I paint it.'

  'So why did you quit?'

  'I was doing murals for a fat git who owned a nightclub. Every time he came by, he'd feel me up. I tipped two and a half litres of Azzurro Blue eggshell over his head.'

  He looked at the evidence smeared across the sleeve of her sweater.

  'Nice colour. Was that before you quit or after?'

  'During, What do you do?'

  'Plastering. Fancy stuff.'

  'In Hull?'

  'No, on walls. Anywhere. Outside Hull right now. Big place. Big job. Lots of money. Living in. That's the way I like it.'

  'So you're not a juggler?'

  'I juggle, therefore I'm a juggler. Jugglo ergo sum, you might say. Only when I need a lift and the ducks get restless.'

  'Stop it. You're sounding like my mother again.'

  'She's a juggler?'

  'No, she thinks she's a philosopher. Cogito ergo sum. That's her favourite. I think therefore I am. What she really means is I think therefore I'm right.'

  'How come you're allowed to mention your mother and I'm not?'

  'Driver's privilege. Long story. More to the point, do they need any painters at your place?'

  'Well now, they might. They just might. Foreman likes a pretty face.'

  'Is he a groper?'

  'Nah, He's the foreman. He's got people to do stuff like that for him.'

  'Will he be around today?'

  'Maybe. He doesn't get out much.'

  A yellow truck shot past in the other direction. Amy swore to herself. She hadn't been looking. Had there been more than ten?

  'I'll deliver you to the door,' she said. 'Oh, I'm Amy.'

  The old man broke into song, 'From Hull and Halifax and Hell, Good Lord deliver me.' He held out a hand. 'Dennis the Menace.'

  'What was that?'

  'Just an old song. Now what's this long story about your mother?'

  Amy started to brake, then laughed. 'You came close there. I try not to think about her. It's just that she spent years trying to get me to go to Hull.'

  'I call that a remarkably small ambition to have for your daughter.'

  'Oh no it's not. Believe me it's not. We were a great family once, you see. Nothing semi-detached about the Dales, no, no. We're a cut above the rest if you think the way my mother thinks. Blood will out. That's another of her favourite sayings.'

  'Only if you cut yourself.'

  'My mother sees the world through class-tinted spectacles. We come from splendid stock according to her, old-fashioned gentry from a great house on the banks of the Humber. Paull Holme Manor. The living proof of the former glory of the Dale family. She only married into it, but every day of my childhood I had it thrown at me. They wouldn't have held their knife like that in Paull Holme Manor. They wouldn't come down to supper at Paull Holme Manor with dirty jeans on. They would never use a disgusting word like that in Paull Holme Manor. That's exactly why I never want to go there.'

  'You better drop me off then. You won't want a job at my place.'

  'Why not? What do you mean?'

  'It's Paull Holme Manor. That's where I'm working.'

  THREE

  Monday, January 13th, 1662

  (February 2nd in the United Provinces)

  I first saw Dahl's house this morning as the sun came up towards the river mouth and I thought it the oddest and most disproportionate dwelling I had ever seen, having no idea of the beauty at work inside. I saw the house from his ship and I was stuck on that ship, suffering. Since I was seven years old, not one day has passed until now when I have not worked at my art. Not one day, even when they took my house from me, even when I had the swelling fever, even when my wife died. It is unforgivable to keep me away from paint and it is the world's loss.

  Of course, whatever Dahl may choose to believe, I did not board this damned tub on purpose. There are good reasons why I do not travel. I went to the docks only to see whether the ship just come from Livorno had brought back with it a picture returned to me by an unhappy and extremely difficult purchaser. I would have sent the boy, but I have no boy in these bare-shelved, anxious-eyed times. I would have sent my boy, my Titus, but he and Hennie decided between them last year that they were now in charge of my life, not I of theirs. It has led us to a strange place, that decision they made. They made it for me, I know. They made it to protect me. The law says they are in charge of my affairs. That shields me from my creditors but they have come to believe it is more than that. They really do think they have the whip hand. I have always been the head of my household but now we all three skirt round the subject. I am still the master of my brush and they do not challenge me if I just paint, so that is what I do. I do not tell them to do anything for me any more for fear they may say no.

  Having no boy, I sent myself and now, in consequence, I am here in this river, on this damned boat.

  It was thoroughly dark, being late in the evening when the arrival of the Livorno ship was announced in the street and I was glad to get out, anticipating spending a little time in gentle disputation with the Arminians on my way. They do love to discuss the finer points of their sectarian views and, these days, I value a good, logical argument with fine intellects almost regardless of the subject matter. In the dark, it seemed to me there was little chance of anyone seeing me who might be after the settlement of a bill and I did not tell Hennie where I planned to go because she would only have tried to stop me.

  I had three or four guilders in my pocket and when the ship from Livorno turned out not to
be the ship from Livorno at all but merely a bedraggled pink just in from Dunkerque with horses on board, most of which appeared to be dead, I decided I would spend one of the coins on a glass or two of wine instead. No sooner had I stepped into the front room of the Egbertsz Inn when a shout of recognition went up from two men at the bar. Summons-men, both of them. I had to turn and run and that is something I am not good at doing. Sitting at an easel, day in, day out, does not make a man fast on his feet. Breathing the fumes of etching acid when I make the plates reduces the ability of the lungs to service a hurrying body. Nature never intended this one of its subjects to imitate the hare. I know my own shape well. It is built to be most comfortable when seated.

  I got away initially only because of the crowd between those damned men of Vondel's and the doorway. After that, I won another few seconds' respite because they naturally turned right, assuming I would be heading for home whereas I had turned left. This was not a result of any native wit, but simply because I was in such a panic that I lost all sense of where I was.

  I heard the muffled shouts from the far side of the inn when they realized their mistake. The street in which I found myself was wide and promised only instant capture if they saw me in it. Capture in the past would simply have meant the serving of another writ but now I was a bankrupt I knew it would mean something much more physical, Vondel had warned me his men would take what they were owed out of my hide if they could not get it out of my purse. My only escape lay in the narrow side alleys, slits of darkness between the warehouses, running down to the wharves on the Amstel river. I took the nearest one and, in the pitch black, ran straight into a fellow humping a whore against the wall, knocking him off his business and angering both of them considerably.

  I apologized, shoved my remaining coins at the man, begged them both to say they had not seen me and made my best speed down into the darkness, arms outstretched for fear of interrupting any other amorous adventures. At the end of the alley, a dim lantern showed me a ship and an unguarded gangplank and when the echoing noise of feet behind me in the alleyway indicated that my coins had not done their work properly, I had no option but to go up that gangway.