title : Henry James and eye
medium : oil pastel & text on paper, wood support
dimensions : 20″ x 30″

applied text :

“How much?” said our friend in English. “Combien?”

“Monsieur wishes to buy it?” asked the young lady in French.

“Very pretty, splendide. Combien?” repeated the American.

“It pleases monsieur, my little picture? It’s a very beautiful subject.” said the young lady.

“The Madonna, yes; I am not a Catholic, but I want to buy it. Combien? Write it here.” And he took a pencil from his pocket and showed her the fly-leaf of his guide-book. She stood looking at him and scratching her chin with a pencil. “Is it not for sale?” he asked. And as she still stood reflecting, and looking at him with an eye which, in spite of her desire to treat this avidity of patronage as a very old story, betrayed an almost touching incredulity, he was afraid he had offended her. She was simply trying to look indifferent, and wondering how far she might go. “I haven’t made a mistake — pas insulte, no?” her interlocutor continued. “Don’t you understand a little English?”

The yound lady’s aptitude for playing a part at short notice was remarkable. She fixed him with her conscious, perceptive eye and asked him if he spoke no French. Then, “Donnez!” she said briefly, and took the open guide-book. In the upper corner of the fly-leaf she traced a number, in a minute and extremely neat hand. Then she handed back the book and took up her palette again.
– Henry James, The American, (Houghton, Osgood and Co., 1877)

This picture was completed in 2000.

Oh Henry James. The eye is I, once a rather combative young person. I’d read a portion of Henry James because I needed a foil, an image to stand against. They say a little education is worse than none … I’m sure they’re right.

Damned if I can recall the title of that first taste of James that was so sour but it was excerpted from something longer and published as a mini-penguin. It goes something like this …

An elder established writer is throwing a garden party. A young hopeful writer is attending with a young lady on his arm whom the young man loves with a passion and intends to marry. The elder proceeds to lecture on the dangers of the writer who takes to wife, giving his own life as an example. He tells how his house harpy has robbed him of his best words, how she and their children have sucked the marrow from his artful bones with their bland, bland unsalted needs. The young man protests that his lover is witty and interested in his work, not at all the sort to distract and deter a serious artist. The overriding message here is that artistry is purely a male province and the closest women get to it is by association and through false pretenses with every intention of murderering an artist in order to make a husband out of him.

mmm.

Jamesian scholars will not be wasting their time reading me I’m sure, but in the event that they are they can rest assured I don’t know much and am surely even less credible on the subject of Henry James. I prefer Thomas Hardy and his Jude the Obscure. I can relate. Not to mention The Withered Arm …

When I found a used copy of James’ The American I read it, filtering the contents through the small mesh screen of all my sour prejudice against Henry James in particular and americans travelling the world en masse …

“Combien?” says the American, “Combien?”.

I imagined Henry James and I, eye to eye on the astral plane. I say;

“So, little man … women can’t be artists, eh? …”