In Bohemia with Du Maurier | Page 3

nature, strongly imbued with the tendencies of the colourist school. Antwerp ever sought to uphold the traditions of a great Past; in the atelier Gleyre you might have studied form and learnt to fill it with colour, but here you would be taught to manipulate colour, and to limit it by form. A peculiar kind of artistic kicks and cuffs were administered to the student by Van Lerius as he went his rounds. "That is a charming bit of colour you have painted in that forehead," he said to me on one occasion--"so delicate and refined. Do it again," he added, as he took up my palette knife and scraped off the "delicate bit." "Ah, you see, _savez vous_, you can't do it again; you got it by fluke, some stray tints off your palette, _savez vous_," and, taking the biggest brush I had, he swept over that palette and produced enough of the desired tints to have covered a dozen foreheads.
The comrade without arms was a most assiduous worker; it was amusing to watch his mittened feet step out of their shoes and at the shortest notice proceed to do duty as hands; his nimble toes would screw and unscrew the tops of the colour tubes or handle the brush as steadily as the best and deftest of fingers could have done. Very much unlike any of us, he was most punctilious in the care he bestowed on his paint box, as also on his personal appearance. Maris, Neuhuys, Heyermans, and one or two others equally gifted, but whose thread of life was soon to be cut short, were painting splendid studies, some of which I was fortunate enough to rescue from destruction and have happily preserved.
Quite worthy to be placed next to these are Van-der-something's studies. That (or something like that) was the name of a wiry, active little man who in those days painted in a garret; there everything was disarranged chaotically, mostly on the floor, for there was no furniture that I can recollect beyond a stool, an easel, and a fine old looking-glass. He had a house, though, and a wife, in marked contrast with his appearance and the garret. The house was not badly appointed, and she was lavishly endowed with an exuberance of charms and graces characteristic of a Rubens model.
A fellow-student of mine was their lodger, a handsome young German, brimful of talent, but sadly deficient in health. He had always held most rigid principles on questions of morality, but unfortunately they failed one day in their application, owing to the less settled views entertained by Madame Van-der-something on such subjects. She certainly gave him much affection on the one hand, but on the other she so audaciously appropriated those of his goods and chattels that could be turned into money, that the police had to intervene, and she eventually found herself before a judge and jury. There, however, she managed so well to cast all responsibility on her husband, who, to this day, I believe was quite innocent, that--"cherchez la femme"--she got off, and he was sentenced to a term of imprisonment.
Now if Van Ostade or Teniers had risen to prosecute him for forging their signatures, and he had been found guilty and condemned to severe punishment, it would have served him right. He was a perfect gem of a forger. He picked up a stock of those dirty old pictures painted on worm-eaten panels that used to abound in the sale-rooms of Antwerp. On these he would paint what might be called replicas with variations, cribbing left and right from old mildewed prints that were scattered all about the floor. He would scrape and scumble, brighten and deaden with oils and varnishes; he would dodge and manipulate till his picture, after a given time spent in a damp cellar, would emerge as a genuine old master. I once asked a dealer whom I knew to be a regular customer of his, at what price he sold one of those productions. "I really can't say," he answered; "I only do wholesale business. I buy for exportation to England and America." If any of my friends here or over there possess some work of Van-der-something's, I sincerely congratulate them, for the little man was a genius in his way.
Of my friend the German I have only to say that, poor fellow, he spent but a short life of pleasure and of pain. What became of his Circe I never sought to know. It was a clear case of "Ne cherchez pas la femme!"
The first friend I made on my arrival in Antwerp was Jean Heyermans (detto il Pegghi), and a very useful one he proved himself, for he at once took me in hand, helped me to find home and hearth, and