Page 44 of Portrait of a Lady
“Yes, well...you told me you wanted to know her, to love or hate her.”
“So, you’ve chosen love then.”
Crosby’s words stunned him for a moment. When he’d transformed the main subject of this painting, he hadn’t had love on his mind. Lust and desire, yes; a bit of enchantment, certainly. But love?
“That is what I feel when I look at this painting,” Crosby said with a shrug. “She’s the epitome of innocence in a den of debauchery. She clearly does not belong there, but somehow fits anyway. She transcends the things happening around her, and I have the urge to reach into the scene and save her, protect her. Love, Hugh...the emotion you’ve invoked is love.”
For a long moment, Hugh could say nothing, could do nothing other than stare at the image of Evelyn on the canvas. Of course he’d portrayed her in the light of love...he was her lover. But she was paying him to be that...so did that make his feelings any less real? Worse, would those feelings damn him in the end when they were forced to part ways?
“I suppose this woman of yours, this muse, has been a good influence on you,” Crosby went on when Hugh remained silent. “This is, by far, your best work.”
Will my work suffer when she is gone, then? What of my heart?
“Thank you,” he managed aloud once he’d found his voice. “You know that your opinion means the world to me, and it was important that I got this one right.”
“I would say you certainly have. You may submit this to the Academy with confidence. They are daft if they refuse you for yet another year.”
Before Hugh could respond, Crosby’s attention shifted to the canvas in the center of the room before his stool, the one he’d put a few more hours of work into just yesterday with Evelyn. She hadn’t been able to come sit for him today, as she was accompanying her mother and sister to a dinner party, but he had plans to go on adding to the scenery tonight for lack of anything better to do. He was truly pathetic, needing to be close to Evelyn in some way while she was not near, even if it meant simply gazing upon her painted image.
“What’s this?” Crosby mumbled, approaching the canvas with wide, assessing eyes. “A new piece? I did not see this one on my last visit.”
Folding his arms over his chest, Hugh shook his head. “I hadn’t begun it then. It’s just a little something I’ve been working on in my spare time. I call it,Portrait of a Lady.”
“Marvelous,” Crosby whispered, his voice low as if in awe. “God’s teeth, it’s magnificent.”
Hugh furrowed his brow, running a hand over the evening stubble making his jaw itch. “Thank you, but it’s not even close to being finished. I still need to—”
“The first painting didn’t need to be finished for me to tell you what it needed,” Crosby interjected with a wave of his hand. “And this one doesn’t need to be complete for me to tell you it’s sublime. This is the same woman, isn’t it? Your muse.”
Hugh studied the near-nude form of Evelyn on the canvas. He still had her hair to finish, as well as several parts of her body, but thus far he’d finished her torso and legs as well as the gossamer fabric that revealed just enough to offer the perfection of her figure and add a dash of sensuality to the portrait. He’d finished her profile, but wouldn’t be satisfied until he got the rosy tint of her cheeks and her pink lips just right. Her eye, however, he’d finished on the first day, tirelessly mixing pigments until finding the blend that perfectly captured her chocolate-hued irises.
“It is,” he replied. “She was reluctant to sit for it but seems to be enjoying the experience. She is the consummate subject.”
Crosby turned to him with a disbelieving laugh, his eyes twinkling merrily. “Hugh, don’t you see it? That is not your painting for the Exhibition.”
Hugh frowned as Crosby pointed toVirtue and Vice, before turning his blunt finger toward the portrait of Evelyn.
“This is.”
Now he was the one grappling with disbelief. He’d worked his fingers to the bone finishingVirtue and Viceand had done everything within his power to make it worthy of the Exhibition. Now, Crosby was telling him he ought to submit one he’d only begun a fortnight ago?
“You cannot be serious.”
“Not only am I serious, I am insistent. I cannot allow you to submitVirtue and Viceknowing you’ve got a far more superior work up your sleeve. This painting is everything...it’s light and air, it’s love and beauty, and yes, it is even sex and sensuality. More than any of that, it’s the workyouare most connected to. I look at this woman and cannot help but feel as if I love her, as if Iknowher. This is a gift, Hugh, a rare thing. I can promise you that while all the paintings submitted for the Exhibition will be technically proficient. But, very few of them will evoke the sort of emotion that turns a painting into a piece of art.”
Hugh studied the canvas in silence for a long while, mulling over what Crosby had said. His reticence had nothing to do with whether or not he liked the piece. He loved it and had wanted to spend his every spare moment working on it this past two weeks. That Evelyn was the subject made it all the better for him. But, there was the fact that he’d placed all his hopes onVice and Virtue, a painting he’d worked on for months. He felt certain about it, about its ability to earn him a place in the Exhibition.
If he took a chance and submitted the portrait of Evelyn, would he find himself once against shut out of the showcase?
“That feeling in your gut,” Crosby said. “The one that registers as fear and makes you feel as if you are going to be ill...I know it well and so do you. That is the feeling of your instincts leading you somewhere important. If you ignore it and submit the first painting, you will still likely make the Exhibition. The piece is one of your best, as I said. But this...this has the potential to give you what you really want, and that is more than having your work displayed.”
Damn him, the man was right as always. Hugh didn’t want to merely be accepted and showcased. He wanted his work to draw clients to him, to make them clamor to sit for him in droves. This painting had the power to do that. Every man looking upon it would want the woman portrayed, would perhaps remember their first loves or the women they loved now. Every woman would want to be her, to be depicted as beautiful and desirable.
But, only if he could finish it in time.
“The deadline for submissions is in a week,” he groaned, running a hand over his weary face.
Where he’d been prepared to work an hour or two on the painting this evening, it now looked as if he’d be at it all night.
