Arts
Celebes and Hendrickje
Norman Rosenthal
The 'Elephant Celebes' and 'Hendrickje Stoffels' are both paintings of the very greatest importance, by Max Ernst and Rembrandt, which have recently entered the collections of the Tate and the National Gallery. They now belong to you and me and can be sought out whenever the fancy takes us. Both paintings have been almost inaccessible until now: with these unique and enriching works, London has received two very special presents. What could be better 'art news'? But they seem to have given rise to very little significant press coverage or public discussion, so that those not professionally concerned with the visual arts, i.e. the general public, who in every sense benefit and indeed have a right to know of this, are left in ignorance.
The 'Elephant Celebes' by Max Ernst entered the collection of the Tate Gallery last autumn, where it joined only two other paintings there of comparable stature in the history of European art of this century, namely Picasso's 'Three Dancers' and 'L'Escargot' of Matisse. Even when the obituaries for Max Ernst appeared some time ago and there was a second occasion to point out that arguably the greatest single painting, by this now classic painter of our century. is now at the Tate, nothing appeared in print.
The purchase of the large and quite exceptionally beautiful portrait of Rembrandt's second wife was news on the front page of The Times in January only with the usual speculation as to its financial value. But more important than the act of purchase is the fact that it has since been cleaned and has been on view now for some time in a room in the new extension of the National Gallery, where it hangs next to the painting by Rembrandt of Hendrickje bathing in a stream and opposite the exuberant portrait of the artist's first wife, Saskia, as Flora, making a wonderful contrast with this later introspective work.
The purchases of these two paintings were as important events as any to have occurred in London's art world in the last year. Yet so mesmerised are the media by the new and often ephemeral, that they fail to reflect in any depth on works of art that will affect the large audience for art so much more substantially. Even the most important exhibition at best leaves just a memory that becomes distorted in time, plus the usual quite understandably self-justifying catalogue that is an attempt by those concerned, both artists and organisers, to gain permanence and immortality.
All this is quite legitimate, but the immortality process is more mysterious and complex. Francis Bacon, in his recently published interviews with David Sylvester, whilst admitting to desiring immortality was equally clear that time alone would sort things out. Immortality is relative, and all of us in the process of looking and communicating our opinions play a part in its realisation. But we are relatively more certain of the immortality of classical Greek sculpture than of Rembrandt, more sure of Rembrandt than of Max Ernst, and more convinced of Ernst than of Bacon.
But it can be affirmed with conviction that Ernst's 'Elephant Celebes', painted in Cologne in 1920, can be recognised as a masterpiece that will stand as one for the foreseeable future. The image, contained within a largish upright canvas, is of a grey monster, looking more or less like an elephant, its trunk capped by a bull's head and decorated inexplicably with a waitress's starched collar. The animal is surmounted by an angular construction, coloured red, green and blue, resembling a sinister weapon system, from the centre of which stares a naked eye. The animal is clearly a threaten ing monster machine, alarmingly intent on shooting us down as well as trampling over us.
'Celebes' is a theatrical painting: the grey-green background sky is painted like a fanciful theatrical backcloth in a small cabaret. Fabulous fish swim across the sky. A puff of smoke hovers above the elephant, although it is unclear whether it is just there or is meant to come from the elephantmechanism. The elephant itself heaves its two visible and immensely thick legs across a wooden floorboard stage, not unlike those in de Chirico's metaphysical paintings. It does this in an ambiguous fashion that suggests both time and space—is it between two wars—or between Germany and France? It is appropriate that this was the painting that the French surrealist poet bought from Max Ernst in Cologne in 1920 and which he took with him to Paris, heralding Ernst's own move the following year from Dada Cologne to Surrealist Paris.
In the distance can be seen a mountain range, or maybe the silhouette of a town foreshadowing an important later theme of Ernst's. To the right, a green and red cactus, like a phallic growth, is complemented on the left by a thin pole acting as a measuring rod : to the front, almost outside the painting and certainly below the stage as a link between the elephant and the spectator is a headless, hollow woman. Like some dreamlike female conferencier, she leads on the elephant machine and beckons it towards its destructive course. The humour of the cabaret is black indeed.
'Celebes' has been claimed as the first surrealist painting and certainly its nightmarish imagery places it on the edge of a literary movement in which Ernst was shortly to play a leading part as a painter. (For an explanation of 'why Celebes?' the curious reader is referred to an excellent lecture on the painting by its last owner, Sir Roland Penrose, published by the University of Newcastle.) But Celebes is not dependent on any surrealist theory or manifesto, which is perhaps the reason for its unique strength in Ernst's work as a whole. In this painting. the artist came to terms in an astonishing fashion with the difficult and complex historical realities he faced in the aftermath of the First World War, which as an artist he legitimately simplifies and reduces to essentials. In this manner the painting can be compared to Picasso's 'Guernica'—curiously, the horned bull's head on the elephant's trunk seems to foreshadow that other masterpiece. The 'Elephant Celebes', which indeed appears to sum up the past as well as prophesy the future, stood out as probably Ernst's greatest single image in the remarkable retrospective exhibition held last year in New York and Paris.
As extraordinary in its different way is Rembrandt's portrait of his young housekeeper and mistress, and later his second wife, Hendrickje Stoffels, which was painted in 1659, at about the time of the superb selfportrait at Kenwood. It belongs, therefore, to the beginning of Rembrandt's great final period that was to last until his death ten years later. It must rank, now that it is there for all of us to see, as one of the most touching and profound portraits of a woman ever painted. It is almost as large as the Kenwood self-portrait. Enveloped in Rembrandt's favourite tones of deep-red, orange and black, what strikes us first however, is the whiteness of Hendrickje's loosely fitting jacket, its sensuality as drapery emphasised by the double string of amber beads that fall around her half-visible breasts. Her right hand holds the arm of the throne-like chair in which she is seated. Her left hand is held under the jacket so that there is the suggestion that she is touching her stomach. The painting is strongly lit from the viewer's left, which allows Rembrandt to make masterly use of chiaroscuro to communicate a syMPat het ically tender yet penetrating analysis of the character of Hendrickje's face, and her body of which we are so aware under the white jacket. This intense communication of character goes further than anything conveyed by Rembrandt's contemporarieS, even by Velasquez. For them the portrait was still a medium for describing the ro of le the sitter, as King, Pope or Servant as distinct from the naked human quality that Rembrandt achieved best of all in his selfportraits. One of the many reasons why this portrait of Hendrickje Stoffels is so remarkable, even for Rembrandt, is that it contains the same quality of perception as his selfportraits of this time--those remarkable works of self-analysis which combine. irl perfect balance, deep introspection and unease and self-distance and grandeur.
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