Ten reasons for going on living in this horrid world
PAUL JOHNSON
The other day a lady sitting next to me at lunch asked me what my ten favourite paintings were. A good question, that, for it forces one to attend to priorities, picking ten reasons for wanting to go on living in this horrid world. I gave her three before we were interrupted. My first would unquestionably be Thomas Girtin's 'The White House at Chelsea'. The Tate has it, but it is hardly ever shown, it is so delicate. It was Turner's favourite, too. When someone who had been looking over his studio said to him nastily, 'I have seen a better one than any of these,' Turner instantly replied, 'Yes, and I know what it is — it is Tom Girtin's White House.' My next would be Whistler's luscious little watercolour of the girl in the grey dress sitting on a red sofa and holding up a fan, one of the delights of the Freer in Washington, which has a huge Whistler collection, including his 'Peacock Room'. The girl was his best and favourite model, Millie Finch, a slim, vivacious creature who knew how to strike a stylish pose. The old dandy caught it, in a few restless minutes of precise and rapid brushwork. Number three, also a watercolour, is by Adolph Menzel, perhaps the best German painter since Diirer. It is of two tired old horses waiting with their sleigh in 1846. A masterpiece of economy, it was probably done in five minutes and now hangs in the Berlin Kiipferstichteabinett. Menzel was only about four foot eight, and his lack of inches became a virtue, for he often painted from unusual angles as a result. This one is seen from the first floor of a hotel, with little Menzel just able to peer over the sill, and it is the downward perspective that makes the sketch unique.
Would I pick only small things? By no means. My next choice is a sizable oil by Velasquez, The Water Seller', on view at Apsley House. This masterly work was looted by the French when they pulled out of Spain in a hurry in 1813. The Duke of Wellington found it, along with much else, in Joseph Bonaparte's baggage train when he captured it. He returned it to the King of Spain, its owner. but the King was so glad to be rid of the French, and so grateful to the Duke for kicking them out, that he insisted he keep the painting, and many other treasures too. So there it is, in the house that used to be known as 'Number One, London'. It is a compendium of all the little tricks a great painter acquires for rendering surfaces, textures, opacity, light, transparency and shadow. I could look at it for ages, every day, without growing tired, and learn a little more with each glance. Then there is a joyful work: Lawrence's portrait of Lady Peel, in the Frick Collection, New York. Sir Robert Peel had a life that began in sunshine — he was perhaps the most brilliant undergraduate Christ Church had ever had, who went quickly into Parliament and high office — and ended in shadow: an ex-premier without a party, who was rolled on by a malign horse and died after three days in agony. The hest thing in all his days was his wife, and Lawrence has captured her consoling beauty and vivacity in this stunning head-and-shoulders.
This makes five. My number six is a big picture, in the Venice Accademia: 'The Miracle of the True Cross' by Carpaccio. Here is the Rialto bridge as it was in about 1500, with all its surroundings on both sides of the Grand Canal, thronged with people, most of them taking no notice of the holy events going on, just being smart Venetians on the qui vive for profit, sex or gossip. It is a crowded, gregarious and lively picture, which pulls you into it, as all great pictures do, making you part of its events. 'Where have you just been?"Oh, in early 16th-century Venice, actually. Some kind of religious ceremony going on. Great fun, anyhow.' More fun is to be had in my seventh choice, The Boating Party', the big Renoir in the Phillips Collection in Washington. Normally I am bored by Impressionists, who are grotesquely overrated these days, and Renoir is a suspect painter who went on far too long, after he had lost his gifts — his late 'Bronze Venuses', as he called them, are repellent. But this is an early work, a celebration of youth and happiness, with delicious girls of 18 or so and handsome, healthy young men, scarcely older, congregating on a balcony overlooking the Seine to eat and drink and flirt and ogle. It is superbly composed and painted with just the right combination of dash and reflection. It must have given Renoir enormous pleasure, and we share it. No message. No particular point, really. Just delight in life.
Then, a very different thing altogether, Pieter Saenredam's ecstatic interior of the Great Church at Haarlem, now in the fortunate possession of the National Gallery of Scotland. I remember when they bought it, paying what seemed a vast sum; it now looks a real bargain. It is a magical concep tion: almost monochrome, but filled with light and depth, and a kind of religious intensity created by the artist's cunning adaptation of perspective. He knew all about perspective, did this single-minded Dutchman, and he knew that to make things seem real you have to bend its rules. But only a man of immense skill and experience can bend them the precise fraction that does the trick. Saenredam was the best painter of interiors in the history of art, and this is his masterpiece.
My ninth choice puts me in a dilemma. One of my favourite collections of drawings is the one formed by the dealer John Thaw, on permanent loan to the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York. It is a proof that a good eye can still assemble marvels, even in these pricey days. He has in the collection a sketch by Fragonard — one of my heroes — of a garden, with a man and a wheelbarrow and two lovers, which is pure bliss. But then if I pick that, why should I not pick the even more accomplished oil of the swinging lady in the Wallace Collection? So instead I go for another jewel in this select trove, a little Rembrandt drawing of a group of blacks playing in a band. Called 'Four Negroes Playing Wind Instruments', it is a miracle of line and shading, done in a few minutes, capturing a brief, noisy episode for all time. What was the occasion? Were they syncopating? Who were these musicians? I do not know. But it must be the first drawing of a jazz band ever done.
Finally, there is a wonderful nude by Anders Zorn, the greatest Swedish painter of modern times (his dates are 1860-1920), and one of the most skilful painters of naked women who has ever lived. This is not a studio work, but a real girl coming out of an actual wood, into the sunlight. She is coming straight at you and she does not have sex on her mind but warm clothes to get into. I have seen this compelling work, but it is in a private collection and I do not now know where it is. A Zorn sometimes comes on the market and if I were a young man I would collect him. I would also go for the man who inspired him and so many other naturalists of the late 19th century: Bastien-Lepage, perhaps the most neglected of all French masters. He is the man who will be revered when all Monet's wallpaper is put in the lumber-room. But that is another story.
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