Free Sacre Bleu by Christopher Moore Page B

“Beg pardon, mademoiselle—”
    “A bear rug’s a sight more comfortable than the riverbank, eh, Édouard?” she said to Manet in French, squeezing his biceps. “At least she didn’t give him syphilis, non ?”
    Manet felt his mouth moving, but no words were coming out. The two painters, both notorious raconteurs, looked at each other, speechless.
    “You two look like you’ve seen a ghost. Oh, there’s my uncle again. Have to go. Ta!”
    She hurried off through the crowd. Whistler’s monocle dropped out of his eye and swung from the end of its silk cord. “Who was that woman?”
    “How would I know?” said Manet. “Don’t you know her?”
    “No. Never seen her before.”
    “Me either,” Manet lied.
    “She knew your name.”
    Manet shrugged. “I’m known in Paris.”
    He really didn’t know who she was. He didn’t even know what she was. He was suddenly feeling ill, and not because of the criticism of his painting. “Jemmie, this White Girl of yours wasn’t the painting you were working on in Biarritz when you had your accident, was it?”
    “No, of course not. That was in the studio. The Biarritz painting was called The Blue Wave.”
    “I see,” said Manet. “Of course.”

     
    “So, Whistler, how’s your mother?” Hommage á Delacroix —Henri Fantin-Latour, 1864. (Whistler center, standing; Manet, standing center right; Baudelaire seated to Manet’s left. Fantin-Latour, the painter, seated in the white shirt.)
     
    T HE B LUE W AVE HAPPENED TO BE THE TITLE OF THE PAINTING THE C OLORMAN carried, wrapped in butcher’s paper, under his arm as he hurried after the girl in Spanish lace.
    “Where have you been?” He followed her out of the palace into the bright noon sun.
    “Having fun,” she said, not missing a step. “Did you see them all? These young painters! They paint in the open air—in the sunshine. Don’t you know what that means?”
    “Blue?”
    “Oui, mon cher. Beaucoup bleu.”

Interlude in Blue #2: Making the Blue
     

     
    F or as long as there have been painters, there have been color men. For years it was thought that the true painter, a master painter, would gather his own pigments, the earths, ochres, insects, snails, plants, and potions that went into making color, and combine them in his studio. But the truth is, the ingredients for colors were often hard to find, difficult to prepare, and rare. To be a master, a painter needs to paint, not waste the light by searching for and preparing pigment. It was the color man who delivered the rainbow into the hands of the artist.
    Ultramarine, true blue, the Sacré Bleu, is made from crushed lapis lazuli, a gemstone, and for centuries, it was rarer and more valuable than gold. Lapis lazuli is found in one place in the world, the remote mountains of Afghanistan, a long, dangerous journey from Europe, where the churches and palaces were being decorated with the Blessed Virgin wearing a Sacré Bleu gown.
    It was the color men who sought out the lapis and pulled the color from the stone.
    First they pounded the lapis with a bronze mortar and pestle, then that powder would be sifted until so fine the grains were not visible to the naked eye. The dull bluish-gray powder was then melted into a mixture of pine rosin, gum mastic, and beeswax. Over a period of three weeks, the putty would be massaged, washed with lye, strained, then dried, until all that was left was pure, powdered ultramarine, which a color man could sell as dry pigment, to be mixed by the artist with plaster for fresco, egg yolk for tempera, or linseed or poppy oil to use as oil paint.
    There are other blues, blues from plants, indigo and woad, which fade with time, and inferior blues from minerals like copper and azurite, which can go black with time, but a true blue, a forever blue, ultramarine, was made in this exact way. Every color man knew the recipe, and every color man who traveled Europe from painter to painter with his wares could swear to his clients