Free Lisette's List by Susan Vreeland Page A

from the depths of foreboding to a vision of glorious splendor.
    “No word about Monsieur Laforgue,” I said.
    T HE NEXT DAY WHILE A NDRÉ was working in the courtyard, I asked Pascal to tell me more about Paul Cézanne. That pleased him, and he took out his pages.
    “I haven’t told you about visiting him in his hometown, Aix-en-Provence, south of here. Julien and I hadn’t seen him since I had acquired that landscape of his, so I went there to set Julien’s mind at rest. I asked after him in galleries, in art supply stores, in cafés along cours Mirabeau, the shady main avenue lined with mansions. You must get André to take you there.”
    “He’ll tell me he has to work. You tell him.”
    “I stopped to watch a boules game and asked the players if they knew him. It was baffling. No one had heard of him—one of the finest painters in all of France. Had he no friends in his own town?
    “Finally, I went to the Hôtel de Ville. A clerk of town records gave me an address, and there I saw him trudging home, hunch-shouldered under a slouch hat, looking like a tramp. He was carrying a game bag with the neck of a green bottle poking out and his oversized paint box, with an easel and a painting strapped to his back. His face was sunburnt and his beard was smeared with paint. He recognized me, Lisette. Imagine that.”
    Pascal picked out his pages from the desk. “This isn’t exact. It’s just what I remember. I told him I had come to ask if he needed any more frames, but mostly to see his paintings.
    “ ‘My paintings? Humph. I am only a beginner,’ he muttered.
    “I told him not to degrade himself, that I had gone to his big exhibition three times, and that I wanted to see his paintings so I could remember them.
    “ ‘It is no great thing to remember paintings,’ he said. ‘Look at nature instead. It’s fresh every day. Think of its author. You do notget that in a painting. But we try. We try. Look over there, at the space between that tree and us. The air. The atmosphere. You can feel it, smell it, even taste it. But how the devil do you paint atmosphere? It’s a mixture of air and water, light and shade, constantly changing. I have to chase it.’
    “ ‘Now, that tree is easier. It’s solid. A cylinder. And the foliage above it, a half sphere. The road, a trapezoid. That bush, a cone. See? The shadows of the divine create those shapes. But be careful. After all, art is a religion.’
    “ ‘The same thing as soul?’ I asked.
    “He answered, ‘You might say that. Or that it is created with soul. How you appreciate a thing is soul. Appreciate those vibrations of light in reds and yellows. Blues, too. You can’t feel the air without blues. If you’re living in the grace of God, you should be able to express it. I’m still working it out. I’m never satisfied. I’m afraid I won’t live long enough to paint with confidence. Do you know, monsieur, what it feels like to be called a fraud? The torment never goes away. And that makes life terrifying.’
    “ ‘A fraud? Never!’ I told him. ‘You’re a master.’
    “He turned to me at his doorway, and his eyes were moist and deep. ‘Am I?’ he asked. He let a moment pass as though he was trying to figure me out. Then he invited me in.
    “It was a grim, cluttered old house. The studio had high ceilings and tall windows. I seem to remember a potbellied stove. Along a shelf there were white compotiers like my mother’s, straw-wrapped wine bottles, a candlestick, gray jugs, pitchers, and the green glazed toupin that’s in my painting.”
    “What’s a toupin ?”
    “An olive jar. He called it moral pottery. He thought by painting it, he was honoring the rustic crafts of Provence. He said that a canvas and a marble block are luxury items, but the craftsman who gives an artistic touch to a simple piece of pottery or a basket, or a panetière , or wooden utensils, or pine furniture brings art to thepeople. Think of that, Lisette, the next time