The Phoenix Land (20 page)

So that evening we went to Van Koneinenburgh’s house. He lived in a tiny studio apartment in one of those houses in the oldest part of The Hague. Everything there seemed to have a soft brownish hue as one sees in old Dutch paintings. Every corner was piled high with drawings and also paintings that had been started and then abandoned as well as giant portfolios hardly able to contain them all.

In this dark crabbed little space – such as Rembrandt may well have worked in – Van Koneinenburgh’s wonderful
Beethoven-like
head seemed doubly impressive.

He spoke very simply, with no affectation, with the calm air of one whose work was inspired by a single refined spiritual ethic, for one could see that, for him, only art was important, and in life only art mattered. The picture was completed by his wife. She was a local girl, that same sort of housewife one sees skimming milk or mending clothes in seventeenth-century paintings. Broadly built and heavy, every time she looked at her husband one could see in her eyes a strange fanatic flame, a mixture of reverence and maternal love for that gentle husband for whom all struggles seemed vain, who never achieved success, was almost unknown and who only occasionally received some small
municipal
commission which just tided them over and enabled them to survive – and all this for a man she herself knew to be truly great, as great, in fact, as any in the history on the Netherlands.

And, indeed, he was a great artist. His style was an unexpected mixture of modern ideas and those of the early Flemish masters. His compositions resembled those of Memling and Jan van Eyk seen through modern eyes. His mastery of draughtsmanship was truly extraordinary, and his execution simple and severe, like that of Dürer. Sometimes a single line would be enough to express his intentions.

The walls were covered with large-gestured compositions, cartoons for mural competitions that had invariably been won by other painters whose clever facile work was more immediately pleasing but milder and less epoch-making and memorable than his.

We stayed with him for a long while. I spent most of the time poring over the drawings in the portfolios, refreshed by a glass of beer and some slices of cold meat which were brought in by the artist’s wife. Each time she brought over a new drawing she glanced questioningly at her husband as if to ask if it were all right and not a profanation. Only when he nodded approval did she put the things down beside me. I understood that these
studies
were sacrosanct, only to be shown to those few who were
considered
worthy. This was confirmed as we walked home, for Aarlof then told me that it was an exceptional honour as Van Koneinenburgh only showed his work to those he decided were exceptionally deserving.

I returned there several times during my stay in The Hague.

Van Koneinenburgh had some interesting theories and liked to talk about them. How one related the placing of one’s
composition
to the space it occupied, the distribution of colour and tone and the relationship to be established between each of the principal lines of the drawing were all matters for which he had developed his own system. He believed there were mathematical rules to be followed, for in his mind all those lines and apparently otherwise meaningless angles were filled with life and expressive force. In consequence, he fancied that he had discovered a
universal
law, although in fact, of course, it was only a natural rationalization of his own way of making a design and not a rule for anyone else.

Van Koneinenburgh’s sympathetic appreciation of my work was very helpful to me because it boosted my self-confidence. It also reinforced my feeling that soon I ought to quit the eternal diet of the two-oranges-and-a-lemon still-lives. I didn’t really mind that, but I did want to work from a live model and would soon have to insist that one was hired. It would be a big decision to take since the other pupils said that working from life was so
difficult
and anyway they were not at all happy about the extra expense. However, when we did get one they all worked from it, and the good Aarlof gave them life lessons too.

The life lessons produced no little trouble. One or two of the models just walked out, while one elderly woman invariably went to sleep in mid-session. At length Aarlof found a really good female nude who seemed to be a professional model and not a half-hearted amateur like the first ones. It was true that she was very expensive, but she held her pose and was beautiful with lovely colouring. She was a real Flemish woman, more a
pink-fleshed
heifer than a milk-cow, just as Rubens would have chosen, rather heavy but very young with a milk-white skin. I set to work eagerly and after a few preliminary outlines decided to try a life-size nude study. But trouble followed, and what a depressing story that turned out to be!

I had already worked for about four days on the painting, and it was going very well, when one morning Aarlof brought in a new pupil. This was a most elegant man, highly scented and sporting a monocle and gaiters. He was slightly balding but had a most distinguished air. Our professor introduced him to us – he had a German name which sounded vaguely aristocratic – sat him down facing the model (
my
model), pressed a minute
drawing
board into his hand, spend a little time whispering and laughing with him and then left us. During one of the model’s rest periods I remember stepping over towards our new student. On his drawing board there were some shapeless doodling, more like smudges than actual drawing.

‘I haven’t done any drawing for a long time,’ said the man with the monocle, as if to justify himself on seeing my surprise. Then, when the model resumed her pose, he picked up his diminutive ‘drawing’ and left without another word. He never returned, and neither did the model! The whole of the next day we waited in vain: she did not turn up that day, or the next, or even the day after that. Nevertheless, I was foolish enough to hope she would still come back. Then the sad-faced widow enlightened me. She waited until the others had already left and then told me what she knew. We need not delude ourselves: our model would not be coming back, for the man with a monocle had whisked her away. She herself had known this would happen as soon as Aarlof had brought him in; and since then she had even seen the two of them in a car with the girl all dressed in new clothes –she was no longer an artists’ model! Seeing my dismay she started telling me all sorts of disagreeable things about our professor who, she said, was a dreadful man and that our monocled friend had probably bought a picture from him. ‘For that,’ she said, ‘Aarlof would sell the whole world – he’d do anything for that! He’s that sort of man!’

All that may have been true, but at any rate there was nothing I could do about it. I told Aarlof the widow’s news, as ironically as possible, and he at once made out that he too was indignant (and even referred to the monocled man as ‘a pig’). However, since it was clear that he had, under the surface jesting of my remarks, grasped the real significance of my sarcasm, he
promised
to find me a real model.

It took some time for my anger to evaporate. Then I decided I would myself start to search for a suitable model. I would find the right sort of model and engage her myself. Then I would not risk being tricked so easily. It occurred to me that, as there were always so many painters at Scheveningen in the summer and that there were also plenty of pretty girls there who often wore their enchanting national costume, I would go there to look around. With luck I might succeed in finding one willing to sit for me in costume; and so, on Sunday, I set out for the fishing village that lay close to the bathing resort.

There I beheld a sight worth seeing. All dressed in the
traditional
local fashion, the girls wore winged little lace bonnets and white blouses above which were collars of black cloth lined with some light material in vivid colours. These last were thrown back coquettishly to show off the linings. Their skirts were also embroidered with similar brightly coloured stripes, and, too, they wore multi-coloured stockings and highly-polished clogs.

So far so good! But I still had to capture one of those who were now strolling about. I would have to try to speak to her and
convince
her, not in a tearing hurry, as all those arm-in-arm strollers seemed to be. Along with one or two fishermen, they all seemed to be heading for the sand dunes just north of the village. I started off in the same direction, expecting to come across them spread out a little and sitting on the sand. Climbing to the top of the first dune, I sat down, and started drawing having cunningly worked it out that once they saw me sitting there, the natural curiosity of all Eve’s daughters would sooner or later draw one or two to approach, and so we would start talking – for by then I had already a superficial knowledge of their language – and in this way, little by little, I would convince one of them to sit for me.

Well! I just went on drawing and drawing and drawing. Time passed, and no one came near me. In the course of half-an-hour, and then three quarters of an hour, I only caught an occasional glimpse of a coloured collar or a lacy bonnet, and these were all holding hands with some fisherman or other before they
disappeared
and once again I found myself sitting all alone in the middle of this desert of sand. Perhaps, I thought, there was some dancing going on somewhere. That is where they must all have gone. But the only music to be heard was the sound of waves beating on the shore.

Quite some time was to pass like this; and there is no more dismal place to sit alone than on the top of a sand dune. I did not think that all those nymphs could have gone too far away, and so I started after them, trudging through the deep dry sand, than which nothing is more tiring. At every step one sinks in up to the ankles, and when one climbs up a slope one slides down just as far. Mercifully, I did not have far to go to discover the reason for my solitude.

Just where I was, the dunes had formed themselves into a quantity of little hillocks seven or eight yards apart with, between them, little valleys bordered by steep curved banks just as if nature had placed screens around them. I only discovered this then, but I fancy the youth of Scheveningen must known this all their lives, just as they also knew how resilient was the desert grass that grew there, how soft the sand beneath, how clean it all was so that nothing left marks or stains on elaborate collars or skirts, and that clogs never got lost there even when sometimes kicked off. Hidden away in each of these cushioned bowers of burnt golden sand and silver grey grass was a couple in sweet embrace reclining on their superb natural couch – and as for poor me, I felt like some foolish primeval mammoth, unconsciously trampling on the happiness of others.

I need hardly add that I quickly fled away!

It was about this time that, on his invitation, I went by way of Haarlem to Aardenhout to visit Oszkár Mendlik, who in my opinion was not only one of the best of contemporary painters of seascapes but who also ranked with the greatest of all time.

However, before I write about that visit, I must tell about an experience I had while on my way there, partly because I would like to evoke such a pleasing memory but partly also because,
much as a travel agent will advertise some little-known but agreeable resort, it seems to me to be my duty to pass on to all lovers of beauty my total surrender to what happens in Holland in the middle of April. It was at this time that my trip coincided with the tulip harvest. This lasts for three days during which they cut all the flowers so as to encourage the bulbs to grow larger.

I travelled by train to Leiden and from there on by tram along the highroad. When we had left behind the walls of the old
university
city we passed by lengthy
polders
, those sea-water lakes which once served as protective moats to the ancient
fortifications
. After that came meadows full of cows and then, at the turn of the road, suddenly before us was laid out an astonishing
picture
. As far as the eye could see there stretched out a wide plain covered with the brightest of colours, all set out close to each other. There were long rectangles of which one would be red and the next yellow. Then would come pink or purple. The whole countryside was like a giant chessboard on which the God of Spring had magically changed every square to a different colour. On all sides the gardeners’ entire families were at work cutting flowers – every man, woman and child of them. Near the road children were everywhere. The girls all wore garlands on their heads, those good black-and-white cows sported wreaths, as did the cart-horses, and even the telegraph poles were festooned with flowers which reached up as far as the wires overhead. All around there was this pageant, an orgy of brilliant colour helped by bushels of flower heads strewn all over the roads, the ditches, the tramlines: indeed everything that could be reached was covered by this limitless beauty. It was as if the very spirit of spring could not control its own abundance.

Tiny children were stumbling about weighed down by their flowery robes, pretty fair-haired girls were offering bouquets to all who passed and, if one laughed and joked with them, they threw more bouquets after us. Our journey to Haarlem covered at least twenty kilometres, and so dazzling was the entire trip that when we reached the city and saw its dull grey houses ahead it was almost as if one had suddenly been struck blind.

Everyone should see this who can: it is an unforgettable sight.

Haarlem, as the capital of the tulip-growing region, celebrates the flower harvest with a national exhibition at which all the growers compete with each for the annual gold medal awarded for the best new tulip.

The exhibitions are held in a series of vast glass houses
surrounded
by clumps of rhododendrons, hyacinths, azaleas and other flowering plants. In the centre there is a large dais, upon which are all the new varieties, some rigidly upright, others with their blooms at the end of more flexible stems, which are
competing
for the prize. Some of these do not even look like tulips, for their flower heads have the most bizarre forms as well as the most unexpected colours. When I was there the Gold Medal was awarded to a dark purple flower that was almost black, with long pointed petals, each like the blade of some murderous dagger, bordered with blood-red lines as if they had just been withdrawn from a mortal wound. It was a beautiful but wicked flower,
scentless
, which stood aloof on its stiff pale green stem.