Indeed, I have come pretty near omitting my periodical record this time.It was all the work of a friend of mine, who would have it that I should sit to him for my portrait.When a soul draws a body in the great lottery of life, where every one is sure of a prize, such as it is, the said soul inspects the said body with the same curious interest with which one who has ventured into a "gift enterprise" examines the "massive silver pencil-case" with the coppery smell and impressible tube, or the "splendid gold ring" with the questionable specific gravity, which it has been his fortune to obtain in addition to his purchase.
The soul, having studied the article of which it finds itself proprietor, thinks, after a time, it knows it pretty well.But there is this difference between its view and that of a person looking at us:--we look from within, and see nothing but the mould formed by the elements in which we are incased; other observers look from without, and see us as living statues.To be sure, by the aid of mirrors, we get a few glimpses of our outside aspect; but this occasional impression is always modified by that look of the soul from within outward which none but ourselves can take.A portrait is apt, therefore, to be a surprise to us.The artist looks only from without.He sees us, too, with a hundred aspects on our faces we are never likely to see.No genuine expression can be studied by the subject of it in the looking-glass.
More than this; he sees us in a way in which many of our friends or acquaintances never see us.Without wearing any mask we are conscious of, we have a special face for each friend.For, in the first place, each puts a special reflection of himself upon us, on the principle of assimilation you found referred to in my last record, if you happened to read that document.And secondly, each of our friends is capable of seeing just so far, and no farther, into our face, and each sees in it the particular thing that he looks for.Now the artist, if he is truly an artist, does not take any one of these special views.Suppose he should copy you as you appear to the man who wants your name to a subscription-list, you could hardly expect a friend who entertains you to recognize the likeness to the smiling face which sheds its radiance at his board.
Even within your own family, I am afraid there is a face which the rich uncle knows, that is not so familiar to the poor relation.The artist must take one or the other, or something compounded of the two, or something different from either.What the daguerreotype and photograph do is to give the features and one particular look, the very look which kills all expression, that of self-consciousness.
The artist throws you off your guard, watches you in movement and in repose, puts your face through its exercises, observes its transitions, and so gets the whole range of its expression.Out of all this he forms an ideal portrait, which is not a copy of your exact look at any one time or to any particular person.Such a portrait cannot be to everybody what the ungloved call "as nat'ral as life." Every good picture, therefore, must be considered wanting in resemblance by many persons.
There is one strange revelation which comes out, as the artist shapes your features from his outline.It is that you resemble so many relatives to whom you yourself never had noticed any particular likeness in your countenance.
He is at work at me now, when I catch some of these resemblances, thus:
There! that is just the look my father used to have sometimes; Inever thought I had a sign of it.The mother's eyebrow and grayish-blue eye, those I knew I had.But there is a something which recalls a smile that faded away from my sister's lips--how many years ago! I thought it so pleasant in her, that I love myself better for having a trace of it.
Are we not young? Are we not fresh and blooming? Wait, a bit.The artist takes a mean little brush and draws three fine lines, diverging outwards from the eye over the temple.Five years.--The artist draws one tolerably distinct and two faint lines, perpendicularly between the eyebrows.Ten years.--The artist breaks up the contours round the mouth, so that they look a little as a hat does that has been sat upon and recovered itself, ready, as one would say, to crumple up again in the same creases, on smiling or other change of feature.--Hold on! Stop that! Give a young fellow a chance! Are we not whole years short of that interesting period of life when Mr.Balzac says that a man, etc., etc., etc.?
There now! That is ourself, as we look after finishing an article, getting a three-mile pull with the ten-foot sculls, redressing the wrongs of the toilet, and standing with the light of hope in our eye and the reflection of a red curtain on our cheek.Is he not a POETthat painted us?
"Blest be the art that can immortalize!"
COWPER.
--Young folks look on a face as a unit; children who go to school with any given little John Smith see in his name a distinctive appellation, and in his features as special and definite an expression of his sole individuality as if he were the first created of his race: As soon as we are old enough to get the range of three or four generations well in hand, and to take in large family histories, we never see an individual in a face of any stock we know, but a mosaic copy of a pattern, with fragmentary tints from this and that ancestor.The analysis of a face into its ancestral elements requires that it should be examined in the very earliest infancy, before it has lost that ancient and solemn look it brings with it out of the past eternity; and again in that brief space when Life, the mighty sculptor, has done his work, and Death, his silent servant, lifts the veil and lets us look at the marble lines he has wrought so faithfully; and lastly, while a painter who can seize all the traits of a countenance is building it up, feature after feature, from the slight outline to the finished portrait.
