The Phoenix Land Page 18
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.
Aardenhout is only a few kilometres from Haarlem.
The Mendlik villa stood in the middle of a park of fine oaks.
I was received so warmly with real Hungarian hospitality that I almost felt as if I were back in my own country in happier times.
My great tie with Mendlik was that he too had been a pupil of Bertalán Székely and shared with me a deep admiration for that great artist who, unhappily, had been misunderstood and little appreciated during his lifetime. His charming wife was a talented sculptor who did me the great honour of doing a small clay bust of my head and shoulders. I have this still, and it gives me great pleasure45.
Mendlik’s seascapes were sensational. The best were his sketches in oil, painted from nature, of which among the most impressive was a series he had recently painted on card while sailing from Rotterdam to New York and back. During this voyage Mendlik never set foot on land, since, as an ‘enemy alien’, he was not allowed to land in America. There was a terrible storm during the voyage, so fierce that in order to paint it he had to be tied down on the bridge so as not to be swept away by the waves. He was that sort of painter! The first of the series was done when first signs of the storm began to appear on the horizon. Then came the way the waves changed colour as the storm tossed them about, followed by the effect of the rising wind until the tempest was at its height, raging round the ship with the winds now so strong on the waves that all one could see were greyish-yellow mountains of water colliding into each other, bursting and shattering into watery fragments, although without leaving any foam; and finally an unbroken surface subdued by the hurricane’s strong hands. I am sure that no one else ever painted like that!
It is terrible to think about what it can mean to be lashed to an iron railing during such a storm, when the crest of every wave sweeps over the deck. One is forced to admire the man, as well as his work, who will brave such conditions and endure such sacrifice.
Notes
43. ‘Rapin’ can mean either a student or a second-rate painter. It is unclear which of these two meanings Bánffy intended.
44. The Dutch title Jongheer is the equivalent to that of baron.
45. This little bust has survived, rescued by the family from the Bánffy house in Budapest when it was occupied by the Russian army in 1944. It resembles the larger than life-size marble bust by Strobl at present lent by Katalin Bánffy-Jelen to the Budapest Opera, where it stands in one of the grand tier foyers beside the great stair. Katalin Bánffy-Jelen presented Mrs Mendlik’s clay maquette to Gábor Koltay after he had been responsible for the reissue of Miklós Bánffy’s great Transylvanian trilogy – Erdélyi Történet – in one deluxe volume in Budapest in 1993.
Chapter Ten
I will now recount some of the main incidents of the rest of my stay at The Hague.
Between these milestones life trickled on in quiet monotony. The mornings were spent in the studio and most of the afternoons too either there or in my hotel room, drawing; except for those days on which I might go to see some famous collection, either public or private, of which there are so many in this rich little country. Then I spent an occasional evening with János Pelényi and his family or with Elek Nagy, who was then living in a villa where, sometime in March, the storks delivered a by then well-rounded baby son.
They were very proud of this uniformly pink and plump child ‘whose like the world had never seen’ and from whom even a few moments’ separation was so unthinkable that, whenever I went to lunch at their home, there in the centre of the table, instead of a bouquet of flowers, the chubby baby himself would be placed, while throughout the meal the only subject of conversation would be his intelligence and beauty. It was most touching to see the Nagy’s happiness … but for me, who for many long months had had no news either of my father or of my sister and her family, this only added to my sense of being uprooted and homeless.
***
With the coming of spring Aarlof would take his pupils out into the country so as to make landscape studies. On one of these excursions I was to have an experience that I found most interesting since it gave me a new insight into the high degree of culture to be found in every strata of Dutch society.
I had seated myself in a marvellously green meadow beside a canal. Behind me were some black-and-white cattle in a row, each one tethered to a stake by a long line. On the other side of the canal was a farmhouse with some fruit trees in the background, while in the foreground two boats were tied up. At one side there was a private bridge leading to the homestead.
I set to work to make a picture of this, and when I had been working at it for some time I saw the farmer crossing the bridge and coming towards me. He stepped up quietly and for a little while stood behind me.
For a while
he just stood there looking at the drawing. Then he waited a moment and asked if I could possibly finish the boats first because he would soon be taking one of them to row into town. Not straightaway but in half-an-hour? He could wait until then. He added that he had come over to ask me this as he did not want to spoil the progress of the drawing, but as he would have to remove one of the two boats he had thought he would tell me in advance so that I could organize my work accordingly!
Wasn’t that extraordinary? Where else would one find people with such real unaffected goodwill?
I had another experience somewhat similar to this. It occurred when I was doing studies in my hotel room. I had been working on an illustration of the classical tale of the nymph Daphne, who was transformed into a laurel-tree, and I needed to look at a free-growing laurel with naturally leafy branches because it would be ridiculous to show the beautiful nymph changing into a bush clipped like a pyramid.
I thought it would not be too difficult to find. Even though in other countries laurels are to be found trimmed into special shapes from the time they are quite small, in this country almost every tree – oaks, beeches, poplars, maples and others too – are carefully pruned right to their utmost tips. To find a laurel growing naturally I had to consult a local gardener.