Below is a sketch I've written that may or may not be included in the final draft of my sequel to "The Portrait of a Lady." I like to write these short stories to get my mind working on ideas for the continuing conflict between Isabel and Gilbert Osmond.
Gilbert Osmond entered Caffe Greco at eleven on a rainy Thursday morning in an aggravated disposition having just come from his art dealer, Raymond Durelli, where to his utter amazement he learned that a picture had been sold for a substantial sum to none other than his very own wife, Isabel, and she had not even requested the discount usually reserved for the better customers, of which, as his wife and he a frequent buyer, she was entitled to, though this is not first and foremost what had him in a furor.
No, what had him in such a fury was that she was buying a work of the so-called Impressionists; a laughable style of no redeeming value perpetrated by dealers in Paris to make fools of naive Americans and significantly line their own pockets while encouraging artists of lesser merit in their hostile campaign against all that was deemed intelligently sublime in the art and craft of painting as it had been practiced for centuries but was now to lie fallow as charlatans committed this fraud on the art world.
That his foolish wife of little taste should be among such gullibility was an outrage to Osmond, more so, as he had been negotiating for a superb Gian Lorenzo Bernini architectural drawing that was to be marketed for a considerable price tag of its own, and Osmond, hoping to extract this sum from his wife’s bank was incensed that she should part with one half the needed cash for this daub by the irascible James McNeill Whistler, a poseur, a hack, possibly the worst of the assemblage calling themselves Impressionists.
Osmond ruefully thought to himself Isabel had not the intelligence to choose the more talented of the bunch, Edgar Degas, who had at least a formidable set of skills lacking in the rest of the group even if he chose to align himself with these third-rate daubers, something he was sure to regret in time.
Now he was to learn by an indirect route that his duplicitous wife had purchased a minor chalk and pastel drawing of the Campanile Santa Margherita in Venice, a more weak, unfulfilled representation one was likely to find of a motif that had been rendered by so many artists in the past it was now almost a cliché but leave it to Isabel to be willfully obtuse--her central ideas having been born in ignorance, encouraged by a society gone mad.
She also had to know he would not hang this piece of humbug in the Palazzo Roccanera--she was therefore planning to hang it in Gardencourt, her house in England--a fact Osmond found as disagreeable as the artists she chose to sponsor and where Mr. Whistler made his home although he did not place the two facts within the same frame.
As Osmond ordered a campari and soda and took a corner table he chanced to see a personage he vaguely recognized, that of Mr. Edward Rosier, a collector of objects de art, old lace and enamels, and once a suitor of his daughter Pansy to no avail, a face he did not immediately distinguish--the gentleman had grown stout and now sported a full beard--and before Osmond could place him, wishing thoroughly to ignore him on principle, could not but take the offered hand as Mr. Rosier approached his table though inviting him to a seat would have been beyond Osmond’s sociable endurance.
“Ah, Mr. Osmond, don’t tell me you are now looking to establish in your drawing rooms a sampling of the Impressionists; I would never have taken you for one who falls for such shenanigans but it is all the rage these days so you may have made a good investment.”
Osmond glared at the impudent man, his eyes ablaze with rancor and deigned not to answer this mocking accusation but instead return the jab: “I don’t in the least know what you mean, Mr. Rosier, is it? Ah, yes, now I remember you and your little collection, you sold it, did you not? And got a good price too if I recall.”
Mr. Rosier colored a little at the obvious reminder of their shared past and decided to continue his subtle attack on a man he thought sinister. “I’ve just come from Durelli’s and I couldn’t help but notice you and Mrs. Osmond now possess a Whistler drawing, might I congratulate you?” he said with a factious grin.
“You may congratulate my wife if that is what it is, I myself know nothing of Mr. Whistler nor care about his meager efforts.”
“I understand your wife is a great friend of the artist. He’s quite sought after-- quite the darling of the public. I hear he is to paint Mrs. Osmond’s portrait. You are tolerant: a portrait by Mr. Whistler can take considerable time. Many ladies have been quite worn out posing for hours a day, with never-ending sittings...he takes great pains with his portrayals...and for a dear price, I'm told.” With that he gave a hearty laugh, tipped his hat and left Osmond stewing.
Osmond’s mood was blackening to a deadly rage as he contemplated what the insufferable man Rosier told him. If it were true, he would surely have to rein in his obdurate wife again. She would become a blot on his reputation as a collector of Old Masters and antiquities. He would have to demand Durelli refund the money for the Whistler drawing and put it toward the Bernini. As for the alleged portrait, tolerance had never been Osmond’s forte and it would not now be practiced in any way for the Impressionists, a trend that would soon, could only be, regarded as a bout of madness, he thankfully concluded.
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