Mme de Saint-Euverte's Soirée

Acrylic on panel, unframed 9x12 inches, (22.9x30.5 cm), 2012

Framed, 17.5x14.5 inches, (36.8x44.5 cm)

Charles Swann is on the left, Mmes de Cambremer, de Francquetot and de Gallardon are at center. Oriane de Guermantes in her Princesse des Laumes incarnation is at the right.

The painting will be exhibited in a show curated by Sarah Archer at Viktor Wynd Fine Arts in London. It opens October 12 at a celebration of Suzette Field's "A Curious Invitation - The 40 Greatest Parties in Literature", published by Picador.

Three Orianes

James Everett of Proust Reader wrote in an email conversation that time creates new versions of the characters of In Search for Lost Time and led me to this question:

Supposing the duchess of Guermantes could be reduced in the manner of classical painting to The Three Ages of Man, might the first age be she at the wedding of Dr. Percepied's daughter where young Marcel spies her with a pimple on her nose in Gilbert the Bad's Chapel and a wash of red light from the window depicting her ancestor Geneviève de Brabant fills the church, might the second age show her later, flashing her dazzling smile to Marcel at the opera at the height of her power, and might the third show her near the end of the trail at the matinée Guermantes where she surprises Marcel by exclaiming it wonderful to see "her oldest friend"?

A similar format could be given to all the major characters of course, most of the minor as well. Where and how does Proust show us changes in character, how does he lead the us through lives that are physically and emotionally redefined by incident, experience and time? At what point for instance does Charles Morel change his evil way to those of a family man, when does Miss Sacripant become Mme Swann and Mme Swann Mme de Forcheville, what changes come over Saint-Loup's face between his table jumping at Doncieres, his coming out at the brothels and his hero's death in the trenches? And could we look each in the face and tell them, "Oh, I know who you are" at each point along the path?

Here is Oriane at the wedding...

At the Opera...

At the matinée...

Each panel is acrylic on masonite, 5x7 inches.
Each image expands when clicked.

 

 

Here they are as a tryptych...

As well as James Everett I'm grateful to Patrick Alexander and Dr. William C. Carter for their contributions to my attempt with the subject.

Charlus as Lear

"But good heavans!" cried Jupien, "I was right not to want to go too far. Look! He's already managed to get into a conversation with the gardener's boy. I had better say good-bye to you, sir, I must not leave my invalid alone for a second, he's just really a big baby now."

~Time Regained, page 897.

But how can we go too far with Charlus, or say good-bye to Marcel's characters? I'd sit with the baron for awhile, let him flatter and ramble, keep his hand off my knee, replace his wilted boutonnière with  a fresh blossom and think, were I myself, of painting him again.

The Illustrated Proust

Patrick Alexander and I have put together a draft version of "The Illustrated Proust". It includes 16 illustrations painted over the last nine months. They will accompany Patrick's tweets of In Search of Lost Time in a final version. The draft can be seen here: The Illustrated Proust. It is listed in the links to the right.
Here are three scenes...

Marcel and the madeleine

Mlle Swann and the Duke and Duchess de Guermantes

Charlus hosting Mme Verdurin's soirée

The Vivonne

Brichot avec lunettes and 5 more make 77

Brichot avec lunettes

Princesse Sherbatoff

Ski

The fisher girl at Carqueville

M. de Forcheville

Miss Sacripant

13 more characters from The Search

Names, no doubt, are whimsical draughtsmen, giving us of people as well as places sketches so unlike the reality that we often experience a kind of stupor when we have before our eyes, in the place of the imagined, the visible world (which, for that matter, is not the real world, our senses being little more endowed than our imagination with the art of portraiture - so little, indeed that the final and approximately lifelike pictures which we manage to obtain of reality are at least as different from the visible world as that was from the imagined).
~Within a Budding Grove, page 590.

Mme de Cambremer after a strenuous session of music,

her diamond earrings fallen, her headpiece of black grapes

come undone.

Mlle Vinteuil recalling a spell of very hot weather at Montjouvain.

Saniette waiting for thunder that never comes.

The affable Babal Bréauté.

Mme de Marsantes

Gísèle sur la plage à Balbec.

Rosemonde

Octave listening to La Voix Humaine.

Léa

Tomato Twin no. 1

M. Nissim Bernard, understanding resemblance is often only external.

Tomato Twin no. 2

Marie-Antoinette at her first soirée as
Charlus' inheritor, Mlle d'Oloron.

If, in the realm of painting, one portrait makes manifest certain truths concerning volume, light, movement, does that mean that it is necessarily inferior to another completely different portrait of the same person, in which a thousand details omitted in the first are minutely transcribed, from which one would conclude the model was ravishingly beautiful while from the first one would have thought him or her ugly, a fact which maybe of documentary, even of historical importance, but is not necessarily an artistic truth?
~Time Regained, pages 738-739.