She was hopelessly "ladylike," and to
interpret her adequately, only the decorative patterns of earlier
men--Mignard, Van Loo, Nattier, Largilliere--would translate her native
delicacy.
For nearly four weeks he had laboured on the face, painting it in with
meticulous touches only to rub it out with savage disgust. To transcribe
those tranquil, liquid eyes, their expression more naive than her
daughter's--this had proved too difficult a problem for the usually
facile technique of Falcroft. Give him a brilliant virtuoso theme and he
could handle it with some of the sweep and splendour of the early
Carolus Duran or the brutal elegance of the later Boldini. But Madame
Mineur was a pastoral. She did not express nervous gesture. She was
seldom dynamic. To "do" her in dots like the _pointillistes_ or in
touches after the manner of the earlier impressionists would be
ridiculous. Her abiding charm was her repose. She brought to him the
quiet values of an eighteenth-century eclogue--he saw her as a divinely
artificial shepherdess watching an unreal flock, while the haze of
decorative atmosphere would envelop her, with not a vestige of real life
on the canvas.
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