5.1: Career: cutting my teeth as an art student

I flew out from London to Paris on 2nd February 1953. It was Russell Page who had suggested to Henry that I might be taken as a paying guest by Mme [J], who lived at 26 Rue de Turin - near the Gare St Lazarre. She was an impoverished widow, a Comptesse, with two teenaged children Michelle and Jocelyne, and an elderly aunt who went by the name of Tante Marthe all dwelling in the same flat. I had a room to myself, but there wasn’t much feeling of living space, and there was an atmosphere about the place which, if in London, I might have classified as Edwardian. I was expected to take my meals at home with them, but to occupy myself with my own studies for the rest of the time.

I came to know the [J] family quite well over these next four months - my return to Britain having been planned for the end of May, in time for me to attend the Queen’s coronation. But I never really accustomed myself to this idea of living under somebody else’s roof. Both at Eton and in the Life Guards, I had been accustomed to greater privacy - somewhere that I could really feel I was on my own territory. In the little room where I slept, which was separated from their drawing-room by a thin partition door, I could never feel truly at home. There was a small table which acted as a desk, and I did indeed engross myself for many hours each week - especially Sundays - revising and rewriting my novel, The Millions and the Mansions. But my life style was distinctly cramped in that room.

Something that I was always most anxious to avoid was the daily session after dinner, or after lunch as well on Sundays, when the household would sit themselves round the drawing-room for interminable polite conversation. I certainly wasn’t accustomed to this kind of communication, either at home or anywhere else for that matter. I had never developed the skills of being a polite conversationalist, nor did I in fact want to. I rather hoped to keep a distance between myself and such intrusiveness.

Nor did I find it any better when the two girls tried to persuade me that I ought to practice dancing with them - accompanied as it always was by one or other of the scratchy tunes within their sparse collection of records. Le jive was very much of the in-thing on their dance floor, but I discovered somehow that the French approach to it was utterly different to what I had experienced in London. It seemed to be all a question of neat little steps, to be performed in sequence, while only taking up the beat lightly on the stretch of the arms - whereas in London the beat was always more heavily stressed, to the disregard of any special foot play. In their company, I simply couldn’t dance. And they were quick to pronounce that I conformed with their ready-made stereotyped notion of Englishmen as being without a Frenchman’s innate sense of rhythm. I didn’t personally see things that way. But I knew that I couldn’t enjoy myself when trying to conform with their way of dancing.

I did however find it refreshingly different to be dwelling in a French family, who could be relied upon to behave at times in a most un-English fashion. Particularly memorable to me was the way in which Michelle and Jocelyne were liable to fling bread rolls and glasses of water at each other across the dining table, to fortify their sense of disagreement with one another within the dispute of the moment. It seemed like the only natural step in escalation that either of them could take, after raising their voices to a shriek within any initial verbal skirmish. Mme [J] usually made an attempt to restore law and order, but on recognizing that such matters had got out of hand, she would revert to the task of making polite conversation to me - seemingly oblivious of the missiles that were ricocheting all around us. It always struck me as so different from the environment that I had known at Sturford Mead.

There were other occasions when it was my own behaviour, at which the [J] family might look askance - largely in the quantity of wine which I took great pleasure in consuming at their meal times. (I think that I did this, in part, on the attitude that it would be a pity for me to set aside what had already been paid for within my lodging fees.) They noted this in various quiet comments on the side; or more fiercely on one particular occasion, when Jo had invited me to accompany her to a surprise party at the home of one of her school friends. I might have become bored stiff within such a juvenile gathering, if it hadn’t been for the champagne. And the father of the family was treating it as a bit of a corny joke, to find an Englishman who was so fond of his wine - instead of asking for beer. I certainly wasn’t drinking in excess by the standards with which I had been acquainted in the Life Guards, but Jo was quick to let me perceive that she felt I had put her to shame. "Il est complètement saoul!" was her comment when Mme [J] came to fetch us. But I think we all drifted thereafter towards the stereotyped conclusion that the men, in English society, drink rather more than their counterparts in France. And we left it undetermined how English women might be expected to behave.

I hadn’t been with the family for very long before we were joined by another lodger - a Dutch boy of approximately my own age, whose name was Eughien. He didn’t take quite so kindly as myself to the antics of the two sisters, and while excusing Michelle for her own part in these exchanges, he eventually made it his business to tell Jocelyne that she was a spoilt brat. But this didn’t go down at all well with Jo, who seemed to think that she had the right to behave as she pleased on this her home territory. She promptly got up and fled the room in tears. And thenceforward the two of them had to be seated at different ends of the table.

But I acquired my freedom from their home environment with the purchase of a Velosolex, which looked like an ordinary - if slightly more solid - bicycle, with a small motor on top of the front wheel. It was a most practical and inexpensive way of getting round Paris, and over the course of time I journeyed to almost every corner of the great city, visiting all the museums and other touristic sights, or sometimes just to get a feel of this environment, and to see for myself how it fitted together.

My daily routine involved attendance at Le Cours de Civilisation Francaise each week-day morning at the Sorbonne, with the purpose of this being for me to improve my understanding of the French language, by the simple process of listening to the lectures. I had after all obtained a Credit for French in my School Certificate, and the subject of French civilization was something that any foreigner needs to know if he is going to spend much time in France. The lectures gave it broad coverage, but mainly within the subjects of its history, art and literature.

That was where I went (by the Metro) each morning and, after recrossing Paris to the 26 Rue de Turin for lunch, I returned again to the Left Bank to attend an art school each afternoon. The choice of where I went was largely at the advice of Vanessa Sturton, who was a niece of Russell Page and a former lodger with the [J] family. She herself was due to return to Britain shortly, but she was invited over to lunch and volunteered to show me a bit of Montparnasse that same afternoon. And the art school - or atelier - which she especially recommended was the Academie Ranson in the Rue Joseph Baras. She regarded it as more authentically student in its atmosphere. The two better known ateliers, which were the Academie de la Grande Chaumière and the Academie Julien, were the haunts of a more middle-aged crowd in addition to their student clientele. She showed me these as well, but I did initially follow her advice by signing on at the Academie Ranson.

The main problem for me to overcome at this art school was my excruciating self-consciousness. I had the dread that others would dub me as someone who simply didn’t belong within this assemblage of young bohemians. My upper class Englishness was something that I was wearing like a ridiculous hat. I didn’t know how to blend in with everyone else. I had faith in my own ability to paint, but I craved for a little time to get myself organised as an art student without the eyes of others being focused upon me. That was not to be allowed to me, of course. It never is, no matter who I might have been.

I was just another anonymous young student, as far as any of the others were concerned. But there was always curiosity to see what kind of a painting style I might display. And the work I had been doing the most recently, when at Wolfenbüttel, was decorative more than plastic, patterning my subject - as can be seen in my painting of a potted plant which I did at that time. Well I set out trying to do the same thing, here in the Academie Ranson, with my subject matter being a young model. It didn’t take me long to realize however that this approach was far divorced from the line expected in this school. I was dragged up to show this effort to Roger Chastel, who was the art professor presiding over the weekly session of criticism. And from the way he talked to me, I was painfully aware how I was being treated like a total beginner.

Hastily I started another painting in a totally different style - far stronger and more sculptural. But the construction lines within my initial sketch accentuated the lines of her vagina. And I was bitterly embarrassed at the way two young French girls were spluttering with uncontrollable giggles, when I took it up for Chastel’s comments. Aware of the way in which they were getting at me, he did make some comment intended to reassure me - about it being a big improvement upon my first effort. But I knew how I wasn’t matching up to the minimum requirements of a serious art student. And I just wished that the earth could swallow me up.

The inhibition I felt about having others see what I was creating, heightened my inner tension. There was so little space in this atelier that we were all on top of one another, and with only one model posing up on the dais, I discovered - within the feverish urgency in which I was undertaking this task - that I was often completing the task in hand, without something else to which I could turn my attention. But I was indeed learning. I was painting with a sudden realization that there were new criteria that I had to satisfy, more concerned with the mechanics of making the viewer’s eye move round the painting, and creating impact at given points, which still had to remain in balance with all the rest of the composition. The notion of draughtsmanship was utterly different as well. I was not liable to get told that I had drawn a particular figure incorrectly, but how the lines in the picture didn’t cohere into something that was sufficiently interesting to study. What might formerly have been castigated as bad drawing might, here, be praised as a valuable contribution to the completed picture. It was a question of having to rethink my artistic position all round.

But as I endeavoured to loosen up my style in accordance with these new requirements, I was still blundering with regard to the type of style which might seem acceptable within the judgement of my peer group at the art school. In one of my early efforts, I painted the model with exaggeratedly flagging breasts. I had no wish to be offensive to her, but I happened to see things that way. My big trouble was that the youngish woman kept addressing remarks to me while she posed. And she eventually asked me to hold up my painting and show it to her, continuing to make this request so that there was no final escape. And then of course she was offended - turning to the other students and asking them to reassure her that her breasts were in no way like the ones I had portrayed. I was squirming with an even greater embarrassment than herself - especially when the dominant young male in the group spoke up to champion her cause, telling her that she should pay no attention to me: that I was mad and that my art work was absurd. Once more I felt acutely that I wasn’t really accepted within this throng. I was someone who had implanted himself from outside.

It was this general feeling that I stood apart within such a relatively small group, combined with the notion that I required more than one model to keep me busy, that persuaded me that I ought to try out one of the larger ateliers - opting for the Academie Julien, which was in the Rue du Dragon. The atmosphere might be less serious from an art student’s point of view, but the two studios were indeed spacious and fairly crowded. This gave me a far greater anonymity in which to find my feet: to work out a new painting style for myself, before contending with the task of making friends with anyone.

I could still take my paintings back to the Academie Ranson for Chastel’s weekly session of criticism. The difference in his general approach to art had shaken me, but I respected it, and I wanted to succeed in impressing him within the criteria which he demanded of us - whereas my first impressions of the criticism at the Academie Julien made me feel that it was far inferior stuff - more concerned with academic detail as to correct, or incorrect draughtsmanship. Having by now shifted my sights with regard to my intended product in art, I had no wish now to shift them back again.

On each successive session of Chastel’s criticism. I was gratified to hear him expressing his astonishment concerning the rapid progress that I was making. He was of course totally unacquainted with my prowess as a painter with which I had formerly been accredited, when I was at Eton, and I knew only too well that he wouldn’t have admired those styles very much, even if I had shown him some examples of such previous work. I realised how I was starting to climb from the bottom rung of a different ladder, but my relief was enormous in that I could now feel that I was beginning to move up it. And it was my artistic temperament in particular that I found was getting praised. Chastel was careful to point out that it wasn’t the paintings themselves about which he was enthusing, but the zest and dedication in my effort to improve. And I could sense that the others were beginning to take notice of how he was praising me.

This stood in sharp contrast incidentally, to the angle which Henry had taken, when attempting to dissuade me from going out to Paris as an art student. For he had quoted Russell Page in saying that what I lacked as a potential artist of distinction was the artistic temperament. I am inclined to suppose that Russell Page had envisaged me as being too much of a typically well-behaved young aristocrat - someone without sufficient fire in his belly to create his own path to creative self-fulfilment.

But I was making good use of my time while I was out here in Paris. I owe much in my current appreciation of art to the visits that I was paying to galleries and museums over this period. I visited virtually everything that was important to see, acquainting myself for the first time with the art movements that were in vogue at that time. Work by any of the big names in Abstract Expressionism was now something which I might hope to recognize on sight. Indeed the importance of bright colour and variant texture was now upgraded in my own approach to painting. But my real favourites were from the Expressionist school. The paintings of Van Gogh were something that I had long admired. But I had never heard of Soutine. In fact it was only after Chastel had commented that my own painting was very much in his style that I sought out some of his paintings in the Musée d’Art Moderne. And other names which featured high on my list for admiration were Chagall, Rouault, Picasso, Kockoshka, Munch and Nolde.

Then came the Easter break, when the Sorbonne if not the art schools as well, closed down for a week. This was in April, and I decided to make good use of it by going on a trip round the chateaux of the Loire. The initial part of the journey was by train, but all the rest was on my Velosolex. It was to be a painting holiday, with a suitcase and all of the rest of my equipment carried along with me. In retrospect I realize how it was all quite dangerous, due to the canvass boards which I had strapped to my back. For my trip coincided with a spell of foul and windy weather, so the boards acted as if they were sails, catching every gust of wind and propelling me across the road at unexpected moments - sometimes when I was being overtaken by a car, or with the sight of an on-coming lorry approaching me. But I have lived to tell the tale.

I probably got to see about twenty-five of these chateaux in all, although I have some difficulty in remembering precisely which these may have been. Two that I painted were Chaumont and Le Moulin, and I remember being greatly impressed by Chambord, Chenenceau, Villandry and Azay-le-Rideau. This was my first opportunity to see how Longleat compared with equivalent stately homes in France. While I took in that the Italianate influence of the Renaissance had reached the Loire some fifty years before Sir John Thynne brought that style to Britain - minus the high rooftops which give these chateaux their distinctive character - it was also evident to me that few of them could match Longleat in the quality of it being a place which still possessed a residential atmosphere. These other places were often sparsely furnished, after being gutted at the time of the Revolution. There was no longer any living family’s spirit to be discerned within them. All this made me the more appreciative of Longleat.

I had been deceived by the mildness of the weather during the weeks prior to this trip into bringing all the wrong clothing with me. For it had suddenly turned freezing cold, and there were days when I was lashed with hail stones while I was painting. This happened to me at Chaumont, I remember. But it tickled my fancy how tourists would rush up with their cameras, during any lull in the storm, to snap me as I painted. I wasn’t doing this expressly to catch their attention, but I was aware how I was behaving in a manner that few others would choose for themselves. It entailed a display of artistic temperament such as fitted me well in my new guise. I was being the young artist, undaunted by all the discomforts that nature could devise. And I threw myself into this role with zest.

I was also sleeping rough, and economising on my meals. The single blanket which I had brought with me was insufficient to keep out the cold at nights, when I was dossed down in a hay-barn, or wherever. The first night I shivered until the dawn enabled me to get up and be on my way. It is revealing for me to quote from a letter which I wrote to Henry, describing my recent holiday.

I must have looked something like the Cheddar caveman, hair on end, straw in my clothes, and oil paint - or woad - on my hands and face. When I arrived at a small village in the early hours of the morning, to try and buy some bread, the village policeman questioned me as a suspicious character. It didn’t help matters when I was unable to produce any papers to prove that I was employed. A passport had to suffice....

You have often asked me what is the modern method of asking a girl to go to bed with you. Well I have now witnessed the American method. He was a serviceman, as I imagine. I was sitting in a café sheltering from the rain, when in he walked. Already present were two French women - not prostitutes, but a bit tarty looking. The G.I. stated that he didn’t know what there was to do during the evenings in this village, and asked one of them if she could tell him. Not much progress. He then said that he hadn’t anywhere to sleep that night. Still not much progress. He then asked her if she would like "a hard proposition." She asked him what he meant. "Well," he drawled, "it’s about this long, and this round - and it’s hard!" Progress established. Exit G.I. with both of the tarts. But for personal use, I have concluded that the method is a bit un-English!

I discovered that my impersonation of a tramp over the course of this week at times had its rewards. I was genuinely hungry and dishevelled, but I had not been anticipating that, after a display of ravenous appetite at an auberge where I had been dining one evening, the proprietor would actually take pity on me and offer me the use of one of his rooms, free of charge. The idea then entered my head that I had only to give the appearance of such deprivation, and people would come forward to offer me shelter. It didn’t always work out that way however.

I remember one occasion when my clochard appearance merely disturbed the proprietor of a small gourmet restaurant, on the banks of the Loire, where I had been hoping that my air of impoverishment might serve to obtain a reduction in the final bill. It must have crossed his mind that the Michelin Guide, or whatever other publications might send out inspectors to sample the fare anonymously at such reputed gastronomic paradises, were quite capable of dressing up their representatives in this manner of guise in order to test the tolerance of their host. In any case, for whatever reason, the proprietor - with some hesitation as I must admit - permitted me to sup at a table in the far corner. But he served me in histrionic fashion, at arms’ length, and with his face creased into lines of petulant disapproval. In vain did I guzzle greedily at the chunks of meat barbecued with herbs. In vain did I wolf down the delicious garlic bread, and a whole third of the cheeses which he had so rashly left upon my table. In vain did I seize the fruit with both hands, and munch as though my life depended upon it. At the end of my repast, I proffered my payment with a forlorn gaze at my host. But there was no offer of a free bed and board forthcoming at this establishment.

By the time I returned to Paris, the [J] family commented that I was looking magnificently robust and healthy. Contending with the elements had done my complexion some good, it would seem. But I was conscious of a psychological boost within my personality as well. I had that feeling that I had just been living the life of hardship such as every artist worth his salt should suffer. And I had shown that I could take it in my stride: that my individualism could flourish no matter how harsh the environment. It might be nothing more than self-delusion, but I felt as if I had at last earned my spurs as a bohemian.

It was with this same spirit of exhibitionism, that I now set up my easel in the streets of Paris; or in the Tuilleries Gardens to be more exact. I was doing a painting with the Arc de Triomphe up on the horizon - in a style vaguely reminiscent of Soutine. People were coming to stand behind me as I painted, and some of their comments were really quite flattering. (The feed-back from a French audience is characterized by their desire to appreciate the work of any artist, whereas in Britain there is a dubious distrust of anything even faintly modernistic - to be felt, rather than heard.) But on this occasion I had the misfortune to become the object for observation from a horde of young schoolchildren. They began wisecracking to each other about my painting. And when I heard one of them declare that I was "un vrai Picasso," I retorted that Picasso didn’t paint in this kind of a style in any way at all. "Hereusement!" said the schoolboy - which set off the assembled crowd into hoots of laughter.

Backchat had never been one of my strong points, so I quickly reverted to silence. But the schoolboys were now stimulated by the idea that they had drawn blood, and were emboldened into taunting me more actively - by picking up the tubes of paint which were resting upon my easel, and scattering in all directions with them. I started out to retrieve them, but rapidly (and wisely) perceived that this would open up into a ridiculous game of pig-in-the-middle, with the tubes thrown from one to the other of them, over my head. So I promptly desisted in all such endeavour. And when they saw that I was declining to rise any further, they lost interest, dropping my paint tubes on the ground and running off in quest for their next victim.

When painting at the Academie Julien, the urgency in this whole business of trying to emerge as an artist was becoming virtually obsessive. And in retrospect, I can see that my behaviour was becoming quite ridiculous at times. The manner in which I had developed a habit of grinding my teeth while I worked, was but one example. I did so under the illusion that nobody could hear me. But I gradually became aware from people’s expressions that they could indeed hear me. So I stopped it.

There were other ways too in which my conduct might have been regarded as eccentric by others. The manner in which I ferried all my wet canvasses across Paris on the metro, was perhaps an example. It seems obvious to me now that people might complain at the danger I created for them, in that the mirror images of the busty ladies who graced my canvasses were liable to get transferred to their own clothes within the rush hour. I was even aware of this happening. And it shouldn’t have surprised me when a man made it his business to give me a public rebuke on the subject.

I mention all this because it did perhaps stand in evidence of the development of an artistic temperament - inconsiderate though it may have been. Indeed others may have seen such conduct as nothing more than a determination on my side to behave at odds with the world. What was significant to myself however, was that out here in Paris, and quite largely distanced from the company of all former friends, I felt at long last as if my inner individualism was finally breaking through to the surface, vibrantly perceptible, conscious of itself, constant and unchangeable.

Inured to the drab rags of diurnal tedium,
I greedily flight my sight from a fleeting keyhole
to treat my vision with feathered hats, and pendent
medals, glittering glory on beribboned breasts.
My testicles ache with unslaked yearning
to spew the bloated congestion in a blocked gut
to such explosive height that rocket clusters
will bust open as beckoning beacons in the sky.
A frightening intensity, pillared like a waterspout,
swirls all whirling trivia into trumpet shape,
cramped in a cranium aflame - if unfulfilled -
with willing, galvanizing aspiration.
Then like a planet with a molten core,
I’ll sprout with foliage for evermore.

Chastel latched on to my individualism, making it the subject for his praise. And it was a form of recognition that was so important to me. By the time I wrote home about it however, it seems that it had gone to my head. Or rather, I was endeavouring to enthuse Henry with a savour of this recognition of my natural talent, so that he might finally endorse my ambitions in this field.

I am going to horrify you by making a conceited comment. The professor who criticizes my work seems to regard me as a potential future genius of painting. I don’t expect you to believe this. You will just think that he must be a pansy - or a pretty rotten art teacher. He is not a pansy, and his name is Chastel. And he has just been made an officer of the Legion of Honour - which is an honour awarded to all the most illustrious of French artists, authors, poets etc.

If Chastel took kindly to the oddities in my behaviour, there were others who most certainly did not. I didn’t make a favourable impression upon the professors at the Academie Julien. There was one - called Schultz or Schwartz? - who, after ignoring me for a number of weeks, tried to take me vigorously to task on the excess of colour and general indiscipline in my paintings. But he was exercising his subjective judgement as if there were objective rules to be learnt, and I wasn’t going to stand for such a dismissive approach. I answered him back as fiercely and as loudly as he had chosen to speak to me - telling him that to my eyes, the colours that I used were brilliant. And because the exchange was all so public, he stood to lose face (and authority) if it were to be continued. So he just turned his back on me, and walked away. But I was aware how my standing up to him had not passed unnoticed, and was even admired in some quarters.

It may be because he had been informed about this episode that Chaplain-Midi, an established artist who was the professor who came in to offer his weekly sessions of criticism at the Academie Julien, was distinctly wary of me from the start. His own style of painting was far removed from anything which I might personally wish to absorb - being pale of colour and too academic in spirit - and it was some while before I actually took up a painting for him to criticize. A whole lot of the students had their paintings lined up against the wall, waiting for his comments. But he was studiously ignoring mine. So when the session was finally drawing to its close, I asked him openly what he might have to say about it. He merely looked at me with a weary smile, and excused himself on the grounds that he was now too tired.