Isabel And Pansy Optimistic

Chapter IXX

Isabel Osmond walking up St. Regents Street at a brisk pace with a mere three days left in England was wondering if she were doing the right thing. She was planning to enter a gallery and make a purchase of three paintings by artists calling themselves Impressionists. She had been in the gallery on four separate visits analyzing the works but more so probing her own insight and sensibilities. When one’s husband was an important collector of Old Masters, it would not enhance Isabel’s self-confidence to be proved a neophyte who made expensive mistakes.

Impressionism was a new fashion in painting and the opinions varied on its validity and lasting value. Some thought it pure insanity; an outrageous joke, in fact many did, but Americans were purchasing these paintings, so much so the prices were rising and Isabel felt if she didn’t act now, they would soon be beyond her ability to refurbish the gallery at Gardencourt. Her cousin’s art collection had been moved to Lockleigh and Lord Warburton's gallery. Isabel wanted very much to reassemble the rectangular room that had once been the joy of that house. Her cousin’s collection had made a deep impression on her when she first arrived in Europe and she did not like to see the space emptied; it struck her as a missing tooth in a beautiful woman. There were still ghostly squares and rectangles where the paintings had once been in place.

How sad the room now looked, she thought. It was Isabel’s idea to bring it back to its original splendor with a collection of Impressionist paintings. She had thought long into many nights about this idea. It had been a month since she and the Bantlings visited the London gallery and she had been back twice on her own and once with Miss Mary Cassatt, the only American artist of the group calling themselves Impressionists unless you want to call Mr. Whistler American, which he certainly was, but had made London his artistic home for many years. He was also ambivalent about calling himself an Impressionist, a true iconoclast was this artist that joining any group did not quite suit his natural instincts.

Isabel had been introduced to Mary Cassatt and her mother by Henrietta and Miss Cassatt was giving Isabel lessons in what the movement was about, who were its favored practitioners and why. Miss Cassatt journeyed to Gardencourt and Isabel was able to impress the artist with her zeal to fill the empty gallery and since the artist’s paintings in the London gallery had all been sold, she donated a pastel drawing to Isabel’s effort, a gift she wanted to bestow on the spirited lady who made her home in Italy but had a charming Tudor house in the English countryside. It was not altogether a gift - the artist knew it would be the beginning - that Mrs. Osmond would become a collector. The American artist was helping the affluent American lady who appeared to Miss Cassatt to be a little lost, while helping her fellow artists, a winning situation all around.

“I had expected Mr. Whistler to join our little party this weekend but he had to cancel. I was disappointed but he promises to be in Rome in a month.”
“Yes, we are to exhibit in Rome. It will not be the expansive exhibit that is on display here in London, but it will be quite a good showing nevertheless. Monsieur Degas is participating and also expects to be in Italy. I hope you will get a chance to meet him.”
“Is he a good friend of yours?”
“Well yes, as much as one can call oneself a friend of such an intricate personality.”
“Is he like Mr. Whistler; all chimera and reverberation?”
Miss Cassatt laughed, the first full laugh Isabel had the pleasure to note in the lady artist. “My dear, he is not nearly so buoyant, he is subdued, the opposite of Mr. Whistler. He is I think, the best of the Impressionists. He has a classical training. Indeed, he is often annoyed with the term which he feels has nothing to do with his own style but he has thrown in his lot with us - begrudgingly perhaps.”
“I admired his painting of the horses - I’m afraid I can’t recall the title.”
“Yes, he has a lovely feel for horses and the figure.”
“Will you be in Italy also, Miss Cassatt?”
“No. I’m afraid I am setting off for the States next week. I expect to spend the winter there and return to France in the spring.”
“I’m sorry you are leaving so soon. I will look forward to our next meeting whenever that may be.” Miss Cassatt was taking leave and Isabel wanted to say something that would cement their friendship - she wanted American friends but more than that, she wanted other women to consult, to feel at ease with.
“Trust your instincts, my dear,” said Miss Cassatt as she entered her carriage. “You have them. You will put together a fine collection and I look forward to seeing this lovely room when next I am in London. You are not making a mistake in collecting the Impressionists; it is most definitely not a fad. It is the future.”

That evening, Isabel sat alone in the small parlor where she entertained afternoon guests, examining the drawing, letting the mood and the dappled light sink into her core. It was of a mother and child that at first Isabel couldn’t quite look at so poignantly did it strike her. Having lost her own child at six months, she had not really consigned her grief to history yet; she thought she had, she was long out of mourning but was she really? When Miss Cassatt presented the pastel, Isabel drew back for a moment so sharp did the imagery jab her heart. Miss Cassatt had no way of knowing of her loss and Isabel chastised herself for her childish reaction that did not go unnoticed by the artist who was too polite to ask Mrs. Osmond if she did not care for the drawing. Isabel noted that she had affected Miss Cassatt and neither woman said anything for a moment, both at a loss as to the meaning of this gift offered in all sincerity.
“My dear Miss Cassatt, I am quite beside myself, it is the finest thing anyone has ever given me. I do not mean to give any other impression. It is splendid. I cannot begin to thank you. It fills my heart.”
“You are most welcome, my dear. Consider it the beginning of your collection.”
Isabel regained her composure and with many more thanks to the artist, saw her and her maid into a carriage for the train station.

Isabel was hard on herself afterward. After all, Rome was full of Madonnas with child, this motif could be seen everywhere including the Palazzo Roccanera where her husband’s growing collection contained more than a few of this solid Catholic motif. But they were not real to Isabel. Most of them she looked on as iconic, lacking realistic interpretation with the exception of Raphael. Most were wooden and did not speak of reality to Isabel.

But this simple drawing spoke of life, of movement, the mother’s caress brought back vividly Isabel’s own arms holding her boy, playing with him. She wept that night for her lost boy. She really hadn’t much before; not from callousness nor unfeeling, but a cold disdain for her husband ruled her emotional state after the death of their son. Osmond managed to take precedence even then. She felt ashamed. She would not in all likelihood experience motherhood again. She gave way to her emotions for the remainder of the night. Miss Cassatt’s picture of a mother and her child had awoken in Isabel a stream of grief she hardly knew she was carrying within. She let it roll over her, it had been long in coming and she welcomed its presence. She thought she might like to cry until the end of time but she also knew she would not. Her volatility, her excess of temperament were attributes of the past. Charged sensations she learned, were not at all helpful if you wanted to view the world with clarity and Isabel most certainly did want clarity. She sought it desperately at times. She longed to have someone tell her how to live her life; the results of clouded vision. She thought at one time she might die of it.

But she had not. The next morning, dry-eyed, she was able to lose herself in the drawing’s attributes in and of themselves - she thoroughly grasped the power in the Impressionist style. She would champion the cause of these artists who could make her feel more deeply than all of Italy’s treasures. Isabel took an early train to London the next day, entered the gallery and purchased a Renoir still life, a Pissarro landscape and a Monet cityscape and asked to have a Degas drawing put on hold until she talked to her banker. She coveted a Manet flower painting that had been sold. She was told that Manet was ill and therefore his works in the Impressionist style would be rare and very valuable. “Please inform me when you acquire other works by Monsieur Manet,” she said. “Consider me a good customer, I am refurbishing a gallery in my home. I shall look to you for assistance.”

With that, she made her way into the beckoning sun that had just made an appearance after a week without its warming presence. The gallery owner could only smile the smile of one who had just sold a number of paintings before the clock had struck noon. He considered closing up for a leisurely lunch but had an appointment with an English artist whose work he didn’t care for but was the nephew of an important collector. Instead, he stood in the window and watched the American lady let the hansom go as she walked, quite alone and independent, down St. Regent Street, not at all in a hurry to be anywhere.

When word got out that a new adherent joined the ranks of collectors of Impressionist works, she found a new coterie of friends starting with Mr. Whistler whose invitation to dine she had readily accepted. The following day she went to Mr. Whistler’s studio and purchased a small oil of the Thames at dusk. Ralph she knew, would approve. It was a subject he always came back to in his own collecting.

And so Ralph’s gallery would be brought back to life. Seven weeks in England had wrought much. She and Miss Cassatt were friends, Mr. Whistler would visit Rome when the Impressionists were having an exhibition at the Roberto Durelli Gallery and both he and Mrs. Osmond were expressive in their enthusiasm for this visit, the opening of the first Impressionist exhibit in Rome. Mrs. Osmond would be a patron and friend.

With the start of her collection in place, Isabel too was ready to leave for Rome. Pansy was prepared to leave now that Harold Ludlow was back at Oxford. She had seen and instantly loved Gardencourt and quite a bit of the city of London. She had a fresh complexion and a new energy that had been lacking but was now fully apparent in the shy convent-raised girl. She no longer looked like a girl nor spoke like one. She had several new dresses that were not those of a girl but they could not be described as gowns for one who was planning seduction. She knew where she was going and it was not into the world of fashion or frivolity. They were beautifully practical. Gardencourt had transformed her into a quite different specimen altogether. Isabel did not know what Osmond would make of her, she hoped he would be pleased with his daughter, that she would be marrying soon. Isabel had no doubt that Pansy would marry her nephew. Osmond would have to consider the possibility that his daughter would live in America. But that was some years off yet. Until then, they would wait, as the young woman so adroitly put it.

They did not know how Osmond was losing patience waiting for their return. They were innocently unaware what forces were being put in place. The two women, arm in arm, boarded the train in the happiest frame of mind, certain that life could only offer more of the same.