His peculiar limitations prevent his seeing anything
but the most prosaic side of human nature--
"'_A primrose by the river's brim
A yellow primrose is to him,
And it is nothing more._'"
Cumberton looked round to surprise an order in the eye of the lady whose
sentiments he had so deftly interpreted, but poetry always made her
uncomfortable, and her nomadic attention had strayed to other topics. His
glance was tripped up by Mrs. Mellish.
"Limitations? But, my dear man, it's because he hasn't any limitations,
because he doesn't wear the portrait-painter's conventional blinders, that
we're all so afraid of being painted by him. It's not because he sees only
one aspect of his sitters, it's because he selects the real, the typical
one, as instinctively as a detective collars a pick-pocket in a crowd. If
there's nothing to paint--no real person--he paints nothing; look at the
sumptuous emptiness of his portrait of Mrs. Guy Awdrey"--("Why," the
pretty woman perplexedly interjected, "that's the only nice picture he
ever did!") "If there's one positive trait in a negative whole he brings
it out in spite of himself; if it isn't a nice trait, so much the worse
for the sitter; it isn't Lillo's fault: he's no more to blame than a
mirror. Your other painters do the surface--he does the depths; they paint
the ripples on the pond, he drags the bottom. He makes flesh seem as
fortuitous as clothes. When I look at his portraits of fine ladies in
pearls and velvet I seem to see a little naked cowering wisp of a soul
sitting beside the big splendid body, like a poor relation in the darkest
corner of an opera-box.
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