"David Garnett - Still Life" - читать интересную книгу автора (Garnett David)

actresses, industrialists and millionaires, aristocrats and finally the Queen
Mother herself, and Corinne curtsied and accepted the royal gloved hand.
"So good to see you again, my dear," the Queen Mother said, although
her eyes passed straight through Corinne.
Corinne had painted her when she was the queen, shortly before her
husband's sitting. She had heard that the first portrait was a trial run and
that if the king hadn't approved, he would not have allowed Corinne to
paint him.
The Queen Mother looked hardly any different from those days six years
ago. "I did so adore your picture of my grandson," she said. "I have a copy
of it in my bedroom."
Corinne could only nod and smile, not sure what she should say. She
was used to meeting the famous only when they sat for her, and she
seldom spoke while painting. Most of her subjects soon gave up trying to
converse, while others thought it was beneath them to talk to her. That
suited Corinne fine. She wasn't interested in talking; it was too much of a
distraction. All she ever needed to say were things like "Head up" or, "Look
to the right a little more."
The Queen Mother didn't spend much time in the exhibition, only long
enough to walk once around the galleries, studying the catalog more than
the pictures themselves. And once she had gone, many more of the guests
felt it wasn't worth staying. They were here to be seen, not to see Corinne's
paintings.
As the halls emptied and only a few dozen remained, Corinne wandered
at random around the exhibition. Every single picture was a portrait,
totally representational, almost all of them done on commission тАФ they
weren't subjects she would have chosen herself; they were simply jobs of
work. There were very few of them she could identify with, and those only
the very earliest. It was her exhibition, but they were no longer her
paintings; she didn't own any of them. Two years ago a painting she had
done six years previously had been sold for half a million new pounds.
Corinne hadn't seen a penny of it. All the picture had meant to her was
five thousand pounds at the time, enough to live on for a while.
She noticed the painting through the archway in the next hall, hanging
in an elaborate gilt frame all by itself. It was worth a lot of money, so it
was deemed to be a better picture. Corinne walked through the doorway
and toward the painting. It was of a famous actor, a man who had become
a Peer of the Realm because of his portrayals of Shakespearean characters.
He was dead, but his image lived on. It was his widow who had paid so
much for the picture, buying it from the theater owner who had
commissioned his most famous actor in his most famous role, Hamlet.
Corinne had seen the play but had not been impressed by the
performance. When the widow had died last year, the painting had ended
up in the Tate Gallery in part payment toward taxes. It was a good
painting, Corinne conceded detachedly, but certainly no better than any
other of hers. Since the half-a-million-pound sale, her work had become
even more in demand. What better investment was there than giving an
artist twenty-five thousand pounds for a canvas that could be worth
twenty times that price? Robert had begun adding to each contract of
commission a clause that guaranteed Corinne a percentage of the