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JANUARY 1970

forward in his chair and took a leisurely and critical look.

"I see you like to do landscapes."

"Yes, sir, I try. I like the openness and expansiveness they suggest."

I still sat nervously in my chair, waiting for the words I had waited so long to hear.

"They are not too bad. The drawing seems fair enough."

He reached over, took the folio in his hand and pulled out the remaining sketches, laying them on the floor with the others.

"Only three or four figures?" he asked. "I was looking for more and these are merely typical art school studies."

I didn't know what to say, but he relieved my hesitancy by asking, "Why don't you do the figure in your compositions, like you do landscapes -- not just figure studies. By doing the figures you are faced with the problem of doing it properly, even accurately. For example, if you do a tree trunk in a landscape larger or smaller than it actually is, it doesn't matter too much, but if a man's legs or arms are too small or too large for his body in a painting . . . well, do you see what I mean?"

I did.

"In addition, and more importantly, the human form, that is to say, man himself, is the most timeless and significant theme in all life and art. All great art has treated man, perhaps because through the artist's various views of man we can all see ourselves."

He sat back in his chair, folded his hands over his crossed knee and seemed to relax. He looked at me a bit quizzically, waiting perhaps, for my response. I couldn't think of anything to say so I just sat there, too. Not that I didn't follow or agree with the basic truth inherent in his statement, but I did not want to offer a trite response by simply saying, 'You're right.' Then, graciously, he kept the conversation alive by asking, "Would you like a cup of tea?"

Of course I would, and he got up to put a kettle of water on the stove. As he was doing this, I began to move about the room. I had already glanced around and noticed several paintings which were in the process of being finished, standing on the floor and leaning against the wall. As I was looking at the paintings, a response which I felt was worthy of his statement came to me, although my viewing the paintings had nothing to do with it.

"Mr. Tanner, you mean man as the great masters of history saw him."

"Precisely," he said.

"Rembrandt, Rubens, El Greco," I exclaimed as he continued preparations for the tea.

He paused and then replied, "Rembrandt, yes. Now there was a true portrayer of man; Rubens, maybe, in his portraits; but El Greco -- I'm not so sure. El Greco was perhaps too close to Italian art, which during his time, idealized man according to prevailing aesthetic concepts and this reduced man to a kind of pictorial anonymity, but Rembrandt's figures were conceptualized both as paintings and as interpretations of a living reality of man. Incidentally, young man, it is quite singular that you just mentioned three important painters of the 17th century. Would you have a purpose in mind for doing this? While Rembrandt was Dutch, Rubens [[strikeout]] French [[\strikeout]] Flemish, El Greco, the Spanish-Greek, they are excellent examples of the best in figure painting in Europe during that period."

"No, sir, I had no specific purpose in mind. Perhaps I cited them because as a boy in high school I came into possession of a small publication on Rembrandt, and then there was a painting by Rubens in our little museum back in Indianapolis called "Christ Giving The Keys To Peter." Also, I only recently saw the Rubens rooms in the Louvre in which he glorifies Catherine de Medici in a series of large allegorical paintings. As for El Greco, it was during my last year in America before coming here and on a visit to the Chicago Art Institute, that I saw for the first time a magnificent painting by this master." 

We both settled back for several sips of tea which, for me, was a much needed pickup at this moment.


"Mr. Tanner, I see you favor Rembrandt as the most important of the three painters. May I ask why?"

He leaned forward in his chair, sitting on the edge of it, so much so that one knee was touching the floor. His arms seemed freer and he appeared to create art forms as his hands moved in accompaniment to his words.

"Well, let's take the Dutch. Who are they? Rembrandt, Vermeer, Hals, even the 'Little Masters'; and don't forget the landscapists -- Van Ruysdael and all the others. These fellows seemed to have possessed a sense of the real, the existing reality of man -- the wetness of trees and the soil. Yet, they employed their paints (a pasty material), to

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