The Glass Village

“Now Mr. Casavant,” Ferriss Adams was saying, “I show you the painting on this easel, the same painting on the same easel found in Fanny Adams’s studio beside her body. During the course of your examination of the Adams canvases this morning, did you examine this canvas also?”

“I did.”

“Exhibit E, your honor.” When the painting had been marked, Adams continued: “Mr. Casavant, is this a genuine Fanny Adams painting?”

“Very much so,” smiled Roger Casavant. “If you’d like, I shall be happy to go into details of style, technique, color, brush-work—”

“That won’t be necessary, Mr. Casavant,” said Judge Shinn hastily. “There’s no question here of your qualifications. Go on, Mr. Adams.”

“Mr. Casavant. Will you tell the court and the jury whether this painting is finished or unfinished?”

“It is finished,” said the expert.

“There’s no question in your mind about that?”

“I have said, Mr. Adams, that the painting is finished. Naturally there is no question in my mind, or I should not have said it.”

“I see. Of course,” said Ferriss Adams humbly. “But our knowledge is not on the level of yours, Mr. Casavant—”

“Please note,” interrupted Casavant, “that when I say ‘the painting is finished’ I verbally italicize the word painting. By that I mean that the creative process of applying paint to canvas is over; I do not mean that no work remains to be done. There are mechanistic aspects to art: for example, when the canvas is dry, the artist usually applies a thin lacquer retouch varnish, which not only protects the surface from dust and the deteriorative action of the air — especially where inferior pigments have been used — but also to bring out the darks. The retouch varnish has the further advantage of allowing the artist to paint over it if he wishes to make changes. On the other hand—”

“Mr. Casavant.”

“On the other hand, this thin lacquer is a temporary expedient only. Most artists allow anywhere from three to twelve months to elapse, and then they will apply a permanent varnish made from dammar resin. At this point one might say that not only is the painting finished, but its mechanistic aspects also.”

“But Mr. Casavant—”

“I might interpolate,” said Roger Casavant, “in the aforementioned connection, that Fanny Adams had strongly individualistic work habits. For example, she did not believe in applying a preliminary retouch varnish; she never used it. She claimed that it had a slightly yellowing effect — a moot point among artists. Of course, she used only the finest pigments, what we know as permanent colors, which are remarkably resistant to the action of air. She did use dammar varnish, but never sooner than ten to twelve months after she completed the painting. So you will find no varnish on this canvas—”

“Mr. Casavant,” said Ferriss Adams. “What we want to find out is: What are your reasons for making the positive assertion that this is a finished painting?”

“My reasons?” Casavant glanced at Adams as if he had said a dirty word. He placed his joined hands to his lips and studied Fanny Adams’s ceiling, seeking there the elementary language necessary to convey his meaning to the brute ears about him. “The work of Fanny Adams is above all characterized by an impression of realism, absolute realism achieved through authentic detail. The secret of her power as an artist lies precisely there... in what I might call her primitive scrupulosity to life and life-objects.”

“Please, Mr. Casavant—”

“In her quaint way, Fanny Adams expressed it thusly: ‘I paint,’ she would say, ‘what I see.’ Now, of course, regarded superficially, that’s an ingenuous statement. Every painter paints what he sees. The esthetic variety of artistic experience comes about because two painters looking at the same object see it in two different ways — one as a disoriented basic form, perhaps, the other as an arrangement of symbols. The point is that when Fanny Adams said, ‘I paint what I see,’ she meant it literally!” Casavant glared triumphantly at Ferriss Adams. “It is one of the great charms of her painting style. She never — I repeat, never — painted from imagination, and she never — I repeat, never — painted from memory. If she painted a tree, it was not any old tree, it was not the tree as she remembered having seen it in her girlhood, or even yesterday, it was the tree, the particular tree she was looking at, the particular tree she was looking at now, at that precise moment in time; in all its nowness, as it were. If Fanny Adams painted a sky, it was the sky of the instant. If she painted a barn, you may be sure it was the very barn before her eyes—”

“Excuse me for interrupting, Mr. Casavant,” said Ferriss Adams with a sigh, “but I thought you told me this morning... I mean, how do you know this painting is finished?”