The Old Portrait
Hume Nisbet
"Old-fashioned frames are a hobby of mine. I am always on the prowl amongst
the framers and dealers in curiosities for something quaint and unique in
picture frames. I don’t care much for what is inside them, for being a painter
it is my fancy to get the frames first and then paint a picture which I think
suits their probable history and design. In this way I get some curious and I
think also some original ideas.
"One day in December, about a week before Christmas, I picked up a fine but
dilapidated specimen of wood-carving in a shop near Soho. The gilding had
been worn nearly away, and three of the corners broken off; yet as there was
one of the corners still left, I hoped to be able to repair the others from it. As
for the canvas inside this frame, it was
so smothered with dirt and time stains
that I could only distinguish it had been a very badly painted likeness of some
sort, of some commonplace person, daubed in by a poor pot-boiling painter
to fill the secondhand frame which his patron may have picked up cheaply as
I had done after him; but as the frame was alright I took the spoiled canvas
along with it, thinking it might come in handy.
"For the next few days my hands were full of work of one kind and another,
so that it was only on Christmas Eve that I
found myself at liberty to examine
my purchase which had been lying with its face to the wall since I had brought
it to my studio.
"Having nothing to do on this night, and not in the mood to go out, I got my
picture and frame from the corner, and laying them upon the table, with a
sponge, basin of water, and some soap, I began to wash so that I might see
them the better. They were in a terrible mess, and I think I used the best part
of a packet of soap-powder and had to change the water about a dozen times
before the pattern began to show up on the frame, and the portrait within it
asserted its awful crudeness, vile drawing, and intense vulgarity. It was the
bloated, piggish visage of a publican clearly, with a plentiful supply of jewelry
displayed, as is usual with such masterpieces, where the features are not
considered of so much importance as a strict fidelity in the depicting of such
articles as watch-guard and seals, finger rings, and breast pins; these were
all there, as natural and hard as reality." . . .
