The Unbearable Lightness of Scones Read Online Free PDF Page A

Prize. He agreed with David Hockney that an artist really had to be able to draw before anything else could be achieved. Now, Hockney could draw, as Angus often pointed out in the Cumberland Bar.
    Then there would be grants for portrait painters, or Civil List pensions, perhaps, of the sort awarded to MacDiarmid. The importance of the portrait would be stressed in his new arts policy, just as the utterly ephemeral nature of installation art would be made crystal clear. Those unfortunate gallery cleaners who threw expensive installations out in the belief that they were rubbish would be vindicated, perhaps even given the grants taken away from those of whose work they disposed. And as for portraiture – what a glorious age would begin for this unjustly neglected branch of painting! The spirit of Henry Raeburn would again make itself felt in Edinburgh, and people would once more take an interest in the human face, not under the false light of our vain contemporary quest for beauty, but as the incorporation of humanity’s virtues and vices.
    Look at Raeburn, Angus once remarked to Domenica Macdonald. Everything is there in those faces: wisdom, tolerance, learning.
    “But not pride,” said Domenica. “Raeburn’s subjects don’t look proud, do they?”
    Angus mused for a moment. “Is there no pride there?” He thought of some of the better-known portraits: Francis Macnab, the MacNab, draped in tartan and wearing a muckle hairy sporran. Was the face not proud? Or was it just grim? To be an anything must be difficult; how much easier going through life being just a something. Scottish aristocrats, ofcourse, were odd. They belonged to a national tradition that did not really approve of anybody getting too above himself, and yet there they were, genuine, twenty-four-carat toffs, and if you were too demotic then what was the point of being a toff in the first place?
    “Henry Raeburn was a kind man,” he said. “Some of his subjects may have suffered from pride, but it doesn’t really come through in the paintings. He concentrated on other things. One has to be charitable as a portrait painter.”
    Domenica raised an eyebrow. “Does one? And why? Because the person you’re painting is paying the bill?”
    Angus had to concede that this might sometimes happen. “Court painters, that sort of person does that, yes. And I suppose all those paintings of chairmen of the board – sometimes I think that those paintings are done to keep the share price up. If you had an honest portrait of the chairman, one showing him to be all worn out with care and heading for a heart attack, then … well, it wouldn’t help.”
    “Nor would portraits of military figures showing their gentle side,” suggested Domenica.
    “No, that might not help one’s defence posture,” agreed Angus. He paused. “I painted George Robertson once, you know. It was while he was Secretary General of NATO.”
    “Did you make him look resolute?” asked Domenica.
    “Reasonably so,” said Angus. “But he looked fairly resolute anyway. He came out of it very well. I got on very well with him. He has a sense of humour, you see. And he’s a great man. He comes from Islay, you know, and that’s an island that always produces good men and good whisky.”
    “Not a portrait to scare NATO’s enemies?”
    “My portraits don’t scare anybody,” said Angus. “Mind you, I did once, years ago, do a little picture of Margaret Thatcher – bless her – a tiny little miniature. Then I pasted it onto a matchbox.”
    Domenica looked puzzled. “Oh?”
    Angus smiled. “Yes. Then I stood the matchbox outside amouse hole. The mouse had been bothering me – he had gnawed away at some canvas I had. So I used it as a mouse-scarer. It was more humane than a mouse-trap, you see. The mouse came out and saw this picture of Margaret Thatcher staring at him and he ran straight back into the hole. It was very effective.”
    “Did she scare us that much?” asked Domenica,