Sacré Bleu

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“Oh,” said the Colorman, taking the Professeur’s hand. “The Colorman.”

“Charmed,” said the Professeur. “You are a wise man, no doubt, having sought out the best baker in Paris.”

“The painter?”

“I mean Lucien,” said the Professeur.

“I have to go,” said the Colorman. He hurried out the door without looking back. His donkey had been tied up outside, a large wooden case strapped to his back. The Colorman untied him and led him across the square.

They watched through the bakery window until he disappeared on the stairs down the butte to Pigalle, then the Professeur looked at Lucien.

“So that was him?”

“Yes.”

“What is he doing here?”

“Juliette killed him a week ago.”

“Not very thoroughly, evidently.”

“I have much to tell you,” said Lucien.

“And I you,” said the Professeur.

“We’ll go across the square to Madame Jacob’s, have coffee,” said Lucien. “I’ll get Régine to watch the front.” He peeked his head through the curtain. “Régine, could you watch the counter please, I need to speak with the Professeur.”

The baguette hit Lucien square in the forehead and wrapped around his head, crunching in his ear.

“Perhaps The Circus, with all the figures off balance, ready to tumble down on each other in the next second, would be his portal back into life.” The Circus—Georges Seurat, 1891

“Ouch! What—”

“Maman is right,” said Régine, regarding the crust. “Perfect. Just double-checking.”

GEORGES SEURAT STOOD BEFORE HIS PARTIALLY COMPLETED PAINTING The Circus, holding a small round brush loaded with red, trying to ascertain where, exactly, the next small red dot would go. Four identical brushes loaded with different colors poked through the fingers of his left hand, as if he had snatched some great, gangly insect out of the air and its multicolored legs were shot with rigor mortis or surprise. He was making a picture of a bareback rider standing atop a palomino, trying to convey the dynamic movement of the scene while meticulously forming the figures out of one dot of color placed next to a complementing color, laid down in harmony and contrast so that when one stood back, the scene formed for the first time in the mind of the viewer. It was a solid theory, and applying it in his major paintings, The Bathers and A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, had brought him great success and had made him the unofficial leader of the Neo-Impressionists, but the process was the problem. It was too meticulous. It was too static. It took too damn long to do a painting. In ten years he had completed only seven major paintings; his last one, The Models, a scene from an artist’s studio, with models undressing, had been panned by critics and rejected by the public as being a picture of daily life with all the life taken out of it. The nude models appeared as cold and sexless as marble pillars. And meanwhile, Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec were splashing their dancers and singers, acrobats and clowns across the public’s consciousness with vivid, fluid vigor and movement. Seurat had invented and perfected a technique, pointillism, based on solid color theory, but now he felt imprisoned by it. Sometimes, it turned out, art was what you had to say, not how you said it.

At only thirty-one, Seurat felt used up, or at least weary of standing still, tired of the intellectual art of theory; he wanted to grasp the visceral, the sensual—grab the movement of life before it got away. Perhaps The Circus, with all the figures off balance, ready to tumble down on each other in the next second, would be his portal back into life.

As he placed a precise and tiny dot of red in the clown’s hair, there was a knock at the door. Life interrupting art. He wanted to be angry, but in fact he was grateful. Perhaps it would be a delivery of supplies, or better, Signac or Bernard dropping by to see the progress on his painting. So much easier to discuss theory than to apply it.

He opened the door and nearly dropped the brushes, still splayed out of his left hand. It was a young woman, stunning in a satin dress the color of cinnamon, fair skinned with dark, nearly black hair, eyes as blue as sapphires.

“Pardon me, monsieur, but I understood that this is the studio of the painter Seurat. I am a model in need of work.”

Seurat stood for an embarrassing moment just looking at her, sketching her in his mind’s eye, then she smiled and jolted him out of his imagination. “I’m sorry, mademoiselle, but I have all my studies for the painting I am working on. Perhaps when I begin another—”

“Please, Monsieur Seurat, I am told that you are the greatest painter in Paris, and I am desperate for the work. I will pose nude. I don’t mind. I won’t get cold or tired.”

Seurat forgot completely what he meant to say next. “But, mademoiselle—”

“Oh, I beg your pardon, monsieur,” she said, extending her hand. “My name is Dot.”

“Come in,” said Seurat.

WHEN LUCIEN AND THE PROFESSEUR ARRIVED AT MADAME JACOB’S CRÉMERIE, Toulouse-Lautrec was already seated at one of only three tall café tables, eating Camembert spread on bread, drinking espresso with a touch of cream floated over it. Seated with him, still in her overdone theatrical makeup, was a very thin, very tired Jane Avril. Lucien had never seen her in person but recognized her immediately from Henri’s drawings and posters.