Continued from yesterday
For YesBut’s Image posted on 23rd July 2007, David McMahon suggested the caption -
“Triple art bypass”
While Doug suggested -
"Cindy's art class were so low on funds that the sidewalk was their only canvas. That is until the rains came."
The photo suggested the following story to me, (continued from yesterday): -
Was there a clue in the painting itself? She didn’t have to look at the painting, she had an image of it seared in her brain. It was a painting of two Frenchmen, Jean de Winterville and Georges de Selve, standing either side of shelves which display a number of objects, the most intriguing, but at first not the most noticable feature, is a long whitish elongated object in the forefront of the painting. Viewed from the side the distorted perspective corrects itself and is seen to be a skull - a sign of mortality. Was the skull the reason for the commission?
In February she phoned him to say the painting was finished. His secretary informed her he was in the USA and he would contact her on his return.
She wasn’t sure why she hadn’t informed the other members of the artist group of the commission, and now that the painting was finished she wanted to show it to them, but felt embarrassed that she hadn’t told them about the painting; and especially who had commissioned it. So she said nothing.
Two months later he came to view the work, he was pleased with the finished painting and immediately wrote a cheque for £10,000 and arranged for the painting to be collected the next day. She banked the money, and was relieved by the sense of security it provided.
She didn’t think about the painting. She continued to try and find and develop her own painting style, but all in vain. The summer would again be spent on the South Bank, painting a copy of an “Old Masters” work, and collecting money from tourists.
One evening she was in the flat of the artist who had introduced her to the Artist Group, the other members of the group were there sharing a couple of bottles of red wine. One of them got up and walked over to the TV,
“Do you mind if I put on the box, there’s a review on of the Damien Hirst’ retrospective exhibition”.
She turned towards the screen, and involuntarily blurted out “That’s my . . .”.
Her words were drowned by cries and hoots of laughter, as the artists heard the art critic justify the price tag of £7.5 million for Damien Hirst’s copy of Holbein’s “The Ambassadors” mounted in a diamond studded platinum frame.
