A Woman in Full

I was out in London with some visiting friends, yesterday, and after a good meal we decided to go to Apsley House. The House was that of the Duke of Wellington, and is in fact a monument to Imperial booty and to the frankly offensive conservatism of the nineteenth century Tory aristocracy.

However, it is beautiful. Most of the windows were once smashed, I reflected as I stood in front of a picture of a particularly fat Louis XVIII (an no, it wasn't a mirror) by outraged protesters. They were annoyed that the Iron Duke opposed the very limited reform Bill of 1832. Perhaps they had also cottoned on to how, unlike (for instance) Eisenhower, Wellington made his whole career a wreath to his great victory.

In any event, the art within the house, especially on the staircase and the second floor, is fantastic. The bottom floor, which is composed of the Egyptian service that Empress Josephine got as alimony, displays of batons and the Shield of Waterloo, and a plaster version of what looks like Karnak, is rather humdrum. The statue of Napoleon as Mars the Peacemaker by Canova--a sort of Imperial hypocrisy if ever I heard one--is fascinating. Once I got into the Spanish Royal Collection I was transported.

I had wanted to see the copy of Velasquez's Pope Innocent X, whose counter reforming gaze stared out from the painting. It wasn't shielded, or roped, or hidden; I stood a foot or two away, and was very struck by it. Most Popes called innocent aren't, and I suppose he was no exception. His gaze certainly conveyed that. He was a very good lawyer, his alleged mistress was a credit to him, and he was good to Ireland. Mostly by sending his nuncio, hope and lots of guns. So I approved, especially standing in Arthur Wellesley's transplanted West British house.

Steen's Image of a Dissolute Household, what seemed a mislabelled Guercino, and a couple of Cignanis had an effect heightened probably by the Cigar I'd smoked on the way there. Guercino's Venus in particular was lovely.

However, Robert Lefevre's portrait of Pauline Bonaparte trumped everything. I've blogged about great and admired females of high intelligence on this blog before--about Catherine the Great or Lady Lovelace, for instance. Pauline Bonaparte was clever, but had other attributes too.

Principally, she didn't give a fig for power or authority, but understood that men could be very silly, and occasionally nasty; that money and family were important; that scandal didn't matter, and that sex had its place; and that, in the end, loyalty to her brother mattered even when all had abandoned him.

She strikes me as devious, selfish, maddening, beautiful, funny, and a darn good time, which is why I smiled when I saw the Lefevre picture. It reminded me of two others, both of which are of Pauline Bonaparte but which convey her different aspects and charm quite well. I've put them at the top of the blog. In one, by Louise-Marie Jeanne Mauduit, she seems a young women lost in gossip and machination.

It's interesting that her female remembrancer seems to have honed in on this pose above all, and illustrates how diverted men's eyes were by Bonaparte's sensual appeal. That of course is a point Germaine Greer made in this fascinating book about female painters and their troubles some time ago.

I'm not so sure that Dr Greer can complain that much about depictions of Pauline Bonaparte; this was a woman who rouged her bare breasts during meetings (although she had a tendency to hold meetings in her private apartments). That sort of thing is not contemplated in any section of the sex discrimination act or subsequent amending legislation, nor in any equivalent code. How could one take notes during that? I suppose it was easier when Lyndon Johnson or Robert Maxwell held meetings in the toilet, or Kennedy in the bath--or, by all accounts, when Sarah Palin did whilst wrapped in a towel and nothing else during the late campaign.

Francois-Joseph's Kinson's painting, on the other hand, depicts Boaparte as half nervous, half bored, in a striking red dress. Perhaps the same fact holds for artists as historians; being an outsider (he was Belgian) enables one to get more of a grip on a society. Then again, he was a man, she was beautiful, and they could both be described, in their different ways, (if slightly offensively) as being involved in a 'certain idea of France'.

The main painting, which I saw yesterday, of course shows her in the chemise in which she often entertained, a playful look disguised by just enough solemnity. I fell slightly swoony over it. Ah well. Only God and Susan Blackmore are ever truly going to know how my drink- and hormone-soaked neural pathways work. I don't.

I love portraiture for its capacity to stir myself, I suppose. In that, like biography, its value is narcissistic, though with the Velasquez--and to an extent with a Coreggio that hung also in Apsley House--one can be transported out of oneself. Who's to say, when we set aside the fallacy that our objective reason is higher and more legitimate than anything else, that we are ever doing anything than reflecting from behind our own eyes and firing neurons in a bloody soup?

You can read about Bonaparte on the fantastic Scandalous Women website here. I'd also recommend a trip to the gilded luxury of Apsley House, although (especially if you start off with French, American, or my Irish republican heritage) you might want not to drink in its very sugary gilt and its consciousness of the way the outline of a lost enemy carved painfully a territory within the British state's soul too deeply. It would make you think of how Empires corrupt and overwhelm, which is probably not what you want for your money from a trip to Apsley House.

Here's a video of the frankly brilliant Robert Hughes from PBS' Charlie Rose Hour. He's talking about his memoirs, which I thoroughly recommend.