Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2002. Vol. 8. Eger Journal of American Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 28)

Studies - Judit Borbély: The Writer's Paintings and the Painter's Scenes

Merimee's La Venus dTlle, thus leading James to realise that literature is no less art than painting, consequently 'even with canvas and brush whisked out of my grasp I still needn't feel disinherited' (.Autobiography 294). And it was also La Farge who discerned Henry James's inborn talent for seeing with the painter's eye. James's attraction to pictures was obvious already at a very young age, together with his habit of connecting pictures and real living scenes. Under the influence of a concrete experience he usually remembered a picture he had seen which, in turn, helped him to interpret the reality around him. We might say that he had the tendency to see an actual scene as if it were a picture. His conscious interest and studies in art obviously gave it further reinforcement but, judging by his earliest memory of Paris that he recalls in his Autobiography, he must have been born with the painter's eye: I had been there for a short time in the second year of my life, and I was to communicate to my parents later on that as a baby in long clothes, seated opposite to them in a carriage on the lap of another person. I had been impressed with the view, framed by the clear window of the vehicle as we passed, of a great stately square surrounded with high-roofed houses and having in its centre a tall and glorious column. (Autobiography 32) Besides being fascinated by the strength of Henry James's visual sense, we must underline a small detail in the above quotation: the view being framed by the window. Framing a scene is typical of James, as we will see, and it is used to its greatest effect at climactic moments of recognition when, in Viola Hopkins Winner's words, 'sight merges with insight' (Hopkins 73). That James was visually stimulated is not surprising, for he frequently accompanied his father to the studios of the latter's artist friends, contemporary painters and illustrators (Thomas Hicks, Felix Darley, Christopher Cranch and Paul Duggan), as we can read in the Autobiograhy. Furthermore, as a child, he was regularly taken to art exhibitions, and later, already as an adult, he consciously explored the great museums and galleries of Europe, so much so that the National Gallery, the Louvre, the Uffizi, the Pitti all became his second home. To have some conception of James's exquisite sensitivity to art and to see what ineffaceable impression the temples of art made on him, let me quote his first memories of the Louvre from 1855 when he was but 12 years old: 124