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

condensed light and fresh air' {The Painter's Eye 45). His choice of a Lambinet may be explained by the fact that a typical Lambinet includes all or most of the recurring motifs of the Barbizon School, as we can see in The Washerwomen or in Fishing on the Banks of the Seine (it might be either of them that Strether recalls): a slow moving river reflecting the luminous sky, a cluster of trees with light filtering through and spacious meadows merging with the horizon, creating the impression of peace and quiet, freedom from pressures and complications. Let us see now James's verbal painting in The Ambassadors: The oblong gilt frame disposed its enclosing lines; the poplars and willows, the reeds and river—a river of which he did n't know, and did n't want to know, the name

—fell into a composition, full of felicity, within them; the sky was silver and turquoise and varnish; the village on the left was white and the church on the right was grey; it was all there, in short—it was what he wanted: it was Tremont Street, it was France, it was Lambinet. Moreover he was freely walking about in it. (453) It is difficult to decide whether Henry James is describing the original Lambinet landscape that he must have seen in Boston, or verbally creating a similar pictorial work of art, modelled on a natural scene that he himself may have seen. Whichever option we choose, it is clear that Lambert Strether's ekphrastic perception achieves the kind of synthesis that was one of the aims of aestheticism: 'to bring the perfect moment into a world of temporality,' as Jonathan Freedman expresses it in his Professions of Taste (Freedman 19), i.e. to reach the perfection of perception within the perpetual flux of time. Enjoying the rural idyll, Strether abandons himself to the picturesque details around and he indulges in colours and lights to such an extent that he still feels within the oblong gilt frame of the Lambinet when at the end of his rambling he enters the small village inn on the bank of the river. But at this point the scene ceases to be a Lambinet. (In view of James's immense knowledge of art and his familiarity with paintings, it would not make much sense to claim his ignorance about the shift from a landsacpe in the Barbizon manner to an impressionist scene. Judged by his essay of 1876, 'The Impressionists', his first reaction was unconcealed dislike to 'the little group of the Irreconcilables' (The Painter's Eye 114) who, in his opinion, were 129