Day 0013

Once again I have butchered the incomparable beauty and subtlety of a master drawing. Today's is a copy from Leonardo's study of a female head. I should like to return to some of these studies as the project progresses and see if I can improve on them.

Today feels like one of those days that I will look back on with fondness. With the distance of memory I will forget how tired I was and remember rather the trip to the Met to look at the impressionists, the walk in the park and the pleasure of learning from Leonardo. I woke early to do a stroke of work, and I'm astonished at how much of the day there is before lunch.

I finished Proust's The Captive, and I'm half-way through The Fugitive. I am in love with his self-awareness and sincerity, and I am devouring his work with a keenness I haven't felt for many other authors. I wish I could read it in French.

I had the happy accident of uniting art and Proust through Renoir's portrait of Madame Georges Charpentier which I saw at the Met today. As I have mentioned before, it was nice to see something in person that he would have stood in front of in person as well. Who knows how many great people paintings have seen in their history?

“To succeed thus in gaining recognition, the original painter or the original writer proceeds on the lines of the oculist. The course of treatment they give us by their painting or by their prose is not always pleasant. When it is at an end the practitioner says to us: “Now look!” And, lo and behold, the world around us … appears to us entirely different from the old world, but perfectly clear. Women pass in the street, different from those we formerly saw, because they are Renoirs, those Renoirs we persistently refused to see as women.”
Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way

There is so much art in Proust's work, such a sensitivity for the visual. It feels like a perfect synthesis to listen to his work whilst drawing.