So it won’t come as a surprise to anyone, but the one week I spent in Paris was the best week of my life. And as someone who loves beautiful things, I was in heaven. I mean, it’s Paris and the Parisians know beautiful things. Have you seen their clothes? Listened to their music (the Little Sparrow was playing not too long ago in the coffee shop I’m holed up in today)? Walked along their bridges? Tasted their food? I swear, there is nothing like standing a foot and a half away from an Impressionist painting. They know and excel at beautiful things. My senses have never been so alive and so deliciously pleased as when I was in the City of Lights. And the epitome of all that I experienced that week found itself accumulated in a small corner on a wall in an old train station.
I love Impressionism; it’s my favorite period in art. Something about the softness of the light, the blending of the colors, the tangibility of the brush strokes. I’ve never really cared for portraits. I feel bad for the subjects who have to stand or sit for hours as an artist dabbled little blots of paint to canvas. But when my eyes fell on a portrait of Madame Barbe de Rimsky-Korsakov, painted by Franz Xavier Winterhalter in 1864, at the Musee d’Orsay, I felt something strange. I’ve never wanted to be anyone other than myself, but when I looked at her, I wanted to be her. To this day, eight years later, I remember thinking, “I want to be her.”
She was delicate, but not weak. Poised, but not rigid. Her warm, brown eyes were kind, patient, intelligent. She had a round face; it made her look young. Even though her soft lips looked more predisposed to frowning, it looked as though a smile came easily to those full cheeks. The artist captured so accurately a deep well of emotion that she, the subject, was so good at covering up. She was obviously posing and her expression conveys the obligation she felt to sit still, but she still looks so effortlessly beautiful. She was aware of her space and where her body was; what the exposure of her shoulder would do; what that glimpse of her wrist would stir. She was effortlessly sexy, if that was something to be prized back then, and undeniably beautiful in an elegant and timeless way.
So, she’s basically everything I want to be. So completely feminine and, what’s more, she was the subject of a painting. She was deemed important enough to be captured, to have someone spend hours working to portray who this woman was. She had value, she had worth. Right now, I’m struggling to balance my worth to one being (to me, the most important – God) and my worth to one person (he of the ‘Walter Mitty’ post). Which is to say, despite the glorious gifts of life, creativity, art, inspiration, and the experience of all those wonderful things by the One who thinks I’m worth the life of an innocent, I still feel worthless. I am not a subject (the subject) of this boy’s art. I dream of being the subject of a book, a painting, a deliberate photograph, a poem, a song. His book, his painting, his photograph, his poem, his song. I want to be the reason some one spends hours working to capture me perfectly as I am. I want to be the subject of someone’s art.
That’s pretty heavy, I know. And probably really sad (confession: I’ve got tears in my eyes thinking about my worth), but what I love about this painting is that I can become her. What gives me that hope is something ridiculous: her hair. I give you permission to laugh and think me superficial. But her hair is where I see myself most. Even though I have the same deep-set hooded eyes, the same slightly snobbish upturn of the nose, the same slight downturn of curved lips, as she does, her hair is what stands out in the portrait; it’s what she’s holding, as if its what she prizes most about herself. She doesn’t bother with styling it, of making it fashionable. It’s loose and flowing. If you were to ask me what I love most about my physical self, I would declare: I love my hair. I love its deep rich color, how warm and comfortable it is with its amber and gold and red undertones. My hair has a beautiful shine to it that catches the light. I prefer to wear it down where the waves and gentle curls are on display best. It’s soft and long so you can run your fingers through it. I call it ‘girlfriend hair,’ (You know when you’re walking down the street and you see a beautiful guy in a beautiful sweater with a beautiful dog and his girlfriend comes up and she’s got the effortless, perfect, beautiful head of hair and you’re instantaneously envious of everything about her? Yeah, that kind of hair). And, excepting the length, it is the same hair of the beautiful woman in Winterhalter’s painting.
And because we have the same hair, as superficial and shallow as that may be, I have some hope that I will become her; a woman with grace, dignity, a woman worth of sitting motionless for hours as an artist dabs little blots of paint to canvas.
*Caveat: I wrote this a couple of months before I’ve eventually posted it and I’ve learned that no guy can ascribe worth to me. I do that myself. I don’t need no man to make me feel valuable.
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