A Note on Tronies

I discovered a new word last week – it’s an art-historical term, but one which is actually very applicable to modern-day life: it is the phenomenon of the tronie. A tronie is a recording of a silly facial expression. These days, of course,  many people record these on their iphones as ‘selfies’ , post them on Instagram or even message-dissolve them to each other on snap-chat. But three-hundred years ago Rembrandt recorded them on velum, oak panels and copper plates.

What made Rembrandt the king of the tronie? And why did he do them? In The Power of Art Schama writes that Rembrandt was one of the most honest artist auto-biographers of all time and that he recorded observations of himself with more penetration of insight and honesty than any other Protestant painter of the period. We see this detached and curious observation of his own external morphology and the changes that took place over time, in the astonishingly long catalogue raisonée of Rembrandt’s self-portraits. From a swarthy young man, through a precious middle period and on to brow-beaten middle age, Rembrandt appears to us in all the forms he took in his life. Perhaps this meticulous self-documentary explains why Rembrandt has always appealed with such force and strength to art historians and biographers: he gives us such a clear sense of himself.

Of course he didn’t draw the line with self-portraiture. The same morbid curiosity for realism that would find him eventually painting a dissection scene, applied to all those to whom he was close to – especially his young wife Saskia. His impressionistic, beautifully-articulated love affair with the human face finds its highest expressions in some of his graphic nocturnes – portraits he sketched of his wife while she slept. There she is: Saskia, asleep in her bed-box with her face nestled against a plump goose-down cushion. In these drawings, she appears to us with such vivacity and realism – with her upturned, pinched nose and fat cheeks, that for me, this album is a universal expression of the tenderness we exercise towards those whom we love while they sleep.

Anyway, enough Saskia, enough Rembrandt – that is all stuff for the next story. Now I speak of tronies because the mercurial, silly, importunate expressions that Rembrandt records drolly, whimsically, perhaps in a bored or flippant mood, remind me strongly of Lukas – that is, of the Magpie. The Alexandrine-blue eyes, fair hair, wobbly nose – there something about Lukas

which is highly reminiscent of the famous Dutch Golden Era artist.

Moon River

Riding on the edge of a D – full-toned and eloquent, that dips like a sad stream, then blossoms out again into a fan of music. Two drifters off to see the world, there’s such a lot of world to see. I am full of pity for every other love but this one: what an archetype, what a loaded vase of roses.

Clarity. Arising out of a love-cloud and limb-tangle. The softness of arms brushing, the kisses trapped in teeth. And every sight and sound is mauve and melts into minor chords and suspended half-tones. Everything is the sixth note in the scale or the f# in a c major: secret, suggestive, lingering. And every glistening slate roof tile and red brick glimpsed through my window is another ‘I love you’. Did you know about the etymology of ‘window’? It comes from the Old Norse ‘vindauga’ meaning ‘wind eye’. You can imagine those poor old norse villagers huddled behind clay walls, looking out with terror-filled eyes at the blusterous winds outside.  My eye searches beyond the limit of the bedroom: where the amber street lights fraternise with the cold night air and the night has become so mulberry, I could squash it. The moon is reflected in the river.

Love. Love and purity of heart. The suspended ‘I love you’ rocks the room and fixes everything into a permanent sweetness that can only find metaphors in treats like pralines and smoked teas and cheesy omelettes and the gifting of everything that is beautiful because it is an extension of the love and holds everything together and makes it all cognate.

Erebus, drag me not away from the bedroom, the river room, into the world of dreams. I wish to stay a while in this partial eclipse of soul and body; on the ebbing, bleeding edge of passion. Feeling, for a moment, before I am dragged away from it forever,

This sweetness outside time. 

Claeys-Bouüaertdomein

This morning, while the weather was bright and cheerful, Lukas  and I set off for Claeys-Bouüaertdomein – a small park nestled in the city suburb municipality of Mariakerke. I heard about this park the night before, in MacDougalls, while speaking to a customer who was reading a book entitled The Power of the Soul. As he lifted his glass of tea to his lips we exchanged anecdotes about our favourite places in Ghent. Among mine I named Bergoyen Nature Reserve, the Visserij and, of course, Prinsenhof. He mentioned one of his favourite spots: a small city park called Claeys-Bouüartdomein, which he described as a local ‘gem’.

The cycle ride to get there the next morning– along the Kanaal Gent-Brugge – was memorable and calming. The wide canal was lined with an impressive number of water craft and liveaboard ships whose vast steel hulls crowded the waters. Lukas complained that I cycled too slowly, yet I could not resist taking my time with the morning sun falling softly upon my face, the spectacle of so many boats on the canal before me, and the smell of coal and wood smoke drifting in the bright, cold air. Having lived on a narrowboat for so long and finding even wide-beams palatial from the inside, I could only imagine what the interiors of these mighty craft must look like. They were like sea-going vessels or decommissioned ocean liners. The difference arises because the canals in Belgium were built to be wide enough to sustain considerable river traffic – even ships sailing out to sea. So, there is no comparison between the inland waterways of the UK and Belgium. They are like different countries – different geographies of water, land and steel.

Eventually we saw the tall, striped red and white radio tower in the distance, signaling that we had arrived in Mariakerke. It was a landmark that I had used many times before to navigate through this sprawling part of the city. We veered from the cycle path, turned left before school gates and entered a wooded area.

I had difficulty trying to find any information about the history of Claeys-Bouüaertdomein online, yet what the solitary man told me that night was quite correct; it was mainly forested and a sanctuary for a number of different species of woodland tree, many of them non-native, like the English Oak. There were also a surprising number of mushrooms for this time of year in mid-December, bedded down in the thick blanket of mulch and red leaves on the forest floor.

The centre-piece of Claeys-Bouüartdomein is the Kasteel – a magnificent example of late Victorian Belgian architecture, surrounded by a shallow moat. The Kasteel – ribbed with salmon pink and white stone, with attic windows, bell domes, a belvedere and gambrel roof – was a striking pastiche of many different architectural styles, and potentially as a ‘fairy castle’ a little kitsch, yet its setting in the park was seemed almost natural: probably the result of careful landscaping.

Walks in late autumn that leave the tips of your toes freezing cold and turn the button of your nose bright red, are very good for the soul. So it was a fantastic morning ‘constitutional’, brought to life by the colour palette of autumn: russet red, vernal green and ochre brown, and trenchant, deep, soggy footfall through mud.  Alone, in the park, sitting on the trunk of a fallen tree beside a rather forlorn-looking lake, I imagined this would be the perfect setting for clandestine lunch-time smoking sessions for schoolboys. The forest was still. Great tree-limbs soared overhead: hairless, full of concentrated power.

It was a little outing, nothing more. I shall paint it for you with a few rough brushstrokes: the sighting of a red squirrel, the sharp, flickering crest of a mandarin duck, some inquisitive sheep crowding their faces towards us behind a holly bush.