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Updated: May 29, 2025
She had heard, she said, that he could completely finish a portrait in two sittings. The ladies rose and prepared to go away. Tchartkóff laid down his pencil, conducted them to the door, and then, returning, stood for a while before his portrait, regretting the delicate lines, the half-tints and airy tones, so happily caught and pitilessly effaced.
Shaking off this feeling, Tchartkóff again approached the portrait, and forced himself to gaze steadily upon its eyes. They were still fixed upon him. He changed his place; the eyes followed him. To whatever part of the room he removed, he met their deep malignant glance.
He was informed that Lise had not slept well, that there was usually no yellowness at all in her face, which struck every body by its freshness of complexion. Sadly and reluctantly Tchartkóff began to efface what he had taken such pains to produce. With it there vanished of course much of the resemblance.
The landlord of the small house in which Tchartkóff lodged, was no bad type of the class of house-owners in such quarters as the fifteenth line of the Vasílievskü Ostrov.
The figure was draped in a flowing Asiatic costume. Defaced and injured and grimed with dirt though the portrait was, yet, when Tchartkóff had wiped the dust from the countenance, he perceived evident traces of the touch of a great artist. The picture seemed to have been scarcely finished, but the force of treatment was immense.
Every body admired the skill with which the painter had succeeded in preserving the resemblance, and at the same time in giving beauty to the original. The last remark, of course, was not made without a slight tinge of malice. Tchartkóff was besieged with commissions. The whole town was mad to be painted by him. His door-bell rang incessantly.
Parents, ere they leave this vale of tears, may bequeath to their sorrowing children their exact resemblance. The warrior, the statesman, the poet, all classes of men, in short, will pursue their career with fresh zeal and ardour, now that the brilliant pencil of a Tchartkóff enables them to transmit to posterity their visible features, as well as their imperishable renown.
The type of face of the fashionable young lady was unconsciously transferred to Psyche, yet nevertheless she had an expression of her own which gave the picture claims to be considered in truth an original creation. Tchartkoff gave himself up entirely to his work. For several days he was engrossed by it alone, and the ladies surprised him at it on their arrival.
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