So, Who Were Those Guys Based On?
---The historical basis for Kimball and Seaton
To be perfectly fair, I guessed half the origins for Kimball and Seaton, because what I really recognized was not so much the artists themselves, but their works: the painting of Sir Anthony's Kimball drools artspeak all over to get the job is Putney's variation of The Oath of the Horatii. Kimball makes his fortune (so to speak) with a series of prints I immediately recognized as Goya's series, The Horrors of War and his fame with a painting based upon Goya's The Third of May, 1808.
I hated all three works, but by god they left vivid impressions, since it's been over a decade since that survey class where I encountered them. Though my attitude towards David has softened somewhat since the class (I thought he was awful, far worse than the pre-Raphealites my profs sneered at), I still loathe the Oath, though I've come to realize more for the relative roles the men and women in it play as for what I consider to be its muddy, ugly color and, oddly enough, melodramatic (to the point of silliness) composition.
The men, depicted as heroic, are about to do something stupid---fight with their sisters' lovers/spouses etc; the women, whose approach strikes me a damned sight more honorable---attempting to bridge the gap between the enemies via understanding---are depicted as weak, wailing, and useless. Besides the ugliness of the neoclassic style (no brushmarks) the painting deeply offended my sensibilities. But I have to admit that David's Marat is a wonderful study in shape, and form, executed very effectively with a limited palette, its restrained neoclassical sensibility striking a stronger chord than Delacroixan melodrama would have. (See, I can too do artspeak.)
The Goya works are memorable for the macabre approach (especially the series), but since the point---made, perhaps, most powerfully in Picasso's modern take on war, Guernica---was to express their creators' disgust with and illustrate the horror of war, they certainly succeed in achieving their object, and if I was acutely uncomfortable with them, I can't deny the justice of their approach or my reaction.
Creating fictional characters who could live up to paintings that could affect me so deeply (particularly since anytime an author trys to fictionalize a really great or famous person I become---unfairly I'm sure---suspicious of hubris) would be a trick indeed. (Certainly I can see the appeal of populating one's works of fiction with powerful, or gifted, or famous persons. But if the story is set in the past, and the names are too big, it begins to conflict with the readers' knowledge of the way things really happened. One can write an alternate history, or set the thing in the future---both favorite tricks of sf & fantasy writers---or simply turn to writing biography of the actual folks. However, though that may be more `honest' [i.e. believable] it's not as much fun. I do actually sympathize over this dilemma, even if it doesn't sound like it.) But the least I felt Putney could do was attempt to support the characters with the types of personalities and goals that would be compatible with the real artists.
That didn't happen, especially in Seaton's case, and that's where the half guessing comes in: Seaton was to be ``a cross between Jacques-Louis David and Sir Thomas Lawrence''; likewise Kimball an amalgamation of Goya and Gericault. Frankly, though I like the works of Lawrence and Gericault better than those of the other two, they hadn't the emotional impact, and besides there were no references (that I detected anyway) to specific works of those two. The blended qualities, therefore, resulted for a lot of querulousness about Seaton's character on my part in the previous link.
And Rebecca?
No specific works are ever mentioned in her case, and so I didn't really get up in arms about her (though I will admit---just to be really, annoyingly inconsistant here) neither could I really visualize her work; that, I suspect, is the reason I didn't think her talent could be the equal of Kimball's. So, what's a poor author to do, then?
My suspician is that one is probably safest in basing characters upon minorly, rather than majorly, famous people---in this case, artists well enough known for their work to be respected within the community, but not so famous that even fairly ignorant readers immediately recognize the historical figures upon which they're based, and then crow about all the differences those readers' limited knowledge permits them to detect.
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Sylvus Tarn Last modified: Fri Sep 11 11:46:44 EDT 1998
Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 2008 sylvus tarn.
