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“Yes. Not with the Colorman, but nearby. She is inside the station, but it’s very early, and there is almost no one else around.”
“What does she look like?”
“I can’t see. She is holding an umbrella so I can’t see her face. She’s small, thin. From her dress and posture I would say she is fairly young.”
“Can you move closer?” said the Professeur. “See if you can get a look at her.”
“I set down the easels and walk toward her. She peeks around her umbrella, then hurries away, out toward the rue de Rome exit. As she steps into the rain she has to lift the umbrella. Yes, she’s young. Pretty.”
“Do you know her?”
“Can you touch her bosoms?” asked Henri.
“Monsieur Toulouse-Lautrec, please,” said the Professeur.
“What? It’s an illusion, there are no rules of propriety.”
“It’s Margot,” said Lucien. “The girl who Monsieur Renoir has been painting at the Moulin de la Galette. She is leaning over, talking to the Colorman behind her umbrella. They leave together, down the boulevard. I will try to follow them.”
Paris, 1877, Gare Saint-Lazare
“I AM THE PAINTER MONET,” MONET ANNOUNCED TO THE STATION MANAGER. The usher, who had presented Monet’s calling card, stood by the manager’s desk, frozen in a half bow to the grandiose gentleman. Lucien stood in the doorway, drooling, as he had been instructed, and haphazardly juggling the three easels, Monet’s paint box, and a broad wooden case for carrying wet canvases.
“I am the painter Monet. I have decided to paint your station.” Claude Monet—Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 1875
Monet wore a velvet jacket and a silk waistcoat bound with a gold watch chain; lace cuffs draped his wrists; a black silk cravat was tied at his throat, pinned with a pearl stickpin—every inch the gentleman, dandy, and master of his universe. His lapel bulged a bit, betraying half a baguette that he had concealed in his coat, the remains of the breakfast Mère Lessard had sent along to him, since he had no money for food.
“I have decided to paint your station,” said Monet. “I must admit, I was torn between Gare du Nord and your station, but I believe your station has more character, so it is Gare Saint-Lazare that shall be honored.”
The station manager, a thin, nervous, balding man—a man built for bureaucracy—was flustered. He stood at his desk in his suit of yellow ochre plaid and began to fuss with papers, as if something on his desk might confirm his station’s worthiness.
“This is my assistant, Lucien,” Monet announced, turning on a heel and leading the way out of the office into the great chamber of the station. “He is a simpleton, but I allow him to be my porter so he does not starve. Don’t be alarmed if you see him eating paint. I allow him half a tube a day.”
“Bonjour,” drooled Lucien.
The station manager and the porter nodded uncomfortably to the boy, then skated by him in the doorway as if he might be poisonous to the touch and followed Monet onto the platform under the grand clock.
“I wish to paint the steam and smoke, the fury of the engines preparing to depart. I will paint fog, you see, capture on canvas that which has never been captured.”
The station manager and the porter nodded in unison, but didn’t move otherwise and seemed to have no intention of doing so, as if they were overwhelmed by the painter’s bearing.
“Lucien, set up my easels,” said Monet, pointing. “There! There! There!”
The painter’s barking of orders seemed to wake the station manager from his daze. Of course, if there was going to be steam, the locomotives would need to be fired. “Bring engine number twelve under the roof. Tell the engineers down the line to get their engines up to steam.”
“I will need them to vent it at once, if they can,” said Monet.
“Tell them to vent the steam on my signal,” the station manager instructed the porter, who hurried off down the train tracks. To Monet, the manager said, “Monsieur, may I suggest that you only have one train at a time release its steam. On a wet day like today, the entire station might be so filled with fog you couldn’t see to paint.”
“Fine, I want a storm of steam. Turner’s ghost should stir at the storm I capture today,” said Monet. “Let me know when all is ready.” He took his palette from his paint box and began to load it with color, while Lucien set blank, primed canvases on the easels, then looked to the master with an eyebrow raised, waiting for approval.
Monet stood behind each canvas in turn and looked at his view of the station, then adjusted them so he had nearly the same perspective at each spot. Then he took a broad, flat brush, wet it with turpentine in the palette cup, then loaded it with lead white and dipped just the corner in the Colorman’s ultramarine. In a second he was washing the top of each canvas with a pale blue, going from one easel to the next and back.
“But, Monsieur Monet,” said Lucien, confused. “The trains are not ready yet. How can you capture the moment if the moment is not happening yet?” How was he to learn anything from his masters if they changed their method without notice? Monet never tinted his canvases before beginning a painting, or at least Lucien had never seen him do it.
“Just watch, Lucien. And don’t forget to drool when the station manager returns.”
Monsieur Monet was mad, Lucien thought. Well, not really, but others would have thought it a mad undertaking. Lucien had been present when Monet and Renoir were having coffee at the bakery, shortly after the first Impressionists show, when one of the reviewers had written, “Monsieur Monet seems to view the world through a cloud of fog.”
