Artists and Paintings in Maugham's of Human Bondage

181 /RTISTS AND PAINTINGS IN MAUGHAM'S OF HUMN BONDAGE By Stanley Archer (Texas A&M University) In 0£ Human Bondage, artists and paintings occupy a significant place. Maugham names over thirty painters, alludes to two others, mentions ten famous paintings by name, and refers to numerous others.1 The hero, Philip Carey, studies art In Paris for two years and visits the Luxembourg, the Louvre, the displays of art dealers, and the National Gallery. In his futile attempt to become an artist, he discusses the subject with his friends and changes his tastes. The references to art function in two ways: they provide description and the reflect the development of Philip's character. If the piece of Persian rug, a gift to Philip from the eccentric poet Cronshaw, holds the key to the meaning of life, art marks Philip's progress on the way to an understanding of the meaning. Though he did not study art, Somerset Maugham held an Interest in painting throughout most of his life, an interest appropriately reflected in his works. In The Summing Up (I938) he mentions having read Pater and Ruskin at age twenty and having viewed the masterpieces of European art that Ruskin praised.2 His novel Moon and Sixpence (I919) has an artist as protagonist, and he devotes sections of Don Fernando (1935), A Writer's Notebook (1949), and The Vagrant Mood (1952) to discussions of art and artists. An article on masterpieces of art, "Paintings I Have Liked," appeared In the December 1, 197Ht issue of Life Magazine. In Purely for My Pleasure (19^2), Maugham includes reproductions of paintings from his own collection, accumulated over many years and sold before his death.3 In Of Human Bondage Maugham makes numerous references to paintings fpr the purpose of effective description. He expects the reader to recall Watteau as he describes the countryside near Moret where Philip and his friends spend the summer: "The ladles of Watteau, gay and Insouciant, seemed to wander with their cavaliers among the great trees, whispering to one another careless, charming things, and yet somehow eppressed by a nameless fear."^ While a few other references to describe landscape and sending occur, references to paintings or painters are used more often to describe women. Usually they suggest disapproval or distaste. ,Cronshaw»s French mistress, we are told, "reminded you of the Bohémienne In the Louvre by Franz Hals. She has a flaunting vulgarity which amused and yet horrified" (p. 252). Ruth Chalice, the Emgllsh girl who made no distinction between the love of art and the *rt of love, "With her large brown eyes, thin ascetic face, her pale skin, and broad forehead, . . . might have stepped out of a picture by Burne-Jomes. She had long, beautiful hands, with fingers deeply stained by nicotine" (p. 270). Yet Maugham occasionally uses the references in order to convey a pleasing Impression . After Introducing his wife to Philip, Thorpe Athelny asks In her presence, "Doesn't she look like Rubens* second wife?" (p. 538), a reference suggesting the radiant happiness that Philip finds during his visits with the Athelnys. In a later reflection on Athelny's daughter Sally, Philip muses, "she had the skin that Rubens painted" (p. 7^9). In the part of the novel set in Paris (Chapters 40-51), it is useful to dismiss the work of student painters by showing it to be derivative. Thus Clutton says of an acquaintance: "he paints 182 just like Pissaro [sic]" (p. 300). I-'iost of these descriptions are from a character's point of view, usually from Philip's. However, in an early description of Perkins, headmaster of the King's School, Maugham is apparently speaking from the narrator-author's point of view (p. 93) since nothing preceding the reference indicates Philip's acquaintance with great painters. Yet the descriptive intent does not loom large in 0_f Human Bondage. The novel is Philip Carey's story and, in some measure, the story of every man in a modern democratic state. As art relates to Fhilip, it enables Maugham to work out the major theme of the novel, the necessity for each man to free himself from the bondage of...