Art in novels: with “The real thing” Henry James grabs the essence of being an artist

The narrator of “The real thing” is a painter and this short novel, published in 1892, is dedicated to his relation with the Monarchs, a couple of aristocrats who, after having lost all their money, turns to him to be his models for a series of illustrations. But in spite of being the “real thing”, the painter doesn’t manage to see them as effective models. “After all they were amateurs, and the ruling passion of my life was the detestation of the amateur. Combined with this was another perversity – an innate preference for the represented subject over the real one: the defect of the real one was so apt to be a lack of representation. I liked things that appeared; then one was sure.”

December 22, 2016