The Mysterious Sketch

Opposite the Saint Sebaldus Chapel in Nuremberg rises up a little inn, tall and narrow, with a jagged gable, dusty windows and a plaster cast of Our Lady on top of its roof. It was here that I spent the unhappiest days of my life. I had gone to Nuremberg to study the old German masters, but, due to a lack of liquidity, I had to paint portraits...and what portraits they were! Fat purveyors of tittle-tattle with a cat on their knees, aldermen in wigs, burgomasters wearing a three-cornered hat and the whole thing set off by luminous ochre and cinnabar by the bucketful.

From portraits I descended to sketches and from sketches to outlines.

Nothing can be worse, believe me, than to constantly have on your back a head steward, tight-lipped, shrill, impudent-looking, who comes to you every day with: "So then! How soon will you be paying, sir? Have you any idea how much your bill is now? No. It doesn't bother you, does it?... Sir eats, drinks and sleeps as he pleases... Does not our heavenly Father feed even the birds of the air? Sir's bill comes to four hundred schillings and ten kreuzer... It's hardly worth mentioning, I know."

Those who have not heard this scale being sung can have no concept of it - love of art, imagination, a sacred passion for the beautiful all dry up under the withering breath of such a browbeater... You grow gauche and timid, all your energy dissipated along with any feeling of personal dignity.

One night, penniless as usual, and threatened with debtor's prison by that worthy steward Rap, I decided I would thwart his hopes of payment by slitting my throat. With this pleasant thought in mind, sitting on my truckle bed opposite the window, I gave myself up to a thousand philosophical reflexions of varying degrees of cheerfulness. I did not dare to open my razor for fear that the irresistible force of my reasoning might well instil in me sufficient courage to do away with myself once and for all. Having argued with myself in this way, I blew out my candle, deferring the conclusion to this line of thought to the morrow.

This abominable Rap had driven me completely round the bend. All I could do now artistically was draw silhouettes and my only desire was to have the money to rid myself of this awful man's odious presence. But that night my mind performed a singular about-turn. I woke up going on for one o'clock, relit my light and, wrapping around me my grey smock, dashed down on paper a quick sketch reminiscent of an old Dutch master...something strange, bizarre and bearing no resemblance to my usual style.

Picture a dark courtyard hemmed in by high dilapidated walls...These walls are furnished with hooks seven or eight feet from the ground. Even at a cursory glance we may guess that this is a shambles of some sort.

On the left there is a latticework made up of narrow strips. Through it you can see a side of beef suspended from an enormous ceiling by enormous pulleys. Broad pools of blood run down over paving stones and meet up in a drain full of undefined debris.

The light comes down from on high, from between chimneys, against which weathervanes are silhouetted by a piece of sky only as big as your hand and the roofs of neighbouring houses drop their shadows dramatically from one floor to another.

At the end of this recess is a space. In this space is a woodshed, on this woodshed ladders, a few bales of straw, rope, a hen-coop and an old rabbit hutch that has seen better days.

How did these heterogeneous details come to present themselves to my imagination?... I do not know. I had no memories of things like this and yet each stroke of my charcoal pencil was a fantastic feat of observation by dint of being true to nature. Nothing was missing!