A Connoisseur of Beauty Read Free Page A

bought the previous day. The strong colours and the large canvas were quite in keeping with the grand setting and seeing it in this new context it was almost like seeing the painting anew. It looked magnificent.
    “Well since I remember that James had that vast oil painting of his Golden Retriever, Sassy, there before, I can only approve the change. James was a good man, but not perfect.”
    Hunter laughed, “Yes, I acknowledged the technical merits of the picture and then rapidly removed it.” Their eyes met in mutual understanding.
    Amy turned to take in the rest of the room, “Any other minor changes in mind?”
    “Maybe. I may commission some new paintings. Some of these are excellent but some of more historical or sentimental interest, as I’m sure you’ll acknowledge. But one interests me in particular for a number of reasons, both because I’m curious about its origin and because... but let’s go and look at it.”
    Amy wasn’t in much doubt as to where she was going to be led. The controversy surrounding the painting of Elizabeth Montford had been disputed over a couple of centuries. Sure enough she was led up the stairs to the small gallery of paintings with which she was so familiar. Most, after all, were her ancestors.
    “Is it? “ Hunter asked simply. He was looking at her intently again and she was ready to feel uncomfortable under his penetrating stare. However, there were two questions which he could be asking, and she decided to assume that it was the more technical one.
    “Well, no one can prove it, but for my money, yes. Certainly it is eighteenth century, because it is of Elizabeth Montford. Unfortunately a small house fire fifty years ago damaged the bottom of the canvas and obliterated any signature.  After that it was effectively trimmed up and reframed. You can tell by the composition that there should be more in the foreground.”
    Hunter acknowledged this with an authoritative nod. “It is certainly in the style of Gainsborough. He had his imitators, but the sheer quality of the work... of course he was really a landscape artist, but portrait painting was more lucrative. Was it him who observed that a man may do great things and starve in a garret?”
    Amy smiled and nodded, although this was a little close to home. Her work may not be great but she was perilously close to the starving in a garret part. Her father had almost literally left her with the money tucked in the tea caddy and nothing else but the cottage in which they had lived.
    “And my other question... ” Hunter turned the full force of his gaze onto Amy. He surveyed her face and body almost hungrily, a look mingled of curiosity, eagerness and desire. “Is this you? I was bewitched by the beauty of the image the moment I saw it. Then I walked into your exhibition and saw you...?”
    Amy struggled to compose herself under the ferocity of his scrutiny, adopting lightness in her tone of voice which was very different to what she was feeling. 
    “No, it’s an eighteenth century work but the...likeness is, well, unsurprising.” Amy deliberately looked at the painting so as to disengage herself from Hunter, who was still holding her with his eyes. “She is my ancestor and it was always said that there were two kinds of Montford women, the Elizabeths and the Harriets. Harriet Montford is over here, in a seventeenth century painting. She was, well, you can see, handsome enough, but stocky and anything but delicate. She was renowned for breeding dogs and horses. Elizabeth was renowned for a string of aristocratic and, it was rumoured, royal lovers. In fact her third son was not thought to be his father’s son, so to speak, but as there was no chance of him inheriting, this fact was discretely glossed over.”
    “So beautiful, yet cold and faithless,” mused Hunter. “It’s often the way.”
    Amy bridled a bit at this criticism, feeling it somehow reflected on her. “Well, we don’t know she was cold, she may have been