Keeping the World Away by Margaret Forster
Reviewed by Cindi Di Marzo
Margaret Forster’s complex and rewarding Keeping the World Away (Ballantine, 2006) examines the power of one painting–not art, not any individual artist or group, but a deceptively simple image–to connect with the deepest needs and longings of the women into whose hands it comes. Unknown to them, these needs and longings connect them to the artist who painted the image. Gwen John, the woman behind the work, was unusual for her or any time, fiercely protective of her art, her independence and her privacy. The painting that haunts the pages of Forster’s novel is a symbol for Gwen and, apparently, many women who seek solitude, a clear purpose and a refuge from the pain, passion and chaos of the world outside.
In September 2004, the Tate in London held the first large-scale show of works by Gwen John (1876-1936) and her better-known brother, Augustus (1878-1961). The exhibit features in Forster’s prologue and sets the stage for her leisurely, reflective story that is, really, a series of stories revolving around an early version of Gwen’s oil painting, “Corner of the Artist’s Room in Paris (with Open Window),” painted circa 1907-1909. Gwen kept the never-exhibited final painting, Forster notes in a postscript, and bequeathed it to her nephew, who gave it to Augustus’s longtime mistress, Dorelia McNeill.1
Born in Tenby, Wales, Gwen and John, after their mother’s death, distanced themselves from their exacting father. As young adults early in the twentieth century, they travel to Paris to study art. Troubled by the seemingly easy access to the art world that Augustus and his male companions have, Gwen, in Forster’s rendering, immerses herself in drawing and painting, refusing to be diverted to the typical female path of marriage and children. She watches as many of her women friends choose family and society over art and the possibility of being alone. But Gwen’s passionate nature is barely contained, and after modeling for master sculptor Rodin, she becomes his mistress. A cool-headed man who admires, above all, order and calm, Rodin tries to suppress Gwen’s wilder tendencies. The affair ends miserably for her; bitter and angry, she resolves to preserve her independence by avoiding emotional entanglements. Her refuge is a place of her own, a place that is, as Rodin counseled, simple and well-ordered.
There, she embarks on what eventually became a series of oil paintings, still lifes of her simply appointed room with a wicker-work chair, jacket tossed over one arm and a parasol leaning against it; a vase of flowers set on a small wooden table; and a window that overlooks the city. The visible section of wall has no embellishments. The colors are mainly neutral. This “portrait” of a room has little evidence of a human occupant, yet is tells a human story. Over the years spanning circa 1907 to the present, the painting’s presence draws those who find themselves, mainly through serendipity, living with it. Perhaps because of the unusual circumstances in which the women come by Gwen’s painting, they do not feel a sense of ownership. Frequently, it takes years from them to reconcile the competing impressions the work gives; longing and contentment; tension and release; emptiness and completion; solitude and loneliness; and pain and the calming of all emotion.
For example, describing the thoughts of Madame Verlon, alone among those closest to the painting to suspect Gwen’s identity as painter, Forster tells readers:
“Looking at the painting here, she concluded that for many years she had been misinterpreting it. Casting aside all her complicated theories as to the significance of the empty chair, the parasol, the flowers, she decided that all it said to her eyes now was ‘Let life be simple.’ Let everything go, all the striving, all the tension; keep the world away.’ ”
While women’s struggles to be creative, successful on their own terms and independent without giving up love and family are at the heart of Forster’s novel, so is claiming an identity as Artist. This struggle transcends gender and must be faced by anyone before they can call themselves a professional. Indeed, Foster inserts the reflections of male and female characters, young and older, who decide that they are not “real” artists, either because they judge that they do not have enough talent, or because painting isn’t important enough to give up everything else. Forster portrays Gwen, a woman who on the surface, at least, gave up much, as the real thing.
Although Forster leaves Gwen’s story after the artist gives an early version of “Corner of the Artist’s Room in Paris” to a friend, Gwen makes a few cameo appearances in the backdrop to other character’s stories. As those characters’ lives unfold, they touch each other in surprising ways that could feel contrived. Somehow, it all feels right, inevitable and, as Rodin might say, well ordered. Near the end of the novel, in the voice of Madame Verlon, Forster contemplates the role fate has played here:
“Some coincidences were so extraordinary that they unavoidably had about them the feeling of having been ‘meant.’ ”
As a fine example of this philosophy, Keeping the World Away, with all its coincidences and fortuitous meetings, has been orchestrated to perfection.
The end of the novel circles back to Gillian, the budding artist who first viewed Gwen’s work at the Tate exhibit. Now studying art in Paris, Gillian questions the intent of artists and the impact their works have on those who see them through the years in light of her grandmother’s curious relationship with Gwen’s painting. With their bird’s-eye view of the fascinating individual stories that make up Forster’s novel, readers are unlikely to ask with Gillian, “Don’t artists want to put more than the paint on the canvas?” They will know the answer. In fact, the answer might send them off to find the work of art that can express their own spirits.
1 According to the postscript, Dorothy “Dorelia” McNeill lived with Augustus and his wife, had a child with him, and raised Augustus’s other children after his wife died. She gave the final version of Gwen’s painting to the city of Sheltied in 1964, on the occasion of the city’s Augustus John exhibition. Corner of the Artist’s Room in Paris remains in Sheltied to this day.
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