Renata’s portrait

Renata’s portrait is a gift that Richard Cantwell welcomes as a keepsake, but Renata defines it as more than a likeness: it presents her as he likes to imagine her, not as she truly is. Its passage from painter to household, and then into Richard’s quarters, makes that gap between the woman and the image a concrete part of their intimacy. The painting is at once a personal memento, a carefully described act of representation, and a substantial object that the characters must physically arrange and decide how to display.

Making and Meaning

After Richard and Renata reflect on wishing for too much, a silence gives way to Renata’s account of the painter. The boy who once painted her is now a man, she says, and goes with many women to conceal what he is. He painted her portrait once; Renata offers it to Richard, who accepts with enthusiasm. The exchange joins the image to a personal history, but Renata does not present it as an unmediated record of that history: the painter’s circumstances and the portrait’s making are part of how she introduces it.

Renata describes the painted figure as romantic, with hair twice as long as hers has ever been, appearing to rise from the sea without a wet head. She contrasts that imagined emergence with the actual effect of coming out of the water: flattened hair, its ends pointing like those of a nearly dead rat. The comic correction refuses to let the romantic image pass as simple truth. Renata also says that her father paid the painter adequately, but that the portrait is not truly her; it is the version Richard likes to think of. The painting’s significance thus rests partly on its acknowledged distance from the person it depicts. Richard answers that he thinks of her when she comes from the sea too, while Renata calls that sight ugly and returns to the portrait as a possible souvenir.

From Offer to Keepsake

The portrait becomes an object Richard actively wants to possess, rather than a compliment left within the conversation. He asks when he will receive it. Renata says it can come that night and offers to have someone wrap it and send it from her house. When he asks where he will hang it, he names his quarters. The destination gives the proposed gift a place in his daily surroundings, while Renata’s word souvenir frames it as a thing he can retain beyond the moment in which she gives it.

The delivery is announced at the table by the concierge, who reports that a man outside—apparently one of Richard’s servants, though carrying a package for him from Renata—has arrived with a large parcel. The concierge asks whether it should go to the storeroom or to Renata’s room. Richard first directs it to his room, but Renata immediately asks whether they can look at it there together, adding that they need not care about anyone present. Her request shifts the portrait from a private delivery to a shared viewing. The gift’s movement is therefore negotiated between storage, personal possession, and the couple’s wish to see it in company.

The Canvas in the Room

When the concierge brings the portrait in, it remains inside its large frame. Its movement is compared to a ship carrying too much sail, an image that makes the painting’s bulk almost a small spectacle in the room. Richard tells a second waiter to fetch two chairs and position them so the canvas will not touch them, and to hold it securely so it cannot slip. Before anyone can treat the portrait as merely an image, its size and weight demand attention: it must be carried, supported, and protected. Richard then remarks that the frame will have to be changed, distinguishing the canvas he wants from the cumbersome presentation in which it has arrived.

Richard’s response combines affection with a practical claim. He tells Renata that he loves her and the two of them as portrayed on canvas, then instructs the concierge to take the painting upstairs to his room and thanks him for bringing it. He says that if the price is right, he is going to buy it. Renata answers that the price is right and suggests, with playful awareness of the gathering, that they could have the portrait and chairs taken downstairs for a special showing to his compatriot. The Gran Maestro instead says it should go to the room and cautions against letting Roederer or Perrier-Jouet do the talking. The exchange leaves the painting poised between a public display and private keeping; Richard’s instruction sends it upstairs, while the proposed change of frame remains an intention rather than a completed alteration.

Image, Possession, and Intimacy

The portrait’s importance lies in the contrast the characters themselves establish. Renata supplies the physical comparison between the idealized woman rising from the sea and the unromantic reality of wet hair, then names the painting as the image Richard prefers. Richard does not dispute her distinction. Instead, he welcomes the image alongside his memory of her actual emergence from the water, allowing the souvenir and the lived woman to coexist without pretending they are identical.

The object also makes affection visible through action. Richard asks for it, chooses his quarters as its destination, oversees its careful handling, and speaks of buying it even as it arrives as Renata’s gift. Those gestures turn desire into an arrangement of ownership and care: the canvas is to be kept, protected from slipping or damage, and eventually given a more suitable frame. Yet the painting does not settle who controls its meaning. Renata explains what it is not, and what she believes it is for Richard; he receives it in those terms, but makes room for both the portrait and the woman it cannot fully represent.