01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, May 1, 2005

BY SAM COALE
Special to The Journal

THE PORTRAIT, by Iain Pears. Riverhead Books. 211 pages. $19.95.

I first stumbled on Iain Pears quite by accident, enjoying his mysteries about art thefts in Rome. Then I read his wonderfully ingenious and intriguing, multi-layered history-mystery about Charles II, An Instance of the Fingerpost, which led to the philosophically moving The Dream of Scipio.

And so it was with great glee that I picked up The Portrait.

He's done it again, an elegantly urbane, subtly crafted work that's filled with surprises, shocks and stunning revelations.

The book is a monologue spun by one Henry Morris MacAlpine, a painter who's self-exiled to the barren isle of Houat off the coast of Brittany in 1914. MacAlpine has lured his old friend and antagonist, the art critic William Nasmyth, to the island to paint him, while at the same time dissecting his life detail by detail during the various sittings.

Nasmyth is revealed as an arrogant, condescending, cruel fellow who can destroy reputations with a single review. And does so. He engineered the Post-Impressionist exhibition in London in 1910 to show up British painters and mark his turf as one "in the know."

MacAlpine hails from Scotland, brought up on a grim Calvinist gruel of predestination, sin, punishment and castor-oil. He sharpened his drawing skills in Glasgow, stole his widowed mother's money, and fled to London to become a wealthy society painter of rich women.

But then things shift. And I can't reveal too much more. Women are involved: the low-life but beautiful model Jacky; the aloof, mysterious Evelyn, who turns out to be a remarkably good painter. The fates of these four characters intertwine in an alarming manner, set within the Darwinian jungle of the turn-of-the-century art world.

MacAlpine seeks solace with a Catholic priest on the island. He reflects on the primal violence and beauties of the sea. He stalks Nasmyth in order to capture his cruelties on canvas. And he has much else in mind as well.

Once you come to the chilling conclusion of the novel, you recognize how crafty Pears has been in designing his yarn. Things fall devastatingly into place.

The relationship between critic and artist becomes a sycophantic dialectic wherein each needs and uses the other. Pears, gracefully but mercilessly scraping layers of personalities away with a finely honed scalpel, plumbs the depths of this disturbing dynamic and raises all kinds of unsettling but necessary questions.

At one point the critic is described as "a demanding god," but then is compared "to a painter as a eunuch is to a man."

Gulp! I think I emerged intact.

Sam Coale is a Wheaton professor and frequent reviewer.