Box of Chocolates

Claude

The man stopped in the middle of a huge field, which spread like a golden sea everywhere around him, as far as he could see.

The light summer breeze caressed the gilded stems of wheat interspersed with tall, crimson poppies, making them sway, move like waves on the restless, shimmering surface of the ocean. It was wonderful. It was inspiring.

The middle-aged man, a painter, set up his easel in a perfect spot-- in a cool shadow of a lone tree. He rummaged through the bag he carried on his shoulder and took out a box of chalks and pencils, a couple of brushes, and a camera.

It was a heavy, black, clumsy looking thing, but he found it incredibly useful. The camera was one of the latest inventions of his century.

Even before setting up his square of canvas on the easel standing in front of him, he took a few photographs of the charming landscape. This way he would be able to finish his work at home, looking at the photographs and remembering the sunshine and the heat of this beautiful day, the scents he could not capture with his brushes, the rustle of the breeze and the chirping of the birds perched high up in the tree towering above him.

Reaching inside the bag again, for his paints this time, he thought of all the things that had changed during his life. Just the paints themselves. Until recently, he and the other painters couldn't properly paint outside in the open. All they could do en-plein-air were rushed watercolour sketches, to be reworked into oil paintings at home.

Carrying the old kind of paints around, made from natural pigments by the painters themselves, had been too difficult, too complicated and impractical. They dried up annoyingly fast. But now, with the invention of the tube paints, it all changed.

Even the photography itself-- not only it helped to preserve the images for later use, it influenced his style of painting as well. It changed his perception of the world.

The world looked completely different, seen through a camera lense.

As he started sketching the yellow field sprinkled with the multitude of moving red dots and irregular splashes of the crimson blooms, he thought of all the other things that were changing fast.

The society, habits, lifestyle, manners. Even the fashion, he realised, when he noticed a female figure, all dressed in white, approaching him across the field.

She looked charming, with her white bonnet and the fancy parasol made of snowy lace, casting a bright blue shadow over her face. Smiling to himself, the painter added his friend onto his masterpiece, applying only a few quick and skilled brushstrokes to his half-finished picture.

"Claude!" the woman called, pausing and waving at him happily.

Claude took a few more photographs, carefully choosing what he wanted to preserve. His painting will have to wait. Now that she was here, Monsieur Monet would just enjoy the summer afternoon in her company.

He would finish the picture later. The photographs that he had taken captured the beauty of this place, of this moment in time forever, and the metal tubes wouldn't allow his paints to dry and become useless. He could afford to take a little break in a pleasant company.

His world was changing, but Claude accepted the changes happily. He was certain that they would make the life of a painter much easier.