Bram is still weary from scant sleep. After sharing a meal with the family, he retired to his room and set about working on his first painting in his new home. He had started with such high hopes, applying paint to canvas boldly, confidently, joyously. But as the hours progressed, so the image in front of him seemed to slip away. What he saw on the canvas fell woefully short of what he was aiming for. Exasperated, he dipped a rag in turpentine and scrubbed away the failed picture. He took a breath, steadied himself, and began again. Two more hours passed in a futile attempt to make something of the sketches from which he was working, to reproduce the energy and the drama of what he remembered. But to no avail. He worked on, into the night. Discarding and starting over. Again and again. Each time with equal determination but dwindling faith in his own ability.

Now, today, he must start afresh. Renew his belief in himself. He steps forward and touches one of the pieces of stone Mangan has selected for his sculpture. The surface is surprisingly warm beneath his fingers. When he lifts his hand again a fine layer of dust coats his skin. The same gritty film that covers everything, and everyone, in the studio.

“So, Bram from Yorkshire.” Mangan comes to stand beside him, momentarily and unexpectedly still. “What do you think of my work?”

“What do I think?” Bram is taken aback. He is in the presence of genius, here to learn from a master, and he, an inexperienced, unknown painter, is being asked his opinion of the great man’s work.

“Don’t be coy.” Mangan resumes striding about the room, snatching up this hammer or that chisel, gesticulating as he goes. “I surround myself with artists because I wish to be challenged, to be tested. Assail me with your criticisms. Beat me with your ridicule. Such wounds as you inflict will serve only to strengthen my resolve, I promise you.” He turns his intense gaze onto Bram, searching his face for honesty.

“Well, I…”

“Come, come!”

Bram studies the sculpted stone in front of him. It is sufficiently representational to be clearly seen as a figure, a female, but the norm has been exaggerated, twisted, stretched, to extreme limits. Limbs would start perfectly formed, the sensuous curve of a shoulder leading into an upper arm, say, and then flatten and meld back into the rock, as if the base material will not fully release it. The face has no features, but the line of the jaw and the pale, broad brow are exquisitely and lovingly rendered.

“I think … I think this is quite extraordinary,” he says at last, letting his palm rest on the figure’s knee. “I think it breathtakingly bold, and modern…”