'Naked sollicitor'

Before 1999, I had no gown and bands of my own. The office where I started as an attorney-at-law had a number of gowns hanging on a coat rack, most with lace bands - there are no better - tied through the top buttonhole. Those who were in session took the best-fitting gown and the cleanest bands in a timely manner. I have no bad memories about that.?The gowns and bands were thoroughly cleaned regularly.

The gowns and bands however rented at the courts at that time were a different matter. There were occasionally suspicious specimens among them. Many of these gowns were not of the best quality grain (duller than prescribed or so worn you could see through them) and quite often malodorous. Rental bands were even worse: they could be living witnesses to pleas spoken with consumption, yellowish white by excessive exposure to tobacco-smoke-soaked beards.

Hiring quality may have improved afterward, but I don't have much trial experience about that. In 1999 I had my own gown measured by Toga Specialist Verbiest-Van Gijzen (Bergen Op Zoom). Prior to that, I had attempted to have a gown made in Cura?ao during a vacation in 1998. I didn't do it after the fabric store showed a picture of a gospel dress as an example.

Good quality never fails to impress. My own gown is still top notch. Perhaps a bit wide in the shoulders, but the shoulder pads that were fashionable yesterday may be so again tomorrow. Speaking of toga fashion. In professional literature and on social media, I am perceiving personalized (colorful) inner linings as the discovery of decorated gown heaven. This is a novelty for me. I knew only the lining applied as a function of the proper defense of a case. For example, the lining allegedly applied by Burberry’s attorney-at-law in his gown equipped with the trademarked argyle pattern. To convince the judge, when the gown is opened with the accompanying statement: ‘what matters whether a sign can be a figurative mark: the visual!’ Fear not: no stripes-polonaise on the inside of my gown. A naked gown pleases me best.

These reflections presented themselves after seeing Lucien Freud's painting ‘Naked Sollicitor’ (1983). I saw an image of it in ‘Lucian Freud Painted Women Naked and Friends in Their Neat Suits’, an article by Mari?tte Haveman (in NRC Culture, 20 October 2022) about the exhibition ‘Lucian Freud: New Perspectives’, on view at the National Gallery in London through 22 January 2024. Among other things, the article focuses on Freud's renowned nude portraits of corpulent women and men in which paint becomes flesh, as Haveman aptly writes. This nude lawyer intrigued me. Who was this? Freud's own lawyer perhaps? In the article I sought the answer in vain.

In a biography about Freud, I found the answer: a lawyer of Swiss-Ghanese descent named Marilyn, a fan who had informed Freud by letter that she wanted to pose as a nude model. Why hadn't Freud painted a dark-skinned woman before? And on top of that: wasn't she an attractive person? Freud accepted the offer. It was not pro bono: Marilyn used her lawyer's fee. Freud thought that was fine: ‘Because it's taking up her time’. But Marilyn did not become Freud's muse. She wanted more from c.q. than Freud. When Freud's assistant, in repayment of his debt to Marilyn, delivered the etching 'Sollicitor's Head' made by him of her 'bold-faced' face, Marilyn's howls and lamentations were such that Freud's assistant, leaving the etching behind, quickly made his way out. Without the gown worn closed, the naked truth of this lawyer showed itself.

Gino van Roeyen