"It was in the back room turned to the wall," he said. "I took it out,
thinking that the Russian prince who ordered the Pegasus decoration
might buy it," and he turned away, not liking to hear my praise of it;
for it neither pleases a painter to hear his early works praised nor
abused. "I painted it before I knew how to paint," and standing before
me, his palette in his hand, he expounded his new aestheticism: that
up to the beginning of the nineteenth century all painting had been
done first in monochrome and then glazed, and what we know as solid
painting had been invented by Greuze. One day in the Louvre he had
perceived something in Delacroix, something not wholly satisfactory;
this something had set him thinking. It was Rubens, however, who had
revealed the secret! It was Rubens who had taught him how to paint! He
admitted that there was danger in retracing one's steps, in beginning
one's education over again; but what help was there for it, since
painting was not taught in the schools.
I had heard all he had to say before, and could not change my belief
that every man must live in the ideas of his time, be they good or
bad. It is easy to say that we must only adopt Rubens's method and
jealously guard against any infringement on our personality; but in
art our personality is determined by the methods we employ, and
Octave's portrait interested me more than the Pegasus decoration, or
the three pink Venuses holding a basket of flowers above their heads.
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