But I remember being very much impressed by a
still-life--some fruit in a bowl--and on approaching it I saw Cezanne's
clumsy signature in the corner. From that moment the revelation was swift.
And before I had seen any Gauguins at all, I was prepared to consider
Gauguin with sympathy. The others followed naturally. I now surround
myself with large photographs of these pictures of which a dozen years ago
I was certainly quite incapable of perceiving the beauty. The best
still-life studies of Cezanne seem to me to have the grandiose quality of
epics. And that picture by Gauguin, showing the back of a Tahitian young
man with a Tahitian girl on either side of him, is an affair which I
regard with acute pleasure every morning. There are compositions by
Vuillard which equally enchant me. Naturally I cannot accept the whole
school--no more than the whole of any school. I have derived very little
pleasure from Matisse, and the later developments of Felix Vallotton leave
me in the main unmoved. But one of the very latest phenomena of the
school--the water-colours of Pierre Laprade--I have found ravishing.
* * * * *
It is in talking to several of these painters, in watching their familiar
deportment, and particularly in listening to their conversations with
others on subjects other than painting, that I have come to connect their
ideas with literature.
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