old a picture. The canvases were of different sizes.
The smaller were pictures of still-life and the largest were
landscapes. There were about half a dozen portraits.

"That is the lot," he said at last.

I wish I could say that I recognised at once their beauty and
their great originality. Now that I have seen many of them
again and the rest are familiar to me in reproductions, I am
astonished that at first sight I was bitterly disappointed.
I felt nothing of the peculiar thrill which it is the property
of art to give. The impression that Strickland's pictures
gave me was disconcerting; and the fact remains, always to
reproach me, that I never even thought of buying any.
I missed a wonderful chance. Most of them have found their way
into museums, and the rest are the treasured possessions of
wealthy amateurs. I try to find excuses for myself. I think
that my taste is good, but I am conscious that it has no originality.
I know very little about painting, and I wander
along trails that others have blazed for me. At that time I
had the greatest admiration for the impressionists. I longed
to possess a Sisley and a Degas, and I worshipped Manet.
His <i Olympia> seemed to me the greatest picture of modern times,
and <i Le Dejeuner sur l'Herbe> moved me profoundly.
These works seemed to me the last word in painting.

I will not describe the pictures that Strickland showed me.
Descriptions of pictures are always dull, and these, besides,
are familiar to all who take an interest in such things. Now
that his influence has so enormously affected modern painting,
now that others have charted the country which he was among
the first to explore, Strickland's pictures, seen for the
first time, would find the mind more prepared for them; but it
must be remembered that I had never seen anything of the sort.
First of all I was taken aback by what seemed to me the
clumsiness of his technique. Accustomed to the drawing of the
old masters, and convinced that Ingres was the greatest
draughtsman of recent times, I thought that Strickland drew
very badly. I knew nothing of the simplification at which he aimed.
I remember a still-life of oranges on a plate, and I
was bothered because the plate was not round and the oranges
were lop-sided. The portraits were a little larger than
life-size, and this gave them an ungainly look. To my eyes the
faces looked like caricatures. They were painted in a way
that was entirely new to