man wanted Mars in his face, he put in Mars: he gave a Byronic turn
and attitude to those who aimed at Byron. If the ladies wanted to be
Corinne, Undine, or Aspasia, he agreed with great readiness, and threw
in a sufficient measure of good looks from his own imagination, which
does no harm, and for the sake of which an artist is even forgiven a
lack of resemblance. He soon began to wonder himself at the rapidity and
dash of his brush. And of course those who sat to him were in ecstasies,
and proclaimed him a genius.

Tchartkoff became a fashionable artist in every sense of the word.
He began to dine out, to escort ladies to picture galleries, to dress
foppishly, and to assert audibly that an artist should belong to
society, that he must uphold his profession, that artists mostly dress
like showmakers, do not know how to behave themselves, do not maintain
the highest tone, and are lacking in all polish. At home, in his studio,
he carried cleanliness and spotlessness to the last extreme, set up two
superb footmen, took fashionable pupils, dressed several times a day,
curled his hair, practised various manners of receiving his callers, and
busied himself in adorning his person in every conceivable way, in order
to produce a pleasing impression on the ladies. In short, it would soon
have been impossible for any one to have recognised in him the modest
artist who had formerly toiled unknown in his miserable quarters in the
Vasilievsky Ostroff.

He now expressed himself decidedly concerning artists and art; declared
that too much credit had been given to the old masters; that even
Raphael did not always paint well, and that fame attached to many of his
works simply by force of tradition: that Michael Angelo was a braggart
because he could boast only a knowledge of anatomy; that there was no
grace about him, and that real brilliancy and power of treatment and
colouring were to be looked for in the present century. And there,
naturally, the question touched him personally. "I do not understand,"
said he, "how others toil and work with difficulty: a man who labours
for months over a picture is a dauber, and no artist in my opinion; I
don't believe he has any talent: genius works boldly, rapidly. Here is
this portrait which I painted in two days, this head in one day, this
in a few hours, this in little more than an hour. No, I confess I do not
recognise as art that which adds line to line; that is a handicraft,
not art." In t