He returned to the room; his visitor, hat in hand, was about to go; a few words were spoken about the art of painting, this led to a conversation, and then to a short discussion.
The newcomer soon showed Mr. Charles Gatty his ignorance of facts.
This man had sat quietly before a multitude of great pictures, new and old, in England.
He cooled down Charles Gatty, Esq., monopolist of nature and truth.
He quoted to him thirty painters in Germany, who paint every stroke of a landscape in the open air, and forty in various nations who had done it in times past.
“You, sir,” he went on, “appear to hang on the skirts of a certain clique, who handle the brush well, but draw ill, and look at nature through the spectacles of certain ignorant painters who spoiled canvas four hundred years ago.
“Go no further in that direction.
“Those boys, like all quacks, have one great truth which they disfigure with more than one falsehood.
“Hold fast their truth, which is a truth the world has always possessed, though its practice has been confined to the honest and laborious few.
“Eschew their want of mind and taste.