“I’ll show you,” said Thompson, and they went round the galleries.
Mendel’s head was nearly bursting when he came out. The riotous colour, the apparent neglect of drawing and abuse of form, the entire absence of tone and atmosphere, shocked him. He resented the wrench given to all his training, and he took Thompson to the Louvre to go back to Cranach and the early Italians. Thompson would not hear of them, and insisted on his spending over an hour with Poussin.
“I can see nothing in them. Good painting, good drawing, but dull, so dull! The flat, papery figures mean nothing.”
“They mean everything to the picture,” said Thompson, “and you have no right to go outside the picture. Poussin kept to his picture, and so must you if you are to understand him.”
“I can see all that,” said Mendel, “but he is dull. I can’t help it, he bores me.”
“It is pure art.”
“Then I like it impure.”
“You don’t really. But you are all like that when you first come from London. You think that because a thing is different it must be wrong. Have you come over alone?”
“No. I’m with a man called Logan and his girl. He is a great painter, or he will be one. Anyhow, he is alive and has ideas.”
“Does he know about Van Gogh?”