“Rather old-fashioned, isn’t it?” Weikhardt asked, with a sly smile. He had grown pale.
Imhof looked. He was a connoisseur through and through. No other had his eye. The painters knew it.
The picture, which reminded one of the visionary power as well as of the brushwork of El Greco, was bizarre in composition, intense in movement, and filled with an ecstatic passion. The forms of an old master, through which the painter had expressed himself, were but an appearance. The vision had been flung upon the canvas with a burning splendour. The figures had nothing old-fashioned about them; there was no cliché; they were like clouds, and the clouds like architecture. There were no concrete things. There was a chaos, which drew meaning and order only from the concentrated perceptions of the beholder.
Felix Imhof folded his hands. “To have such power,” he murmured. “Great God, to have the power to project such things!”
Weikhardt lowered his head. He attributed little significance to these words. A few days before he had stood in front of his canvas, and he had imagined that a peasant was standing beside him—an old peasant or any other simple man of the people. And it had seemed to him that this peasant, this humble man, who knew nothing of art, had kneeled down to pray. Not from piety, but because what he saw had in its own character overwhelmed him.
Almost rudely Imhof turned to the painter and said: “The picture is mine. Under all circumstances. Mine. I must have it. Good-night.” With his top hat set at a crazy angle, and his sleepless, dissipated face, he was a vision to frighten one.
At last he went home.
Next day Crammon informed him of his arrival in Munich. He had come because Edgar Lorm was about to give a series of performances there.