“There you go again.”
“Listen to me. You have a certain talent—technique, perhaps, I should call it; a slight skill in technique.”
“Ah, that’s better. Now go on.”
“You got the praise and the prizes in Paris because of your technique, and that set you on the wrong tack. You are merely only doing well what hosts of other men have done well before you. You are down among the ruck. Now I strive after individuality.”
“You get it, Barney.”
“That’s not for me to say; anyhow, individuality and strength are what I want to see in my pictures, and there will some time come a critic with a mind unbiased enough to recognize these qualities. Then my day will have arrived. You mark my words, I shall found a school.”
“Like Julian’s?”
“No, like Whistler’s. You know very well what I mean. That’s your nasty way of showing you are offended because I’m frank enough to tell you the truth.”
“I suppose none of us likes the candid friend, however much we may pretend to. Well, I must be going. I’ve got some technique to do for one of the magazines.”
“Don’t go just yet. I have not half finished. Here is what I have to propose. Give up your room and come with me. You see the great advantage I have over you is that I can wait. If a magazine asked me to do black and white work for it, I would say, ‘No, go to those poor devils who must have work or starve. I’m working for the future, not for the present!’ That’s what I’d say. Now I’ll give you a bedroom, rent free, and a corner of this studio. It won’t cost you a penny—nor your board either. You can paint just what you like, and not what the public demands. Then you will be independent.”