SNARL. Whereas nature delights in irregular and finely graduated surfaces. Your brush is not destitute of a certain crude talent, Mr. Triplet, but you are deficient in the great principles of Art; the first of which is a loyal adherence to truth; beauty itself is but one of the forms of truth, and nature is our finite exponent of infinite truth.
SOAP. What wonderful criticism! One quite loses oneself among such grand words!
CIB. Yes, yes! proceed Mr. Snarl. I am of your mind.
SNARL. Now in nature, a woman’s face at this distance, has a softness of outline—(draws back and makes a lorgnette of his two hands, the others do the same), whereas your work is hard and tea-boardy.
SOAP. Well it is a leetle tea-boardy, perhaps. But the light and shade, Mr. Snarl—! the—what-d’ye-call—the—um—you know—eh?
SNARL. Ah! you mean the chiaroscuro.
SOAP. Exactly!
SNARL. The chiaroscuro is all wrong. In nature, the nose, intercepting the light on one side the face, throws a shadow under the eye. Caravaggio, the Venetians, and the Bolognese, do particular justice to this—no such shade appears in your portrait.
CIB. ’Tis so—stap my vitals!
(All express assent except Soaper.)