Chapter XLIV

by William Somerset Maugham

　　A certain importance attaches to the views on art of painters,and this is the natural place for me to set down what I knowof Strickland's opinions of the great artists of the past.I am afraid I have very little worth noting. Strickland was nota conversationalist, and he had no gift for putting what hehad to say in the striking phrase that the listener remembers.He had no wit. His humour, as will be seen if I have in anyway succeeded in reproducing the manner of his conversation,was sardonic. His repartee was rude. He made one laughsometimes by speaking the truth, but this is a form of humourwhich gains its force only by its unusualness; it would ceaseto amuse if it were commonly practised.Strickland was not, I should say, a man of great intelligence,and his views on painting were by no means out of the ordinary.I never heard him speak of those whose work had a certainanalogy with his own -- of Cezanne, for instance, or of Van Gogh;and I doubt very much if he had ever seen their pictures.He was not greatly interested in the Impressionists.Their technique impressed him, but I fancy thathe thought their attitude commonplace. When Stroeve washolding forth at length on the excellence of Monet, he said:"I prefer Winterhalter." But I dare say he said it to annoy,and if he did he certainly succeeded.I am disappointed that I cannot report any extravagances inhis opinions on the old masters. There is so much in hischaracter which is strange that I feel it would complete thepicture if his views were outrageous. I feel the need toascribe to him fantastic theories about his predecessors, andit is with a certain sense of disillusion that I confess hethought about them pretty much as does everybody else.I do not believe he knew El Greco. He had a great but somewhatimpatient admiration for Velasquez. Chardin delighted him,and Rembrandt moved him to ecstasy. He described theimpression that Rembrandt made on him with a coarseness Icannot repeat. The only painter that interested him who wasat all unexpected was Brueghel the Elder. I knew very littleabout him at that time, and Strickland had no power to explainhimself. I remember what he said about him because it was sounsatisfactory."He's all right," said Strickland. "I bet he found it hell to paint."When later, in Vienna, I saw several of Peter Brueghel'spictures, I thought I understood why he had attractedStrickland's attention. Here, too, was a man with a vision ofthe world peculiar to himself. I made somewhat copious notesat the time, intending to write something about him, but Ihave lost them, and have now only the recollection of an emotion.He seemed to see his fellow-creatures grotesquely,and he was angry with them because they were grotesque;life was a confusion of ridiculous, sordid happenings, a fitsubject for laughter, and yet it made him sorrowful to laugh.Brueghel gave me the impression of a man striving to expressin one medium feelings more appropriate to expression in another,and it may be that it was the obscure consciousness of thisthat excited Strickland's sympathy. Perhaps both were tryingto put down in paint ideas which were more suitable to literature.Strickland at this time must have been nearly forty-seven.