MEN I HAVE PAINTED
and forgery, referring, I believe, to the portrait of himself by Burgess. I had replied that the style was the only true indication of the authenticity of a work, and even that could not be depended upon when the style was obscure, undecided, or commonplace.
Yesterday he reverted again to the Old Masters, with more than usual bitterness, accused them of puerility and many other faults, said they never made reflections in their shadows, but carried them around a limb or an object with increasing darkness, until in the end they were blacker than black. In fact, that they did not understand reflected lights.
I said that I had been taught to ignore reflections in the shadows, and that once, having made a drawing with transparent shadows, the professor rubbed them out, telling me that I must not see them. "What incompetent fool was that?" Spencer demanded. I went on to say that the result of this teaching had been to make me a painter of reflected light, and that I painted nearly all my portraits in shadow with the face illumined by a book or paper. This amused him, and he laughed heartily.
He went on to say that his opinion was considered a heresy, but that Calderon had in part upheld him, for he (Calderon) had once said that men went daft when they talked of the Old Masters. I suggested Velasquez. Spencer announced that he was "stiff, strained, and awkward"; that Raphael owed his reputation to the religion in his works—that always took; that Van Eyck's John Arnolfini and Wife was an ugly thing; that photography had helped men to perceive the just relation and proportion of shadows, etc., etc. The drapery of the old Greeks was a farce, Spencer declared, adding that it looked as though it had
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