Criticism

Abstract

… I have seen as many and more paintings than you have, and I have looked at them in greater detail; they are as well placed in my imagination as within their frames. My head has catalogued more than any of the potentates of the world could acquire. I am a man of letters as you are. The qualities that you ask for in a good judge: a great love of art, a subtle and penetrating intellect, solid thinking, a sensitive soul and a rigorous fairness. I can flatter myself that I possess them to the same degree as you who is given to being a connoisseur, since you intend to teach others to appreciate it and it would be ridiculous to provide lessons about things that we know nothing. So! With that said if we wish to be truthful to each other, we will admit that after having read your work, and even after having done everything that it said, one still cannot tell the difference between a mediocre copy and a sublime original, and you are proposing to cover the walls of one’s bureau with insignificance and that one will learn to appreciate a piece that costs ten thousand francs even if it is only worth one hundred pistoles, and a painting that one has paid one hundred pistoles as though it were worth ten thousand francs.