onquest made by
rough, hard paths when there is a struggle at every step.

Money, the fickle page, came back to him, holding the train of glory. He
sold pictures at prices unheard of in Spain and they grew fabulously as
they were repeated by his admirers. Some American millionaires,
surprised that a Spanish painter should be mentioned abroad and that the
principal reviews in Europe should reproduce his works, bought canvases
as objects of great luxury. The master, embittered by the poverty of his
years of struggle, suddenly felt a longing for money, an overpowering
greed that his friends had never known in him. His wife seemed to grow
more sickly every day; her daughter was growing up and he wanted his
Milita to have the education and the luxuries of a princess. They now
had a respectable house of their own, but he wanted something better for
them. His business instinct, which everyone recognized in him when he
was not blinded by some artistic prejudice, strove to make his brush an
instrument of great profits.

Pictures were bound to disappear, according to the master. Modern rooms,
small and soberly decorated, were not fitted for the large canvases that
ornamented the walls of drawing rooms in the old days. Besides, the
reception rooms of the present, like the rooms in a doll's house, were
good merely for pretty pictures marked by stereotyped mannerisms. Scenes
taken from nature were out of place in this background. The only way to
make money then was to paint portraits and Renovales forgot his
distinction as an innovator in order to win at any cost fame as a
portrait painter of society people. He painted members of the royal
family in all sorts of postures, not omitting any of their important
occupations; on foot, and on horseback, with a general's plumes or a
gray hunting jacket, killing pigeons or riding in an automobile. He
portrayed the beauties of the oldest families, concealing imperceptibly,
with clever dissimulation, the ravages of time, giving firmness to the
flabby flesh with his brush, holding up the heavy eyelids and cheeks
that sagged with fatigue and the poison of rouge. After successes at
court, the rich considered a portrait by Renovales as an indispensable
decoration for their drawing rooms. They sought him because his
signature cost thousands of dollars; to possess a canvas by him was an
evidence of opulence, quite as necessary as an automobile of the best
make.

Renovales was as rich as a painter