s of Montmartre, at the
corner of a patch of waste land whence as a background he painted some
miserable, low, tumble-down buildings, overtopped by factory chimneys,
whilst in the foreground, amidst the snow, he set a girl and a ragged
street rough devouring stolen apples. His obstinacy in painting from
nature greatly complicated his work, and gave rise to almost insuperable
difficulties. However, he finished this picture out of doors; he merely
cleaned and touched it up a bit in his studio. When the canvas was
placed beneath the wan daylight of the glazed roof, he himself was
startled by its brutality. It showed like a scene beheld through a
doorway open on the street. The snow blinded one. The two figures, of a
muddy grey in tint, stood out, lamentable. He at once felt that such a
picture would not be accepted, but he did not try to soften it; he sent
it to the Salon, all the same. After swearing that he would never again
try to exhibit, he now held the view that one should always present
something to the hanging committee if merely to accentuate its
wrong-doing. Besides, he admitted the utility of the Salon, the only
battlefield on which an artist might come to the fore at one stroke. The
hanging committee refused his picture.

The second year Claude sought a contrast. He selected a bit of the
public garden of Batignolles in May; in the background were some large
chestnut trees casting their shade around a corner of greensward and
several six-storied houses; while in front, on a seat of a crude green
hue, some nurses and petty cits of the neighbourhood sat in a line
watching three little girls making sand pies. When permission to paint
there had been obtained, he had needed some heroism to bring his work to
a successful issue amid the bantering crowd. At last he made up his mind
to go there at five in the morning, in order to paint in the background;
reserving the figures, he contented himself with making mere sketches
of them from nature, and finishing them in his studio. This time his
picture seemed to him less crude; it had acquired some of the wan,
softened light which descended through the glass roof. He thought his
picture accepted, for all his friends pronounced it to be a masterpiece,
and went about saying that it would revolutionise the Salon. There
was stupefaction and indignation when a fresh refusal of the hanging
committee was rumoured. The committee's intentions could not be denied:
it was a question of