more marvellous
one. He lacked constantly the something necessary and local which gives
to certain very inferior painters the inexpressible superiority of a
savor of soil. It could not be said that he was not inventive and new,
yet one experienced on seeing no matter which one of his paintings that
he was a creature of culture and of acquisition. The scattered studies in
the atelier first of all displayed the influence of his first master, of
solid and simple Bonnat. Then he had been tempted by the English
pre-Raphaelites, and a fine copy of the famous 'Song of Love', by
Burne-Jones, attested that reaction on the side of an art more subtle,
more impressed by that poetry which professional painters treat
scornfully as literary. But Lincoln was too vigorous for the languors of
such an ideal, and he quickly turned to other teachings. Spain conquered
him, and Velasquez, the colorist of so peculiar a fancy that, after a
visit to the Museum of the Prado, one carries away the idea that one has
just seen the only painting worthy of the name.

The spirit of the great Spaniard, that despotic stroke of the brush which
seems to draw the color in the groundwork of the picture, to make it
stand out in almost solid lights, his absolute absence of abstract
intentions and his newness which affects entirely to ignore the past, all
in that formula of art, suited Maitland's temperament. To him, too, he
owed his masterpiece, the 'Femme en violet et en jaune', but the restless
seeker did not adhere to that style. Italy and the Florentines next
influenced him, just those the most opposed to Velasquez; the Pollajuoli,
Andrea del Castagna, Paolo Uccello and Pier delta Francesca. Never would
one have believed that the same hand which had wielded with so free a
brush the color of the 'Femme en violet...' could be that which sketched
the contour of the portrait of Alba with so severe, so rigid a drawing.

At the moment Florent entered the studio that work so completely absorbed
the attention of the painter that he did not hear the door open any more
than did Madame Steno, who was smoking cigarettes, reclining indolently
and blissfully upon the divan, her half-closed eyes fixed upon the man
she loved. Lincoln only divined another presence by a change in Alba's
face. God! How pale she was, seated in the immobility of her pose in a
large, heraldic armchair, with a back of carved wood, her hands grasping
the arms, her mouth so bitter, her eyes so deep