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round objects with a black line, the world will see the black
line, and there will be a black line; and if we paint grass red
and cows blue, it’ll see them red and blue, and, by Heaven,
they will be red and blue.’
‘To hell with art,’ murmured Flanagan. ‘I want to get gin-
ny.’
Lawson took no notice of the interruption.
‘Now look here, when Olympia was shown at the Salon,
Zola—amid the jeers of the Philistines and the hisses of the
pompiers, the academicians, and the public, Zola said: ‘I
look forward to the day when Manet’s picture will hang in
the Louvre opposite the Odalisque of Ingres, and it will not
be the Odalisque which will gain by comparison.’ It’ll be
there. Every day I see the time grow nearer. In ten years the
Olympia will be in the Louvre.’
‘Never,’ shouted the American, using both hands now
with a sudden desperate attempt to get his hair once for
all out of the way. ‘In ten years that picture will be dead.
It’s only a fashion of the moment. No picture can live that
hasn’t got something which that picture misses by a mil-
lion miles.’
‘And what is that?’
‘Great art can’t exist without a moral element.’
‘Oh God!’ cried Lawson furiously. ‘I knew it was that.
He wants morality.’ He joined his hands and held them to-
wards heaven in supplication. ‘Oh, Christopher Columbus,
Christopher Columbus, what did you do when you discov-
ered America?’
‘Ruskin says...’

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