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‘People ask you for criticism, but they only want praise.
Besides, what’s the good of criticism? What does it matter if
your picture is good or bad?’
‘It matters to me.’
‘No. The only reason that one paints is that one can’t help
it. It’s a function like any of the other functions of the body,
only comparatively few people have got it. One paints for
oneself: otherwise one would commit suicide. Just think of
it, you spend God knows how long trying to get something
on to canvas, putting the sweat of your soul into it, and what
is the result? Ten to one it will be refused at the Salon; if it’s
accepted, people glance at it for ten seconds as they pass; if
you’re lucky some ignorant fool will buy it and put it on his
walls and look at it as little as he looks at his dining-room
table. Criticism has nothing to do with the artist. It judges
objectively, but the objective doesn’t concern the artist.’
Clutton put his hands over his eyes so that he might con-
centrate his mind on what he wanted to say.
‘The artist gets a peculiar sensation from something he
sees, and is impelled to express it and, he doesn’t know why,
he can only express his feeling by lines and colours. It’s like
a musician; he’ll read a line or two, and a certain combina-
tion of notes presents itself to him: he doesn’t know why
such and such words call forth in him such and such notes;
they just do. And I’ll tell you another reason why criticism
is meaningless: a great painter forces the world to see na-
ture as he sees it; but in the next generation another painter
sees the world in another way, and then the public judges
him not by himself but by his predecessor. So the Barbizon

Of Human Bondage