Page 1026 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

about art, like all those wealthy Russians, but posing as
amateurs and connoisseurs. ‘Most likely they’ve already
looked at all the antiques, and now they’re making the
round of the studios of the new people, the German

humbug, and the cracked Pre-Raphaelite English fellow,
and have only come to me to make the point of view
complete,’ he thought. He was well acquainted with the
way dilettanti have (the cleverer they were the worse he
found them) of looking at the works of contemporary
artists with the sole object of being in a position to say that
art is a thing of the past, and that the more one sees of the
new men the more one sees how inimitable the works of
the great old masters have remained. He expected all this;
he saw it all in their faces, he saw it in the careless
indifference with which they talked among themselves,
stared at the lay figures and busts, and walked about in
leisurely fashion, waiting for him to uncover his picture.
But in spite of this, while he was turning over his studies,
pulling up the blinds and taking off the sheet, he was in
intense excitement, especially as, in spite of his conviction
that all distinguished and wealthy Russians were certain to
be beasts and fools, he liked Vronsky, and still more Anna.
‘Here, if you please,’ he said, moving on one side with
his nimble gait and pointing to his picture, ‘it’s the

1025 of 1759