Undoubtedly, it would be
accepted, they said!
It was, and hung conspicuously. There were always small groups
before it, for it created something like the uproar that Manet's
"Olympia" had raised in its time. Peter learned from one critic that
his technique was magnificent, his picture a masterpiece of
psychology and of portraiture, and that if he kept on he'd soon be
one of the Immortals. He learned from another that while he
undoubtedly had technique, his posing was commonplace, his subject
banal, his imagination hopelessly bourgeois; that he was a painter
of the ugly and the ordinary, without inspiration or imagination;
that the one pretty and delicate note in the whole canvas was the
butterfly in the lower left-hand corner, and that _that_ was
obviously reminiscent of Whistler, who on a time had used a
butterfly signature! But on the whole the criticisms were highly
favorable; it was admitted that a young painter of promise had
arisen.
Peter Champneys went about his business, indifferent to praise or
blame.
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