every time it came out brighter and fresher, and the painting never
seemed to lose anything in quality. That this portrait cost him
infinite labour and was eventually destroyed matters nothing; my point
is merely that he could paint yellow over yellow without getting the
colour muddy. One day, seeing that I was in difficulties with a black,
he took a brush from my hand, and it seemed to have hardly touched the
canvas when the ugly heaviness of my tiresome black began to
disappear. There came into it grey and shimmering lights, the shadows
filled up with air, and silk seemed to float and rustle. There was no
method-there was no trick; he merely painted. My palette was the same
to him as his own; he did not prepare his palette; his colour did not
exist on his palette before he put it on the canvas; but working under
the immediate dictation of his eye, he snatched the tints
instinctively, without premeditation. Ah! that marvellous hand, those
thick fingers holding the brush so firmly-somewhat heavily; how
malleable, how obedient, that most rebellious material, oil-colour,
was to his touch. He did with it what he liked. I believe he could rub
a picture over with Prussian blue without experiencing any
inconvenience; half-an-hour after the colour would be fine and
beautiful.

And never did this mysterious power which produces what artists know
as "quality" exist in greater abundance in any fingers than it did in
the slow, thick fingers of Edouard Manet: never since the world began;
not in Velasquez, not in Hals, not in Rubens, not in Titian. As an
artist Manet could not compare with the least among these illustrious
painters; but as a manipulator of oil-colour he never was and never
will be excelled. Manet was born a painter as absolutely as any man
that ever lived, so absolutely that a very high and lucid intelligence
never for a moment came between him and the desire to put anything