Speaking on this theme one day Tadema remarked, "Of what use is it to try and graft a branch laden with fruit upon a sapling. If the sapling has no trunk how is it possible to effect a graft? Rubens followed the right principle, and so after having extracted from foreign travel the best it could give he still remained Rubens. But what would have happened if he had undertaken his journey prematurely, that is to say before the artist inside him was fully developed?" On another occasion Alma Tadema expressed his views on the same subject: "It is my belief that an art student ought not to travel. When once he has become an artist, conscious of his own aim, of his own wants, he will certainly profit by seeing the works of the great masters, because he will then be able to understand them, and can then, if necessary, appropriate such things as may appear useful to him. With one or two exceptions the Prix de Rome men are not the foremost of their day. Meissonier, Gerome, van Leys, remained at home till they had become consummate artists. Rembrandt never left Amsterdam, and Rubens, when travelling through Italy, made some sketches after Lionardo da Vinci which might pass as original Rubens, because Rubens was already Rubens when he did them. Vandyck and Velasquez travelled when they were already Vandyck and Velasquez, but not before." The great picture dealer in those early days of Alma Tadema's art life was the Frenchman, M. Gambart, "Prince Gambart," as he used to be called in playful irony, for it was he who controlled and regulated the picture market of Europe, to the immense benefit of his own pocket. It is but fair, however, to add that he was a generous as well as a discerning dealer. When he was visiting any city in his commercial capacity, the whisper "Gambart is here!" would run round all the studios, and many a plot did unknown young artists lay in order to wile him into their workshops, and keen was the disappointment if the great man left the city after visiting only the studios of one or two of the most noted men, ignorant of all the schemes and plans that had been laid to entrap him.