He did not agree to this. “Once a painter, always a painter,” he declared. “Our individual taste improves, our life becomes more educated, until we look upon work as bad which, years before, we thought good. In fact,” he maintained, “if the early pictures of an artist were put with his later work, you would probably find he had not deteriorated at all.” He gave as an illustration the works in the Manchester Exhibition—where one man had, perhaps, twenty pictures, painted in different years, hung side by side; and these, he maintained, one and all reached a certain standard, and did not deteriorate or improve very much with years. Once asked to paint a picture containing several portraits, he agreed, although the subjects were not handsome—ugly, in fact. “What a trial that must be to you?” “Oh dear, no! I far prefer an ugly face to a beautiful one. It is generally so much more interesting.” “Then you choose their dresses and surroundings, presumably?” “No; I do not. I like to paint them as they are, and in their own home. Dressing them up and giving them strange surroundings takes away their identity, and makes a picture, but not a portrait. Men paint with their brain, and if they haven’t got brains, no amount of teaching will make them artists. They must feel what they do with the mind. Colour is in the artist himself, but he must learn for years and years, not to paint, but to draw. Drawing can only be acquired, and is difficult at first. No man can hope to be an artist until drawing is no longer a difficulty. Then, but not till then, he may start to paint. Look how beautifully Frenchmen draw. Art is poorly paid and a disheartening affair. When I see and hear of the thousands of ‘artists’ barely earning a living to keep body and soul together, it makes me positively sick.” One day a friend brought a beautiful bunch of roses to Portland Place. Mrs. Orchardson was so delighted with them, she took them into the studio to show her husband. “Can’t you paint them?” she enquired. “Well, they are lovely,” he replied. And after thinking a moment, he went and fetched a large canvas, on which he had drawn roughly his scheme for the now famous picture of “The Young Duke.” Many feet of white canvas and charcoal lines were there. The rest of the scheme and the colour was only in the artist’s head. He fetched a bowl, placed the roses in it, and there and then painted the flowers upon the great white canvas. So began the picture, round the bowl of roses.