It could not be said that he was not inventive and new, yet one experienced on seeing no matter which one of his paintings that he was a creature of culture and of acquisition.

The scattered studies in the atelier first of all displayed the influence of his first master, of solid and simple Bonnat.

Then he had been tempted by the English pre-Raphaelites, and a fine copy of the famous 'Song of Love', by Burne-Jones, attested that reaction on the side of an art more subtle, more impressed by that poetry which professional painters treat scornfully as literary.

But Lincoln was too vigorous for the languors of such an ideal, and he quickly turned to other teachings.

Spain conquered him, and Velasquez, the colorist of so peculiar a fancy that, after a visit to the Museum of the Prado, one carries away the idea that one has just seen the only painting worthy of the name.
The spirit of the great Spaniard, that despotic stroke of the brush which seems to draw the color in the groundwork of the picture, to make it stand out in almost solid lights, his absolute absence of abstract intentions and his newness which affects entirely to ignore the past, all in that formula of art, suited Maitland's temperament.