I was educated as a painter, mademoiselle, by my father, a good, simple-hearted man, whose little landscapes looked like bits cut out of the actual field and woodland, so fresh and pure were they.

But I was not content to follow in the plain path he first taught me to tread.

Merely correct drawing, merely correct colouring, were not sufficient for my ambition.

I had dazzled my eyes with the loveliness of Correggio's 'Madonna,' and had marvelled at the wondrous blue of her robe--a blue so deep and intense that I used to think one might scrape away the paint till a hole was bored in the canvas and yet not reach the end of that fathomless azure tint; I had studied the warm hues of Titian; I had felt ready to float away in the air with the marvellous 'Angel of the Annunciation'-- and with all these thoughts in me, how could I content myself with the ordinary aspiration of modern artists?
I grew absorbed in one subject--Colour.

I noted how lifeless and pale the colouring of to-day appeared beside that of the old masters, and I meditated deeply on the problem thus presented to me.