They said it was a "mood picture," a "study in soul-tones" and a lot more like that.

They even asked the guilty man what he thought of it.

When he coldly responded that he thought it "looked like the devil" they told him that, of course he would say so: he had no soul for art.
Now, he had signed this horror, but (let me quote him): "I had signed it in a post-impressionist style, so no one on the earth could read the name." After a few days an artist came along who was not wholly obsessed with the new craze.

He studied the thing on the wall, and after a while he said: "Someone is guying you.

That isn't a picture.