Whenever I could get the chance, I visited Doctor Gachet at 34 Rue des Vessenotes, in Auvers-sur-Oise. The large house of yellowing concrete and brick sat on top of a small incline and was silhouetted against a distant skyline of rolling hills and orchards. A large sign at the entrance, read: "Doctor Paul-Ferdinand Gachet, Homeopathic Surgeon." Inside there was always a warm welcome, good food, and encouragement for dissident painters, not only from Gachet, but from his young wife, Colette, who was just as enthusiastic about the new art as her husband. Gachet and I usually discussed the contemporary art scene, the controversy between the Academie and the radicals, and the varied styles which were developing in the dissident group. On one occasion, when the Doctor mentioned Manet and the current Manet fever as a signpost for the future, I said that I didn't see it this way, that Manet was as traditional as Gerome, the academic artist. Aroused by the thought, I added: "For me, Manet is boring, a second-rate imitator of the Spaniards and the Venetians, without their genius. If the academicians offered the olive branch to Manet, he would grasp it as a drowning man a piece of driftwood." To show Gachet how I felt, I dashed off a satirical version of Manet's "Moderne Olympia," freely interpreted, without hesitation. "That's it," I said, "there's nothing to it!" Convincing Gachet of Manet's shortcomings was not difficult; he had a natural antipathy to the image of an upper-class sophisticate trying to masquerade as a radical thinker. His socialist, liberal, and aesthetic beliefs held no brief with everything that Manet represented as a human being...
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from Pour Moi, Cezanne
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