“People of taste and refinement tell us nowadays that Renoir is one of
the great painters of the last century. But in so saying they forget
the element of Time, and that it took a great deal of time, well into
the present century, before Renoir was hailed as a great artist. To
succeed thus in gaining recognition, the original painter, the
original writer proceeds on the lines adopted by oculists. The course
of treatment they give us by their painting or by their prose is not
always agreeable to us. When it is at an end the operator says to us:
‘Now look!’ And, lo and behold, the world around us (which was not
created once and for all, but is created afresh as often as an
original artist is born) appears to us entirely different from the;
old world, but perfectly clear. Women pass in the street, different
from what they used to be, because they are Renoirs, those Renoir
types which we persistently refused to see as women. The carriages,
too, are Renoirs, and the water, and the sky: we feel tempted to go
for a walk in the forest which reminds us of that other which when we
first saw it looked like anything in the world except a forest, like
for instance a tapestry of innumerable shades but lacking precisely
the shades proper to forests. Such is the new and perishable universe
which has just been created. It will last until the next geological
catastrophe is precipitated by a new painter or writer of original
talent.”
Marcel Proust, Le C