Caxton said to me, stopping in front of a painting. “Perhaps you remember from your college days that after the Napoleonic wars, it was presumed of firstborn sons of a certain class that they would become lawyers. Edgar dutifully followed his father’s wishes and enrolled at the Faculté de Droit. Fortunately for the rest of the world — if not his parents — he dropped out in favor of doing something more creative than litigation after only a month.” He walked on. “Cézanne spent almost three years at law school in Aix, replete with boredom. And Matisse actually clerked for a lawyer for quite a while, drafting briefs and keeping files. It was only when he was forced to stay at home with appendicitis that he was given his first paint set by his mother. A decade later, he changed the history of the art world with the birth of Fauvism — exuberant colors and wildly distorted shapes. Imagine our loss if any of these giants had become mired in the law. You don’t paint by any chance, do you, Miss Cooper?”
