I have always felt Sargent's words on Gauguin were completely honest and without rancor; a famous, trained & skilled painter pondering over an oddity with glaring voids in his arsenal of creative tools. When I was 18, an older art student (from a real art school) looked at my work at a show. She crushed me when she said I should take many drawing courses to learn to finish my surfaces. She was right and we both knew it. Such inability was only that - not genius.
