This short story is set in seventeenth-century Paris, where a young painter, Nicolas Poussin, meets the famous old master Frenhofer. Frenhofer claims to be working on a painting of unmatched perfection, which no one has been allowed to see. The tale becomes a meditation on artistic ambition, the struggle between idea and execution, and the risk of chasing an impossible ideal. Brief and haunting, it has been admired by painters and writers, and it gave much to later thinking about modern art.
Quotes
The aim of art is not to copy nature, but to express it.