One of my good friends in Paris had a large Lautrec, which was a parody of a painting of Puvis de Chavannes. It seems that in 1884, Puvis de Chavannes won a prize for a large painting, some thirty-two feet long, which is now hanging around the staircase in the Musée de Beaux-Arts de Lyon in France. The painting is titled The Sacred Woods Dear to the Arts and the Muses, with some twelve nymphs. Lautrec, who was twenty years old at the time, made a large parody of this painting, about thirteen feet long and six feet high. He painted exactly in Puvis de Chavannes's style, but removed the group of nymphs and replaced them with himself, his cousin Tapie de Celeran, Theodore Duret, an art critic of the time, and Willette, a sculptor friend of his and the president of the Beaux Arts. He added a police sergeant who was keeping a group of people from getting into the Sacred Woods. Lautrec also painted a modern clock at the top of a column, and where two angels were carrying a harp in the original he had them carrying a tube of color. At one end of the painting, he took out a maiden and installed instead The Prodigal Son, a subject of another Puvis de Chavannes painting. As this painting was very large, I had to clear it with the Louvre, and it was quite a chore to get their approval to let it leave the country. France that year had just devalued the franc and the government was low on museum funds, so I managed to get an approval. On account of its size I was unwilling to entrust the work to French shipping companies. Instead, I rolled it up and took it with me, and had the frame shipped later.

On the left hand side of the painting was an easel and canvas; primed on the top of the canvas was the name "Mrs. Mackay," and on the bottom of the canvas, "Meissonier." I never knew what the names meant; but many years later, reading Leo Stein's book on Art and Appreciation, I learned that in 1884, the year that Lautrec painted this parody, there was a hue and cry in Paris because Meissonier had done a portrait of Mackay, and on its completion Mackay paid him for it but did not like the picture, and threatened to burn it. All artists claim that no individual has the right to destroy the work of another artist. Lautrec, having a tongue in his cheek when he painted The Sacred Woods, evidently thought this was a timely comment on the affair.