The Hare with the Amber Eyes - Day 3

There's a fantastic passage  in a letter from Jules Lafourg, who is an artist helping Charles Ephrussi by indexing his book on Durer, where he says how much he loves working in Charles room - and then follows this explosion of description of the paintings (Pissaro, Manet, Degas, Renoir - you get the picture). It  gave me an imaginative insight into what Charles and his ilk were trying to do. All these art objects are there to be looked at, that's so startlingly obvious - the reason for restating it is because there is so much intensity in the collecting,  the planning and the looking.  We have so many distractions, ways of filling our lives with music, TV - films and programmes, radio, all on tap, available immediately.  They were creating this kind of rich experiential environment purely with paintings,  objects, drapes, carpets.  Imagine an evening at Charles Ephrussi's house, when there isn't a salon to go to , it's an evening in.  What do you do? You watch paintings, read books, fondle netsuke.