Édouard Manet boarded the new direct train from Paris to Madrid one summer’s evening in 1865. The uncomfortable journey took a day and a half. He stayed in the Grand Hotel de Paris, supposedly noted for its French cooking, though Manet found the food so inedible he sent every dish back…. ..the overwhelming reason for this hazardous pilgrimage, taken during an outbreak of cholera and without a single Spanish word, was to set eyes on the art of Velázquez.
From The Vanishing Man (in pursuit of Velázquez) by Laura Cumming (2016)
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