Unskilled, vulgar, offensive! I can see the headlines still. The furor Roger’s exhibition of French painting caused is something it is now difficult to imagine. To understand it, one has to go back to Edwardian England, with its hankering after convention, its abhorrence of change. To a society that buried dissent beneath the plush carpets of its ruling elite, the aggressive exuberance of a Manet or Gauguin was shocking in the extreme. The French painters opened the floodgates for experiment and individual expression. The hallowed mimesis of English art was shaken to its core.

A high-ceilinged room with white walls. The dazzle of the paintings is so fierce I am forced to lower my eyes. I am still shaky from my weeks of illness and at first I am unable to take in the cacophony of colors and shapes. When I do raise my eyes I am momentarily blinded by crimson and yellow and swathes of blue. I catch my breath. I have scarcely ever seen anything so exciting. I feel a flutter of elation in my breast, as if the pictures have touched a chord that has not been sounded until now.