“…dreams were painted on the walls.”

From: Bohemia in London (1907), by Arthur Ransome:

“His was a simple, earnest life, of a kind that is not so rare as books about studio life would make out. There are many like him, who care more for art than for recognition, and work on quietly, happily, living on bread and cheese, or going without it when painting materials become a more insistent necessity. Since those days he has become a success in spite of himself. Some illustrations he made to fairy tales interested people, and though he fled them when he could, and only asked to be let alone, he has become famous and almost opulent. But he lives as simply as before, and paints in the same manner. His pictures are all wonderful, but his patrons find it as difficult to get him to finish one as it is to persuade him to let it leave his studio when done. In the Middle Ages he would have been a monk and a painter of frescoes, loved by all the gentle-minded folk who came to worship in the church where his dreams were painted on the walls. Now, except among the few who know him well, the best word I hear said of him is that he is a good artist but a criminally unbusinesslike man.”