Over at Burlington House, home of the Royal Academy, the trumpets sounded and A New Spirit in Painting was proclaimed. Hugh Casson, President of the Royal Academy, wrote that the massive exhibition of 145 large pictures was ‘a clear and cogent statement about the state of painting today.’ He even compared the show with Roger Fry’s famous Post-Impres­sionism exhibition at the Grafton Galleries, seventy years ago, when Cezanne, Van Gogh and Gauguin were introduced to a sceptical British public.