He lived in a garret before the war - the sort of place of legend and fiction. Three windows overlooking the city, and heat! (The benefits of a wealthy father.) He painted like a Fauve who had been trapped in the same room as Kandinsky for far too long. When the war came, he fled the city on a bicycle, eighteen of his paintings rolled up behind him. He burned the rest, so that boche would not get to them. He spent the war in London, painting the fires like Turner painted his haze, and when the armistice was called, he put down his brush and joined the family business.