bought and landscaped, and to which he added a pool. Difficulty working on the painting By May 1946, Dickinson had nearly ceased work on the painting, and for six months beginning in the fall of 1946 he went regularly to the Metropolitan Museum to paint a copy of El Greco's View of Toledo. Ward believes that Dickinson had come to feel that in his prolonged work on Ruin at Daphne he had lost the sense of purpose that had given his art its direction, and that by copying El Greco's painting he not only renewed contact with the artist he most admired but the depicted city where had seen the El Greco painting of which he once said, "When I saw the Burial of Count Orgaz, I knew where my aspirations lay. Dickinson continued to have difficulty returning to work on the painting, although in 1947 and early 1948 he attempted to introduce figures into the painting, none of which remain. In March 1948, he resumed steady work on the painting, but during the following two years, little was done on it. In 1949, Elaine de Kooning wrote an article on the painting for ARTnews in its series, "[name of featured artist] Paints a Picture." It was illustrated by photographs of three stages in the painting's progress (the first two misdated). In 1951, he put in more work on the painting, but only in early 1952, anticipating its exhibition in the Fifteen Americans exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (together with Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still and other major modernists), did he finally begin to overpaint the preliminary reds and pinks in which he had worked out the picture's design. Working from the center outwards, he had only painted 30% of the canvas in the new, off-gray color when, in 1954, while the painting was being moved to an exhibition, a gust of wind blew it over, knocking over the men who were carrying it and tearing a hole in the lower right corner. The hole was repaired, but heavy varnish was applied by the restorer, making future work difficult. Elaine de Kooning's article, with photographs of its transformation, had a significant role in boosting Dickinson's recognition. It is likely that the photographic record of the painting's lengthy evolution gave Elaine's husband, Willem de Kooning, the idea of working on a painting (Woman I) over an extended period