Dali’s father would not have accepted that his son was to be a painter if friends, particularly the Pichot family, had not encouraged him to accept it. “My parents had already undergone the influence of personality of the Pichot family before me. All of them were artists and possessed great gifts and an unerring taste. Ramón Pichot was a painter. Richardo a cellist, Luis a violinist, Maria a contralto who sang in opera. Pepito was, perhaps, the most artistic of all.” By moonlight the Pichots gave concerts, and would haul their grand piano onto the cliffs. “So if I paint grand pianos on cliffs or by cypresses, it is by no means a fantastic dream or vision. They are things I have seen, things that have made an impression on me. When Dali saw pictures Ramón Pichot painted that he decided he wanted to become a painter. “But the paintings that filled me with the greatest wonder were the most recent ones, in which deliquescent impressionism ended in certain canvases by frankly adopting in an almost uniform manner the pointilliste formula. The systematic juxtaposition of orange and violet produced in me a kind of illusion and sentimental joy like that which I had always experienced in looking at objects through a prism, which edged them with the colours of the rainbow. There happened to be in the dining room a crystal carafe stopper, through which everything became ‘impressionistic.’ Often I would carry this stopper in my pocket to observe the scene through the crystal."