What's wrong with that exactly? It looks like a fine painting, though quite unoriginal.
There is definitely a "snobbery of philistines" who want to not understand modern art because it isn't about pretty pictures. Making pretty pictures has been outdated in the 1840 by photography, and it's been nearly 100 years since Duchamps presented his "fountain".
If you like pretty pictures, there are people painting dolphins jumping in front of a full moon. Is that what you call art?
What's wrong with a wallpaper sampler? There are lots of neat colors and patterns in there too.
I don't understand how you can call out snobbery at the same time that you equate painting from life with dolphins jumping in front of a full moon, and imply that photography made life painting completely obsolete.
For those who haven't seen the caption below the painting in shrikant's link:
"The vertical strips in his paintings may relate to certain traditions that present God and man as a single beam of light. The name Adam, which in Old Testament was given to the first man, derives from the Hebrew word adamah (earth), but is also close to adom (red) and dam (blood). The relationship between brown and red in this painting may therefore symbolise man's intimacy with the earth."
