 His revised idea was that his architectural invention represented a Roman ruin in Syria that Chedanne bought and landscaped, and to which he added a pool.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.