- British Mr. Cummings has a stooped back, was once Vladimir's mother's drawing teacher, and is now his.
- Habitually, Mr. Cummings uses an eraser from his pocket and teaches Vladimir about the laws of perspective.
- Once Vladimir has a good grasp of perspective and color and shading, he learns by watching Mr Cummings himself paint the same countryside landscape.
- After Mr. Cummings comes Yaremich, the impressionist, and Dobuzhinski, who makes Vladimir practice sketching detailed drawings from memory.
- True, it was Dobuzhinski to whom Nabokov was most directly in debt, when as an adult he needed to draw a cell structure or think of a literary scene; but it was Mr. Cummings that taught him the importance of color, which he appreciates now most.
- In later life, Nabokov learns that Mr. Burness had been a famous translator of the Russian poems Vladimir worshipped as a teen and that he had married around the same time Nabokov did, to a woman around his comparatively young age.
- While talking a walk with Dobuzhinski many years later, Nabokov asks after Yaremich, whether he is remembered as an artist. Dobuzhinski says that he is, but he's not sure what kind of teacher he must have been, because Vladimir was "the most hopeless pupil" he himself had ever had. (4.4.9)