There Is No Expedient To Which A

An Artist Who Brings To His Work A Mind Tolerably Furnished With The General Principles Of Art, And A Taste Formed Upon The Works Of Good Artists – In Short, Who Knows In What Excellence Consists - Will, With The Assistance Of Models... Be An Overmatch For The Greatest Painter That Ever Lived Who Should Be Debarred Such Advantages.

By Close Inspection... You Will Discover The Manner Of Handling The Artifices Of Contrast, Glazing, And Other Expedients, By Which Good Colorists Have Raised The Value Of Their Tints, And By Which Nature Has Been So Happily Imitated.

However Minutely Labored The Picture May Be In The Detail, The Whole Will Have A False And Even An Unfinished Appearance, At Whatever Distance, Or In Whatever Light It Can Be Shown.

I Wish You To Be Persuaded That Success In Your Art Depends Almost Entirely On Your Own Industry; But The Industry Which I Principally Recommend Is Not The Industry Of The Hands, But Of The Mind.

Our Exhibitions [the Royal Academy] Have... A Mischievous Tendency, By Seducing The Painter To An Ambition Of Pleasing Indiscriminately The Mixed Multitude Of People Who Resort To Them.