The Greatest Man Is He

If Deceiving The Eye Were The Only Business Of The Art... The Minute Painter Would Be More Apt To Succeed. But It Is Not The Eye, It Is The Mind Which The Painter Of Genius Desires To Address.

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.

He Who Resolves Never To Ransack Any Mind But His Own, Will Be Soon Reduced, From Mere Barrenness, To The Poorest Of All Imitations; He Will Be Obliged To Imitate Himself, And To Repeat What He Has Before Often Repeated.

A Mere Copier Of Nature Can Never Produce Anything Great.

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.