BOOK II.

TECHNIQUE AND PRACTICE.

“Artists are supposed to pass their lives in earnest endeavour to express through the medium of paint or pencil, thoughts, feelings, or impressions which they cannot help expressing, and which cannot possibly be expressed by any other means. They make use of material means in order to arrive at this end. They tell their story—the story of a day, an impression of a character, a recollection of a moment, or whatever, more or less clearly or well, as they are more or less capable of doing. They expose their work to the public, not for the sake of praise, but with a feeling and a hope that some human being may see in it the feeling that has passed through their own mind in their poor and necessarily crippled statement. The endeavour is honest and earnest, if almost always with a result weakened by over-conscientiousness or endeavour to be understood.... Your work is exhibited not with the intention of injuring any of the human race. It is a dumb, noiseless, silent story, told, as best it may be, by the author to those whom it may concern. And it does tell its story, not to _everybody_, but to _somebody_.”

WILLIAM HUNT.