The Model and the Lay-Figure
It may be doubted whether they have not done more harm than good. They are an attempt to get a bit of stuffed nature and to study from that instead of studying from the thing itself. Indeed, the man who never has a model but studies the faces of people as they sit opposite him in an omnibus, and goes straight home and puts down what little he can of what he has seen, dragging it out piecemeal from his memory, and going into another omnibus to look again for what he has forgotten as near as he can find it—that man is studying from nature as much as he who has a model four or five hours daily—and probably more. For you may be painting from nature as much without nature actually before you as with; and you may have nature before you all the while you are painting and yet not be painting from her.