He had simply, under pretence of following nature, caricatured her into a woman twenty years older than she is." "But did you ever see a modern portrait which more perfectly expressed character; which more completely fulfilled the requirements which you laid down a few evenings since ?" "Never; and that makes me all the more cross with the wilful mistake of it.

He had painted every wrinkle." "Why not, if they were there ?" "Because he had painted a face not one-twentieth of the size of life.
What right had he to cram into that small space all the marks which nature had spread over a far larger one ?" "Why not, again, if he diminished the marks in proportion ?" "Just what neither he nor any man could do, without making them so small as to be invisible, save under a microscope: and the result was, that he had caricatured every wrinkle, as his friend has in those horrible knuckles of Shem's wife.

Besides, I deny utterly your assertion that one is bound to paint what is there.

On that very fallacy are they all making shipwreck." "Not paint what is there?
And you are the man who talks of art being highest when it copies nature." "Exactly.

And therefore you must paint, not what is there, but what you see there.