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.
Sir Joshua Reynolds (1837). “Discourses on Painting and the Fine Arts, delivered at the Royal Academy. With a portrait”, p.244
