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.