Chapter XIII: 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.