Joshua Reynolds

As the natural dignity of the subject (of a portrait) is less, the more the ornamental helps are necessary to its embellishments.

There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking.

If deceiving the eye were the only business of the art, there is no doubt, indeed, but the minute painter would be more apt to succeed; but it is not the eye, it is the mind, which the painter of genius desires to address; nor will he waste a moment upon those smaller objects, which only serve to catch the sense, to divide the attention, and to counteract his great design of speaking to the heart.