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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Hidden Masterpiece by Honore de Balzac: life without the skeleton is a far more incomplete thing than the
skeleton without the life. But there is a higher truth still,--namely,
that practice and observation are the essentials of a painter; and
that if reason and poesy persist in wrangling with the tools, the
brushes, we shall be brought to doubt, like Frenhofer, who is as much
excited in brain as he is exalted in art. A sublime painter, indeed;
but he had the misfortune to be born rich, and that enables him to
stray into theory and conjecture. Do not imitate him. Work! work!
painters should theorize with their brushes in their hands."
"We will contrive to get in," cried Poussin, not listening to Porbus,
and thinking only of the hidden masterpiece.
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